rich and luxurious, while the country possesses all the virtues which tend to private happiness and public prosperity. Those towns are not much regarded by the country; they are hardly considered as an essential part of these states. And the experience of the last war has shown, that their being in the possession of the enemy did not necessarily draw on the subjection of the country, which bravely continued to maintain its freedom and independence notwithstanding.

It has been computed by some political arithmetician, that, if every man and woman would work four hours each day in something useful, that labour would produce sufficient to procure all the necessaries and comforts of life; want and misery would be banished out of the world, and the rest of the twenty-four hours might be leisure and pleasure.

What then occasions so much want and misery? It is the employment of men and women in works that produce neither the necessaries nor conveniences of life; who, with those who do nothing, consume the necessaries raised by the laborious. To explain this,

The first elements of wealth are obtained by labour from the earth and waters. I have land, and raise corn with this I feed a family that does nothing: my corn will be consumed; and, at the end of the year, I shall be no richer than I was at the beginning. But if, while I feed them, I employ them, some in spinning, others in hewing timber and sawing boards, others in making bricks, &c. for building, the value of my corn will be arrested, and remain with me; and, at the end of the year, we may all be better clothed and better lodged. And if, instead of employing a man I feed in making bricks, I employ him in fiddling for me,

the corn he eats is gone, and no part of his manufacture remains to augment the wealth and the conveniences of the family. I shall therefore be the poorer for this fiddling man, unless the rest of my family work more or eat less to make up the deficiency he occasions.

Look round the world, and see the millions employed in doing nothing, or in something that amounts to nothing, when the necessaries and conveniences of life are in question. What is the bulk of commerce, for which we fight and destroy each other, but the toil of millions for superfluities, to the great hazard and loss of many lives by the constant dangers of the sea? How much labour spent in building and fitting great ships to go to China and Arabia for tea and for coffee, to the West Indies for sugar, to America for tobacco! These things can not be called the necessaries of life, for our ancestors lived very comfortably without them.

A question may be asked: Could all these people, now employed in raising, making, or carrying superfluities, be subsisted by raising necessaries? I think they might. The world is large, and a great part of it still uncultivated. Many hundred millions of acres in Asia, Africa, and America, are still forest, and a great deal even in Europe. On one hundred acres of this forest a man might become a substantial farmer; and one hundred thousand men employed in clearing each his one hundred acres (instead of being, as they are, French hair-dressers) would hardly brighten a spot big enough to be visible by the moon, (unless with Herschell's telescope,) so vast are the regions still in the world unimproved.

"T is, however, some comfort to reflect, that, upon

the whole, the quantity of industry and prudence among mankind exceeds the quantity of idleness and folly. Hence the increase of good buildings, farms cultivated, and populous cities filled with wealth all over Europe, which, a few ages since, were only to be found on the coasts of the Mediterranean. And this, notwithstanding the mad wars continually raging, by which are often destroyed in one year the works of many years' peace. So that we may hope the luxury of a few merchants on the sea-coast, will not be the ruin of America.

One reflection more, and I will end this long, rambling letter. Almost all parts of our bodies require some expense. The feet demand shoes, the legs stockings, the rest of the body clothing, and the belly a good deal of victuals. Our eyes, though exceedingly useful, ask, when reasonable, only the cheap assistance of spectacles, which could not much impair our finances. But the eyes of other people are the eyes that ruin us. If all but myself were blind, I should want neither fine clothes, fine houses, nor fine furniture. Adieu, my dear friend. I am yours ever.

B. FRANKLIN.

P. S. This will be in deliverance to you by my grandson. I am persuaded you will afford him your civilities and counsels. Please to accept a little present of books I send by him, curious for the beauty of the impression.

Dr. Franklin to David Hartley, Esq. M. P.

Passy, July 5, 1785.

I CAN not quit the coasts of Europe without taking leave of my ever dear friend Mr. Hartley. We were long fellow labourers in the best of all works, the work of peace. I leave you still in the field; but, having finished mý day's task, I am going home to go to bed! Wish me a good night's rest, as I do you a pleasant evening. Adieu! And believe me ever yours most affectionately,

B. FRANKLIN.

Dr. Franklin to Dr. Shipley, Bishop of St. Asaph. Philadelphia, Feb. 24, 1786.

DEAR, FRIEND,

I RECEIVED lately your kind letter of November 27. My reception here was, as you have heard, very honourable indeed; but I was betrayed by it, and by some remains of ambition, from which I had imagined myself free, to accept of the chair of government for the state of Pennsylvania, when the proper thing for me was repose and private life. I hope, however, to be able to bear the fatigue for one year, and then to retire.

I have much regretted our having so little opportunity for conversation when we last met. You could have given me informations and counsels that I wanted; but we were scarce a minute together without being broken in upon. I am to thank you, however, for the pleasure I had after our parting, in reading the new book you gave me, which I think generally well written and likely to do good; though the reading time of most people is of late so taken up with newspapers and little periodical phamphlets, that few now-a-days ven.

ture to attempt reading a quarto volume. I have admired to see, that, in the last century, a folio, Burton on Melancholy, went through six editions in about forty years. We have, I believe, more readers now, but not of such large books.

You seem desirous of knowing what progress we make here in improving our governments. We are, I think, in the right road of improvement, for we are making experiments. I do not oppose all that seem wrong, for the multitude are more effectually set right by experience, than kept from going wrong by reasoning with them: and I think we are daily more and more enlightened; so that I have no doubt of our obtaining, in a few years, as much public felicity as good government is capable of affording. Your newspapers are filled with fictitious accounts of anarchy, confusion, distresses, and miseries, we are supposed to be involved in, as consequences of the revolution; and the few remaining friends of the old government among us take pains to magnify every little inconvenience a change in the course of commerce may have occasioned. To obviate the complaints they endeavour to excite, was written the inclosed little piece, from which you may form a truer idea of our situation than your own public prints would give you and I can assure you, that the great body of our nation find themselves happy in the change, and have not the smallest inclination to return to the domination of Britain. There could not be a stronger proof of the general approbation of the measures that promoted the change, and of the change itself, than has been given by the assembly and council of this state, in the nearly unanimous choice for their governor, of one who had been so much concerned in those measures;