omy, but only a particular
question of local expediency, whether an article, in itself valueless,
may bear a value of exchange in transactions with some other nation. The
economist considers only the actual value of the thing done or produced;
and if he sees a quantity of labour spent, for instance, by the Swiss,
in producing woodwork for sale to the English, he at once sets the
commercial impoverishment of the English purchaser against the
commercial enrichment of the Swiss seller; and considers the whole
transaction productive only as far as the woodwork itself is a real
addition to the wealth of the world. For the arrangement of the laws of
a nation so as to procure the greatest advantages to itself, and leave
the smallest advantages to other nations, is not a part of the science
of political economy, but merely a broad application of the science of
fraud. Considered thus in the abstract, pictures are not an _addition_
to the monetary wealth of the world, except in the amount of pleasure or
instruction to be got out of them day by day: but there is a certain
protective effect on wealth exercised by works of high art which must
always be included in the estimate of their value. Generally speaking,
persons who decorate their houses with pictures will not spend so much
money in papers, carpets, curtains, or other expensive and perishable
luxuries as they would otherwise. Works of good art, like books,
exercise a conservative effect on the rooms they are kept in; and the
wall of the library or picture gallery remains undisturbed, when those
of other rooms are repapered or re-panelled. Of course this effect is
still more definite when the picture is on the walls themselves, either
on canvas stretched into fixed shapes on their panels, or in fresco;
involving, of course, the preservation of the building from all
unnecessary and capricious alteration. And, generally speaking, the
occupation of a large number of hands in painting or sculpture in any
nation may be considered as tending to check the disposition to indulge
in perishable luxury. I do not, however, in my assumption that works of
art are treasures, take much into consideration this collateral monetary
result. I consider them treasures, merely as permanent means of pleasure
and instruction; and having at other times tried to show the several
ways in which they can please and teach, assume here that they are thus
useful, and that it is desirable to make as many painte