Besides the varied character with which the various strength of the passion stamps different people, there is a difference, in this respect, in the same people, between the agricultural population and the inhabitants of cities, which the following sagacious remarks of Montesquieu seem to me sufficiently to explain."The extent of luxury farther depends on the size of towns, and especially of the capital.In proportion to the populousness of towns, the inhabitants are filled with notions of vanity, and actuated by an ambition of distinguishing themselves by trifles.If they are numerous, and most of them strangers to one another, their vanity redoubles, because there are greater hopes of success.As luxury inspires these hopes, each man assumes the marks era superior condition.But, by endeavoring thus at distinction, every one becomes equal and distinction ceases; as all are desirous of respect, nobody is regarded." (111)In the country it is different; every one is known, and no one can succeed in passing himself off for other than he is.In town Molly Seagrim would have been admired as a fantastical fine lady; in the country she got herself mobbed.To account for the difference, which we every where see between the dissipation of the town and the economy and frugality of the country, we have only to consider, in addition to this, that in the country there are always considerable facilities and encouragements, for even the poorest to form instruments, unless in very anomalous cases, such as that which the abomination of the poor laws has introduced into England.In the country the poor man can devote all his spare time, perhaps his only disposable fund, to the cultivation of some plot of ground, to repairing his house, working in his garden, and procuring food for his cow or his pig.He is induced and enabled to place out all his little savings, as they come in, on some profitable investment.(112) Similar circumstances operate similar effects on the man in middling circumstances, and even on the rich man.It is the town, especially the metropolis, that is the ruin of landed proprietors.
We may also, in a similar manner, explain the tendency of new countries to engender industry and frugality.The very scattered state of the population effectually keeps down vanity; the absolute necessity of working up the materials within reach, rouses the accumulative principle to action, and the abundance of these materials stimulates it to unremitting exertion.
There is hence no better school for the dissolute European than the back woods.After a dozen years' residence in them, or in the clearings to which he has helped to convert them, he comes out a completely altered man.
It is perhaps proper to observe here, that no blame can attach to individuals, for compliances with the follies to which the passion of vanity prompts.
It were a great mistake to imagine that even its absurdities are easily avoidable.It is in vain for any one man to oppose general opinions and practices, however ridiculous.If he does so, he is sure to encounter greater evils than a compliance with the customs of the society would inflict.
It is the business of the poor man to stand well with the world, else he will scarcely make his way through it.It is his business, too, to avoid a display of poverty.One is sure to have most friends when they least need them."Pour s'etablir dans le mende," says Rochefoucauld, "on fair tout ce qu'on peut pour y paroitre etabli.""Notwithstanding my poverty," writes a Jesuit missionary from China,." I have yet been able to relieve the extreme misery of two poor Christians.
The one had his house, his furniture, and his implements of trade, destroyed by fire.The other was by profession a physician and some thieves had in the night carried off his silk dresses; they might as well have stolen his profession and his reputation; for here a physician, unless dressed in silk and cow's hair, passes for ignorant, and is employed by no one."The doctor who had lost his silken robes was probably worse off than the mechanic; the former was still in a condition to find work, the latter was not.He probably, indeed, had nankin left; but had he dressed in it, especially had he pretended to say it was the more comfortable wear, he would have acted about as wisely as would a poor young M.D.in England who should, in cold winter days, attire himself in dreadnought.Who would trust a case to so absurd a mortal?
The man of independent fortune, again, though he need fear no very serious evils from setting himself in direct opposition to received modes of extravagance, will yet certainly incur the charge of eccentricity, perhaps of niggardly parsimony.These are small inconveniences, but he consults his ease in avoiding them.
A person is then only properly guilty of inflicting an injury on the community, when he runs into both acknowledged extravagances and real luxuries.
