Page:Works of the Late Doctor Benjamin Franklin (1793).djvu/287

the natural productions of their country may be diſſipated in vain and needleſs expences, and poverty be introduced in the place of affluence.—This may be poſſible. It however rarely happens; for there ſeems to be in every nation a greater proportion of induſtry and frugality, which tend to enrich, than of idleneſs and prodigality, which occaſion poverty; ſo that upon the whole there is a continual accumulation. Reflect what Spain, Gaul, Germany, and Britain were in the time of the Romans, inhabited by people little richer than our ſavages, and conſider the wealth they at preſent poſſeſs, in numerous well-built cities, improved farms, rich moveables, magazines ſtocked with valuable manufactures, to ſay nothing of plate, jewels, and coined money; and all this, notwithſtanding their bad, waſteful, plundering governments, and their mad, deſtructive wars; and yet luxury and extravagant living has never ſuffered much restraint in thoſe countries. Then conſider the great proportion of industrious frugal farmers inhabiting the interior parts of theſe American ſtates, and of whom the body of our nation conſiſts, and judge whether it is poſſible that the luxury of our ſea-ports can be ſufficient to ruin ſuch a country.—If the importation of foreign luxuries could ruin a people, we ſhould probably have been ruined long ago; for the Britiſh nation claimed a right, and practiſed it, of importing among us not only the ſuperfluities of their own production, but thoſe of every nation under heaven; we bought and conſumed them, and yet we flourished and grew rich. At preſent our independent governments may do what we could not then do, diſcourage by heavy duties, or prevent by heavy prohibitions, ſuch importations, and thereby grow richer;—if, indeed, which may admit of diſpute, the deſire of