and, after a certain time, they leave a
country. Individuals have no means to counteract this tendency, unless
the governing power of the country gives a general impulse to them,
in cases where they can act, and acts itself, with care and attention,
where individuals can do nothing.

In the case of education and manners, in the case of providing for
children, individuals may do much, but government must not only
give the means, but the impulse. In the case of the soil becoming
insufficient for the inhabitants, and of taxes and national debt
increasing, government may stop the progress; and in the cases of
individual bodies trenching on the general weal, as well as in the
tendency of inventions, capital, &c. to emigrate to other countries, the
government may counteract, and, perhaps, totally prevent them all.

In all cases, individuals will and must follow their lawful propensities,
both in the means of employing capital and expending revenue; that is,
they must be left free, in a general way, and only interrupted and
regulated in particular cases; but, sometimes, the means must be
furnished them of going right, and in other cases the inducements to
do so augmented. We shall take the subjects in the same order that
they followed in the Second Book.

Though the manners of people, arrived at maturity, can only be
regulated by their education, when young, if that is properly attended
to, it will be sufficient; for though it will not prevent the generation
that has attained wealth, from enjoying it according to the prevailing
taste, it will prevent contamination being communicated with
increased force, as it now is, to the children. The evils then will go on
in a simple proportion; they now go on with a compound one, and the
evils arising from the [end of page #277] luxury of each generation are
doubled on that which follows after. If that is prevented, it will be all
that probably is necessary; at all events it is probably all that is
possible.

In taxation, the government should study to do away what is
obnoxious in its mode of collection, for that does more injury to the
subject, in many cases, than an equal sum would do levied in another
manner; and when payments are to be made, the mode should be
rendered as easy as possible. Every unnecessary trouble should be
avoided in collecting a tax. In the tax on receipts and bills, why should
the sums to which they extend not be printed on them, so as to prevent
error, whi