Of course, what is true of bread is true of luxuries and comforts, whether for the body or the mind.  But the consideration of luxuries leads us to a new aspect of the whole question, and to a second proposition no less true, and maybe no less startling, than the last.

At the present day, we, of the easier classes, are in a state of surfeit and disgrace after meat.  Plethora has filled us with indifference; and we are covered from head to foot with the callosities of habitual opulence.  Born into what is called a certain rank, we live, as the saying is, up to our station.  We squander without enjoyment, because our fathers squandered.  We eat of the best, not from delicacy, but from brazen habit.  We do not keenly enjoy or eagerly desire the presence of a luxury; we are unaccustomed to its absence.  And not only do we squander money from habit, but still more pitifully waste it in ostentation.  I can think of no more melancholy disgrace for a creature who professes either reason or pleasure for his guide, than to spend the smallest fraction of his income upon that which he does not desire; and to keep a carriage in which you do not wish to drive, or a butler of whom you are afraid, is a pathetic kind of folly.  Money, being a means of happiness, should make both parties happy when it changes hands; rightly disposed, it should be twice blessed in its employment; and buyer and seller should alike have their twenty shillings worth of profit out of every pound.  Benjamin Franklin went through life an altered man, because he once paid too dearly for a penny whistle.  My concern springs usually from a deeper source, to wit, from having bought a whistle when I did not want one.  I find I regret this, or would regret it if I gave myself the time, not only on personal but on moral and philanthropical considerations.  For, first, in a world where money is wanting to buy books for eager students and food and medicine for pining children, and where a large majority are starved in their most immediate desires, it is surely base, stupid, and cruel to squander money when I am pushed by no appetite and enjoy no return of genuine satisfaction.  My philanthropy is wide enough in scope to include myself; and when I have made myself happy, I have at least one good argument that I have acted rightly; but where that is not so, and I have bought and not enjoyed, my mouth is closed, and I conceive that I have robbed the poor.  And, second, anything I buy or use which I do not sincerely want or cannot vividly enjoy, disturbs the balance of supply and demand, and contributes to remove industrious hands from the production of what is useful or pleasurable and to keep them busy upon ropes of sand and things that are a weariness to the flesh.  That extravagance is truly sinful, and a very silly sin to boot, in which we impoverish mankind and ourselves.  It is another question for each man’s heart.  He knows if he can enjoy what he buys and uses; if he cannot, he is a dog in the manger; nay, it he cannot, I contend he is a thief, for nothing really belongs to a man which he cannot use.  Proprietor is connected with propriety; and that only is the man’s which is proper to his wants and faculties.