In _Holland_ all are employ'd, even the lettred World deal in Traffick and are Merchants; nay the Deaf, the Lame, the Blind, the Dumb, and the very Dead Work. PRIOR. The Dead Work! That is a Flight extraordinary sure, Mr. _Dean_, and I must call on you to retract that Mistake. SWIFT. Not at all; for tho' that Truth is a little incomprehensible in _Ireland_, where we have no such Incitements, in _Holland_ the Statues and Monuments of their useful and industrious Citizens, and the Epitaphs and Praises on them, prompt and inflame the living to emulate them, and push on their Virtue to excell, in every Art, and open every Road to Profit and to Glory. When I was throwing away (like other People) my Thoughts and my Time above Ground, I used often to think on these Matters; and I fear to as little Purpose as we talk of them now. However I must say, _Tom_, that tho' if our rich People would think and grow Managers, and our Poor wou'd Work, and keep their Hands and their Children busy, nine tenths of our Evils wou'd be remov'd, yet I am convinc'd, neither of these important Points will be minded, till we are forc'd to get better Notions of Things, by seeing the Nation ruin'd by the want of them, as often as a Boy at School is whipt for playing the Truant, before he will mend. PRIOR. Ruin is as terrible a Remedy, as a deadly Sickness is a Reformer; and I had rather hope that sumptuary Laws against Dress, Racing, Gaming, _&c._ if we were Wise enough to make them, and amendable enough to mind them when made, wou'd do our Business much better. 'Tis a Misfortune for _Ireland_, that our Spendthrifts so often run out their Lives and their Estates together, and so their Examples are lost on us; for I ever thought it a Pity, they shou'd not live forty or fifty Years in beggary, their own Lives are such a Torment to them, and they become thereby such fine Scare-crows, to our young unthinking Squanderers, when they see them all the while, standing as it were in a kind of Pillory. Nothing keeps the _Dutch_ so frugal as their Loads of high Taxes, for some good Author, (and I think 'tis your old Friend Sir _William Temple_) tells us, one cannot have a Dish of well dressed Fish at a Tavern in _Holland_, without paying near thirty Gabels for it. We want some Remedy for our Extravagancies of all Kinds greatly, but this is so shocking a one, that one wou'd hope the very fear of it might cure us, as some Men have renounc'd their Intemperance, by their dread of the Gout and the Doctor. Without some such helps, our fine Gentlemen seem not inclined to learn or consider, that we shou'd save immense Sums to our Country, if we eat Corn of our own sowing, drunk home-made Wines of our own Brewing, fed on Fish of our own catching, burn'd Coals of our own raising, and wore no Cloaths that were not of our own manufacturing. If they were once convinced of this, good Effects wou'd follow, and we shou'd soon acknowledge that it