The second cause of decline is far more difficult to be removed. The root of it lies deep, and is ingrafted with the spirit and manners of the whole people, high and low. The lower classes have contracted a taste for superfluity and expence, which they are enabled to gratify, by working for their countrymen; while they despise the branches of foreign trade as low and unprofitable. The higher classes again depend upon the lower classes, for the gratification of a thousand little trifling desires, formed by the taste of dissipation, and supported by habit, fashion, and a love of expence. Here then is a system set on foot, whereby the poor are made rich, and the rich are made happy, in the enjoyment of a perpetual variety of every thing which can remove the inconveniencies to which human nature is exposed. Thus both parties become interested to support it, and vie with one another in the ingenuity of contriving new wants; the one from the immediate satisfaction of removing them; the other from the profit of furnishing the means, and the hopes of one day sharing in them. But even for this great evil, the very nature of man points out a remedy. It is the business of a statesman to lay hold of it. The remedy flows from the instability of every taste not founded upon rational desires. In every country of luxury, we constantly find certain classes of workmen in distress, from the change of modes. Were a statesman upon his guard to employ such as are forced to be idle, before they betake themselves to new inventions, for the support of the old plan, or before they contract an abandoned and vitious life, he would get them cheap, and might turn their labour both to the advantage of the state and to the discouragement of luxury.