used often to think on
these Matters; and I fear to as little Purpose as we talk of them now.
However I must say, _Tom_, that tho' if our rich People would think and
grow Managers, and our Poor wou'd Work, and keep their Hands and their
Children busy, nine tenths of our Evils wou'd be remov'd, yet I am
convinc'd, neither of these important Points will be minded, till we
are forc'd to get better Notions of Things, by seeing the Nation ruin'd
by the want of them, as often as a Boy at School is whipt for playing
the Truant, before he will mend.

PRIOR. Ruin is as terrible a Remedy, as a deadly Sickness is a
Reformer; and I had rather hope that sumptuary Laws against Dress,
Racing, Gaming, _&c._ if we were Wise enough to make them, and
amendable enough to mind them when made, wou'd do our Business much
better. 'Tis a Misfortune for _Ireland_, that our Spendthrifts so often
run out their Lives and their Estates together, and so their Examples
are lost on us; for I ever thought it a Pity, they shou'd not live
forty or fifty Years in beggary, their own Lives are such a Torment to
them, and they become thereby such fine Scare-crows, to our young
unthinking Squanderers, when they see them all the while, standing as
it were in a kind of Pillory. Nothing keeps the _Dutch_ so frugal as
their Loads of high Taxes, for some good Author, (and I think 'tis your
old Friend Sir _William Temple_) tells us, one cannot have a Dish of
well dressed Fish at a Tavern in _Holland_, without paying near thirty
Gabels for it. We want some Remedy for our Extravagancies of all Kinds
greatly, but this is so shocking a one, that one wou'd hope the very
fear of it might cure us, as some Men have renounc'd their
Intemperance, by their dread of the Gout and the Doctor. Without some
such helps, our fine Gentlemen seem not inclined to learn or consider,
that we shou'd save immense Sums to our Country, if we eat Corn of our
own sowing, drunk home-made Wines of our own Brewing, fed on Fish of
our own catching, burn'd Coals of our own raising, and wore no Cloaths
that were not of our own manufacturing. If they were once convinced of
this, good Effects wou'd follow, and we shou'd soon acknowledge that it
is barely owing to our own Extravagance, Thoughtlesness, Sleepiness,
Drunkenness and Vanity, that we don't, with one Voice, condemn and
renounce such evident Errors, in our national Conduct, and fix on their
Remedies.

SWIFT. This _Tom_, is merely dreaming of