III. Frugality

If some portion of the products of industry be not put away to aid man in his future creative operations, a nation could make no progress in wealth. It could never acquire capital, which, as we shall see, is indispensable to further production. Without this aid, creative industry can no more exist than man can live without food. The extraordinary opulence of Holland, which once carried on commerce with all the world, and which even now lends money to most of its neighbors, was owing no less to the economy than the industry of its inhabitants.

One cause of wealth which has ever characterized commercial nations, is the fact that they neither could have acquired the materials of traffic, nor have extensively prosecuted it without great forbearance to spend. It is obviously as true with a nation as with an individual - if it annually consumes all that it annually produces, it at best can be but stationary, and may be easily retrograde.

IV. Government

For a nation to be at once safe, prosperous, and happy, it must have the advantage of good government and laws. Man will be neither industrious nor frugal, if a rapacious government is ready to seize on the fruits of his labor. His productive powers are not likely to be much exerted, if his earnings are not secured to him, and placed beyond the reach of arbitrary power; and the spectacle of great national industry, either agricultural, manufacturing, or commercial, has never been seen under a pure despotism.

It is not only necessary that productive industry should be protected from the exactions of its own government, but also from the invasive violence of other nations. It must also be defended from the attacks of domestic force or fraud, and these defences cannot be furnished without an efficient government, and a good system of jurisprudence.

The rights of property and of person should be accurately defined, and promptly and vigorously maintained. Contracts, freely and fairly made, should be strictly enforced - and, above all, the Government should honorably fulfil its own engagements, whether they were to pay a debt, to relieve from a burden, or to concede a privilege. Nothing better shows the wise policy of honesty than a scrupulous preservation of the public faith. By a breach of it, a nation may lose more than it gains, even in a pecuniary view; but, for its loss of character, it can have no adequate compensation.

The modes in which a government may impede a nation's prosperity and wealth, are truly formidable in number and degree. It may subject its people to a merciless system of taxation, as in India, under its former Rajahs and its present rulers. It may, like Charles the Twelfth, drag them from the plough or the loom, to shed their blood to gratify his mad ambition. Or it may employ them in building vast pyramids, as in Egypt; or fantastic palaces, like the Alhambra in Spain, or Versailles in France. Or it may grant monopolies of all articles in most general use to a few pampered court favorites. Such are among the modes by which mankind have been downtrodden and oppressed by their rulers.

But governments sometimes err by a well-intended but vicious intermeddling; for in the body politic, too much regulation is as mischievous as too much medicine in the body natural. It was a conviction of this truth which suggested to the merchants of France their celebrated answer of "laissez nous faire" - let us alone - to Colbert, who had inquired how he could serve them. With an intelligent people, the sagacity of individuals will suggest far better schemes for their interest than any sovereign or legislature is likely to do; and, in the estimation of a free people, the forbearance of a government is one of its highest attributes.