Book V: Chapter 3

CHAPTER III.

OF PUBLIC DEBTS.

In that rude state of society which precedes the extension of
commerce and the improvement of manufactures ; when those
expensive luxuries, which commerce and manufactures can alone
introduce, are altogether unknown ; the person who possesses a
large revenue, I have endeavoured to show in the third book of
this Inquiry, can spend or enjoy that revenue in no other way
than by maintaining nearly as many people as it can maintain. A
large revenue may at all times be said to consist in the command
of a large quantity of the necessaries of life. In that rude
state of things, it is commonly paid in a large quantity of those
necessaries, in the materials of plain food and coarse clothing,
in corn and cattle, in wool and raw hides. When neither commerce
nor manufactures furnish any thing for which the owner can
exchange the greater part of those materials which are over and
above his own consumption, he can do nothing with the surplus,
but feed and clothe nearly as many people as it will feed and
clothe. A hospitality in which there is no luxury, and a
liberality in which there is no ostentation, occasion, in this
situation of things, the principal expenses of the rich and the
great. But these I have likewise endeavoured to show, in the same
book, are expenses by which people are not very apt to ruin
themselves. There is not, perhaps, any selfish pleasure so
frivolous, of which the pursuit has not sometimes ruined even
sensible men. A passion for cock-fighting has ruined many. But
the instances, I believe, are not very numerous, of people who
have been ruined by a hospitality or liberality of this kind;
though the hospitality of luxury, and the liberality of
ostentation have ruined many. Among our feudal ancestors, the
long time during which estates used to continue in the same
family, sufficiently demonstrates the general disposition of
people to live within their income. Though the rustic
hospitality, constantly exercised by the great landholders, may
not, to us in the present times, seem consistent with that order
which we are apt to consider as inseparably connected with good
economy; yet we must certainly allow them to have been at least
so far frugal, as not commonly to have spent their whole income.
A part of their wool and raw hides, they had generally an
opportunity of selling for money. Some part of this money,
perhaps, they spent in purchasing the few objects of vanity and
luxury, with which the circumstances of the times could furnish
them ; but some part of it they seem commonly to have hoarded.
They could not well, indeed, do any thing else but hoard whatever
money they saved. To trade, was disgraceful to a gentleman; and
to lend money