ife, are denied us by
nature, or not to be attained by labour and industry! Are those
detestable extravagancies of Flanders lace, English cloths of our own
wool, and other goods, Italian or Indian silks, tea, coffee, chocolate,
china-ware, and that profusion of wines, by the knavery of merchants
growing dearer every season, with a hundred unnecessary fopperies,
better known to others than me; are these, I say, fit for us, any more
than for the beggar who could not eat his veal without oranges? Is it
not the highest indignity to human nature, that men should be such
poltroons as to suffer the kingdom and themselves to be undone, by the
vanity, the folly, the pride, and wantonness of their wives,[93] who,
under their present corruptions, seem to be a kind of animal, suffered,
for our sins, to be sent into the world for the destruction of families,
societies, and kingdoms; and whose whole study seems directed to be as
expensive as they possibly can, in every useless article of living; who,
by long practice, can reconcile the most pernicious foreign drugs to
their health and pleasure, provided they are but expensive, as starlings
grow fat with henbane; who contract a robustness by mere practice of
sloth and luxury; who can play deep several hours after midnight, sleep
beyond noon, revel upon Indian poisons, and spend the revenue of a
moderate family to adorn a nauseous, unwholesome living carcase? Let
those few who are not concerned in any part of this accusation, suppose
it unsaid; let the rest take it among them. Gracious God, in His mercy,
look down upon a nation so shamefully besotted!

If I am possessed of an hundred pounds a year, and by some misfortune it
sinks to fifty, without a possibility of ever being retrieved; does it
remain a question, in such an exigency, what I am to do? Must not I
retrench one-half in every article of expense, or retire to some cheap,
distant part of the country, where necessaries are at half value?

Is there any mortal who can shew me, under the circumstances we stand
with our neighbours, under their inclinations towards us, under laws
never to be repealed, under the desolation caused by absentees, under
many other circumstances not to be mentioned, that this kingdom can ever
be a nation of trade, or subsist by any other method than that of a
reduced family, by the utmost parsimony, in the manner I have already
prescribed?

I am tired with letters from many unreasonable, well-meaning pe