Adam Smith remarks, that "It is not by the importation of gold and silver that the discovery of America has enriched Europe.By the abundance of the American mines those metals have become cheaper.A service of plate can now be purchased for about a third part of the corn, or a third part of the labor, which it would have cost in the fifteenth century.With the same annual expense of labor and commodities, Europe can annually purchase about three times the quantity of plate which it could have purchased at that time.But when a commodity comes to be sold for a third part of what had been its usual price, not only those who purchased it before can purchase three times their former quantity, but it is brought down to the level of a much greater number of purchasers, perhaps to more than ten, perhaps to more than twenty time~ the former number.So that there may be in Europe, at present, not only more than three times, but more than twenty or thirty times the quantity of plate which would have been in it, even in its present state of improvement, had the discovery of the American mines never been made.So far Europe has, no doubt, gained a real conveniency, though surely a very trifling one.The cheapness of gold and silver renders those metals rather less fit for the purposes of money than they were before.In order to make the same purchases, we must load ourselves with a greater quantity of them, and carry about a shilling in our pocket, where a groat would have done before.It is difficult to say which is most trifling, this inconveniency, or the opposite conveniency." (100) I suspect there is also a little exaggeration here, as the words of the author in another place would prove."If you except iron, the precious metals are more useful than any other.As they are less liable to rust and impurity, they can more easily be kept clean; and the utensils, either of the table or the kitchen, are often, upon that account, more agreeable when made of them.A silver boiler is more cleanly than a lead, copper, or tin one;and the same quality would render a gold boiler still better than a silver one." (101) But, if we should admit that silver, as a commodity possessing many useful qualities, is valuable on other accounts than its scarcity, we must also grant that a very large share of other departments of the expenditure of the wealthy consists of mere luxuries, -- articles, the sole gratification afforded by which is, that they alone can afford to possess them.It is then, I apprehend with some truth, that, in another part of the Wealth of Nations, the author, in tracing the causes which brought on the diminution of the power of the great feudal lords, and ascribing them chiefly to their expending their revenues on the produce of foreign commerce and manufacture, instead of maintaining a large retinue, characterizes the bulk of the articles constituting this expenditure as useless for any other purpose than the gratification of a selfish vanity."All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.As soon, therefore, as they could find a method of consuming the whole value of their rents themselves, they had no disposition to share them with any other persons.For a pair of diamond buckles, perhaps, or something as frivolous and useless, they exchanged the maintenance, or what is the same thing, the price of the maintenance, of a thousand men for a year, and with it the whole weight and authority which it could give them.The buckles, however, were to be their own, and no other human creature was to have any share of them; whereas, in the more ancient method of expense, they must have shared with at least a thousand people.With the judges that were to determine the preference, this difference was perfectly decisive;and thus, for the gratification of the most childish, the meanest, and the most sordid of all vanities, they gradually bartered their whole power and authority.Having sold their birthright, not like Esau, for a mess of pottage in time of hunger and necessity, but, in the wantonness of plenty, for trinkets and baubles, fitter to be the playthings of children than the serious pursuits of men, they became as insignificant as any substantial burgher or tradesman in a city." (102) Even here, too, there is some exaggeration; the seat of a wealthy modern nobleman exceeds the rude castle of his half barbarous ancestor, not only in the gratification it gives to the personal vanity of its possessor, but also in the refined enjoyments it affords its inmates.The exact proportion between the mere luxuries and the absolute enjoyments, in this as in other cases, is indeed impossible to ascertain.The former, however, undoubtedly make a very large portion of the total amount.
As we descend in the scale, from the persons and mansions of those who have the fortune to possess hereditary wealth and hereditary claims to good society, to those who have themselves accumulated, or are employed in accumulating riches, and raising themselves to distinction, from thence to the lower grades of life, and, at last, to the mere drudges of the community, we shall find every step we take marked by a greater prominence in two circumstances.The amount expended on what are neither the necessaries nor conveniences of life becomes less, but that expenditure is more decidedly mere luxury.Taste gives enjoyment even to the wildest extravagance of those whose chief occupation has been to devise means to enjoy life, and to make it agreeable to others; but he whose business has been, or is, to discover the best means of gaining wealth, though he may yield less to the desire of show, does so more thoroughly.He becomes a mere imitator, and, like most imitators, is apt to retain all the defects and to drop much of the graces of his copy.
