This by itself is sufficient to show that Adam Smith’s graduation of wants is quite misleading in the present connection. When we ask about the “degree” or “urgency” of any individual want, we get no information by determining to what class or kind it belongs—whether, for instance, it is the need for a necessary or the desire for a luxury. The craving for food, as has been suggested, belongs so conspicuously to the first class of wants, that we do not so often speak of “wants” of subsistence, as of “needs” of subsistence. The desire for liquor, again, some people would scarcely dignify by the name of “want” at all. Yet many people will attach as much importance to the one as to the other. If we are to judge by his expenditure, the working man may graduate his wants thus: bread, house room, liquor, tea, tobacco, clothes, meat; while a rich man may spend more on his horses than he does on his house, and his grocer’s bill may be less than his florist’s. The fact seems to be that, with the scale of wants which each man makes for himself, the graduation by classes or kinds has very little to do. From the consideration already pointed out, that certain wants are fundamental, necessary, and universal, the class must, indeed, have something to do with it, but the other two considerations, the limited nature of these wants and the abundance of provision for them in most communities, throw the consideration of necessity quite into the background. There is one case, however, where Adam Smith’s scale comes nearly true;—where the income is just sufficient, and no more, to cover the barest wants of man as a living being. If a seamstress has to sustain life on a shilling a day, she will take care to dispose of the shilling in such a way that she spends on food just enough to keep life in, on clothes, enough to keep her warm, while the meanest roof that will keep out the rain will satisfy her “want of shelter.” And, in proportion as we approximate to this direst poverty, will the class have more to do with the scale. Even the seamstress, however, will probably “jump” the class of comforts, and spend her last penny on the highest concrete want among the luxuries of the poor, tea.