We must encourage oeconomy, frugality, and a simplicity of manners, discourage the consumption of every thing that can be sold out of the country, and excite a taste for superfluity in neighbouring nations. When such a system can no more be supported to its full extent, by the scale of foreign demand becoming positively lighter; then in order to set the balance even again, without taking any thing out of the heavy scale, and to preserve and give bread to those who have enriched the state, an additional home consumption, proportioned to the deficiency of foreign demand, must be encouraged. For were the same simplicity of manners still kept up, the infallible consequence would be a forced restitution of the balance, by the distress, misery, and at last extinction of the supernumerary workmen. I must therefore, upon such occasions, consider the introduction of luxury, or superfluous consumption, as a rational and moral consequence of the deficiency of foreign trade. I am, however, far from thinking that the luxury of every modern state, is only in proportion to such failure; and I readily admit, that many examples may be produced where the progress of luxury, and the domestic competitions with strangers who come to market, have been the cause both of the decline and extinction of their foreign trade; but as my business is chiefly to point out principles, and to shew their effects, it is sufficient to observe, that in proportion as foreign trade declines, either a proportional augmentation upon home consumption must take place, or a number of the industrious, proportioned to the diminution of former consumption, must decrease. By the first, what I call a natural restitution of the balance is brought about, from the principles above deduced; by the second, what I call a forced one. Here then is an example, where the introduction of luxury may be a rational and prudent step of administration; and as long as the progress of it is not accelerated from any other principle, but that of preserving the industrious, by giving them employment, the same spirit, under the direction of an able statesman, will soon throw industry into a new channel, better calculated for reviving foreign trade, and for promoting the public good, by substituting the call of foreigners in place of that of domestic luxury. I hope, from what I have said, the political effects of luxury, or the consumption of superfluity, are sufficiently understood. These I have hitherto considered as advantageous only to those classes who are made to subsist by them; I reserve for another occasion the pointing out how they influence the imposition of taxes, and how the abuse of consumption in the rich may affect the prosperity of a state.