I confess, however, that while a luxurious taste in the rich subsists, industrious people will always be found to supply the instruments of it to the utmost extent; and I also allow, that such a taste has infinite allurements, especially while youth and health enable a rich man to indulge in it. Those, however, who are systematically luxurious, that is, from a formed taste and confirmed habit, are but few, in comparison of those who become so from levity, vanity, and the imitation of others. The last are those who principally support and extend the system; but they are not the most incorrigible. Were it not for imitation, every age would seek after, and be satisfied with the gratification of natural desires. Twenty-five might think of dress, horses, hunting, dogs, and generous wines: forty, of a plentiful table, and the pleasures of society: sixty, of coaches, elbow-chairs, soft carpets, and instruments of ease. But the taste for imitation blends all ages together. The old fellow delights in horses and fine clothes; the youth rides in his chariot on springs, and lolls in an easy chair, large enough to serve him for a bed. All this proceeds from the superfluity of riches and taste of imitation, not from the real allurements of ease and taste of luxury, as every one must feel, who has conversed at all with the great and rich. Fashion, which I understand here to be a synonimous term for imitation, leads most people into superfluous expence, which is so far from being an article of luxury, that it is frequently a load upon the person who incurs it. All such branches of expence, it is in the power of a statesman to cut off, by setting his own example, and that of his favourites and servants, above the caprice of fashion. The levity and changeableness of mankind, as I have said, will even assist him. A generation of oeconomists is sometimes found to succeed a generation of spendthrifts; and we now see, almost over all Europe, a system of sobriety succeeding an habitual system of drunkenness. Drunkenness, and a multitude of useless servants, were the luxury of former times. Every such revolution may be profited of by an able statesman, who must set a good example on one hand, while, on the other, he must profit of every change of taste, in order to re-establish the foreign trade of his subjects. An example of frugality, in the head of a luxurious people, would do infinite harm, were it only intended to reform the morals of the rich, without indemnifying the poor for the diminution upon their consumption. At the same time, therefore, that luxury comes to lose ground at home, a door must be opened, to serve as an out-let for the work of those hands which must be thereby made idle; and which, consequently, must fall into distress.