 ignorant of the said Method to this Day, though Both of them highly capable of having it put in Execution.
You surprise me, Mr.
Meekly,
said the Earl, a Method to make Men ingenious, a Method to make them industrious! how can that be?
Experience has proved it to be even so, my Lord; for where a Method may be found for encouraging and promoting Ingenuity and Industry, that Method will, infallibly, make People become both ingenious and industrious. No Man will work, my Lord, without some Hire, or Wages, or Return for his Labour; neither will Any, who are in Want, refuse to work, when assured of a due Reward for so doing.
When the good Housholder walked out to the Marketplace, and found Labourers loitering there, when it was now toward Evening, he asked them,
why stand ye here all the Day idle?
And when they answered,
because no Man hath hired or given us Employment,
he took this for a sufficient Apology, he had Compassion upon them, and he supplied them with the divinest of all Kinds of Charity,
the Means of earning their own Bread.
Now, throughout
China
and
Holland,
no Person is in Want, because All are hired, All employed, the Young and the Old, the Lame and the Blind; and All find a ready Sale, without Anxiety or Loss of Time, without Travel or Delay, for the Products of their Industry. Throughout
Great Britain,
on the contrary, Nineteen in Twenty are in real Want; and in
Ireland,
as I am told, Forty nine, in Fifty, are nearly in a State of Beggary, merely for want of being employed, for want of Encouragement to Labour.
Permit me, then, to explain to your Lordship, how some Men, and some Nations, come to be encouraged to Industry, and Others to be discouraged, or, in a Manner, prohibited from it.
Different Men are endowed with different Talents and Powers, insufficient in many Respects, though superfluous in Others, to their own Occasions. Different Countries are also endowed with different Productions, superfluous in many Respects to the Natives, though necessary or desirable for the Well-being of Foreigners.
Now, these alternate Qualities, of Deficiency and Abundance, at once invite and impel all Men, and all Countries, to claim and to impart that reciprocal Assistance which is denominated Commerce. Each gives what he can spare, Each receives what he wants; the Exchange is to the mutual Advantage of all Parties. And, could a Method be found out
