of work to accomplish, provided it be not oppressive to the strength or the faculties, is as much greater than the happiness of him who is without occupation, as the apparent accommodations of the prince are superior to those of the peasant. Nothing is more common than complaints of the fatigue of labor and the irksomeness of business: nothing is more conducive, and nothing more indispensable to happiness.

The complaints which are made of the constancy and severity of manual labor, as labor is distributed at present, are much more reasonable. And yet the cheerfulness of the husbandman as he pursues his daily toil is proverbial. The expression of his countenance is not that of misery; the language of his tongue is not that of murmuring. Countenances pale with care; countenances darkened with the gloom of disappointment and despondency, and which appear but the darker for the smile that sometimes sits on them; countenances which exhibit an appalling picture of tumultuous passion, of bitter, unrecompensed suffering, must be sought, where the wealthy toil for wealth; where the ambitious strive to rise, and the risen fear to fall, The laborer is a stranger to the very name of these sufferings, than which the human heart knows few more dreadful. His day is peaceful his pillow receives him to undisturbed and refreshing slumber: in the past he sees nothing

:

to regret, in the future nothing to fear: his task is regular; his recompence is certain and here is his compensation, and the rich know it is a compensation for the want of the conveniences which riches purchase. The severity of his labor, without doubt, is greater than is consistent with humanity, or required by utility; but as the arts improve, the necesssity of great manual exertion will be lessened, and as society advances, the time requisite to devote to industry will be abridged. In the mean time the oppressiveness of labor is much more really than apparently diminished by that power which the human strength possesses of accommodating itself to its imposed burthen: and it is observable, that excessive as the exertions of the laboring classes are, their recreations are all athletic.

There is little foundation for the complaint of the irksomeness of the employments to which great numbers are condemned. To employments the most disgusting the mind is reconciled by habit. The tastes of men are infinitely vari ous. An occupation of which one person can never think without horror, another chooses and delights in; a situation in which one man would die of disgust, is endeared to another by the gratifications of which it is the source. Professions the most laborious and hazardous are often the fixed choice of those who might have pursued the most easy and secure there is no occupation

forced on man by necessity which is without its compensation; and no situation so advantageous as to be the object of general ambition which is without its peculiar, and not unfrequently, its over-balancing inconvenience,

At least with equal truth it may be affirmed, that the superior accommodations of the rich uniformly fail to bring with them the happiness they promise. There is a power in constant operation which, notwithstanding the gaiety and pomp of their appearance; notwithstanding the sumptuous and overflowing board which is daily spread for them, levels their proud distinctions: and raises the peasant, in his humble garb, and with his frugal fare, at least to an equality in enjoyment: that power is habit. Be the apparel of the rich as gorgeous as the arts of luxury can make it, it affords no more comfort to the wearer than the coarsest habiliment of poverty: to the pleasureable sensations of the body its costliness cannot conduce: the gratification which it might afford the mind is effectually counteracted by the great equalizer of the inequalities of fortune; and while beneath the ermine and the purple, the heart is oppressed with care, or torn with the fangs of wounded pride and disappointed ambition, beneath the texture of the coarsest woof, it beats with freedom and is at peace.

Nor can the luxuries which pamper the appe

tite be reckoned among the sources of pleasure, though they may be, and are, among the most powerful of the means which equalize the actual enjoyments of the rich and poor, by scourging the former with many pains and diseases to which the latter are strangers. Luxury may pall the senses, and does so; but it neither quickens the appetite nor increases the pleasure of its gratification. The peasant looks forward to his humble repast with satisfaction, a satisfaction of which he is seldom cheated, while the rich sit down to their sumptuous fare with little appetite, partake of it with less pleasure, and arise without refreshment. And to his humble habitation the peasant is as completely reconciled as the man of wealth is habitually unconscious of his palace: habit, which makes the one satisfied without magnificence, renders magnificence little satisfactory to the other.

These are plainly adventitious circumstances of which happiness is independent: it may be great with them: it may be equally great without them. In the essentials of happiness, in occupation and health, the lot of the poor is at least as favorable as that of the rich, while their common nature is subject to like infirmities: both are equally exposed to pain and to disease, or, if in these respects one be more exempted from suffering than the other, that exemption is

in favor of the poor.

So true it is, that "when

Providence divided the earth among a few lordly masters, it neither forgot nor abandoned those who seemed to have been left out in the partition. In what contributes to the real happiness of human life, these last are in no respect inferior to those who would seem so much above them. In ease of body, and peace of mind, the different ranks of life are nearly upon a level."*

Nor is the evil which is incident to an uncivilized state by any means so great as is commonly imagined. This is a class of evil the extent of which is at all times small, yet the reality is less than the appearance, because it is provided with many mitigations.

From the difficulty of procuring subsistence, the number of persons who labor under the privations and sufferings of a rude state of society must of necessity be small. Whenever that number increases so as to become considerable, agriculture must be cultivated, some degree of civilization must commence, and its progress must keep, at least, equal pace with population. It has been estimated that the evils belonging to the lowest state of the human race are confined to the four hundredth part of the whole; and that, on the largest calculation, those who enjoy the advantages of civilization in comparatively a slight

* Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments, Part 4th, Chap. 1st.

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