million to a hundred when compared with the fire. If the incessant energy of production were constantly repressed by mobs, and fires, and wars, the end would be that consumption would altogether exceed production; and that then the producers and the consumers would both be starved into wiser courses, and perceive that nothing makes good for trade but profitable industry and judicious expenditure. Prodigality devotes itself too much to the satisfaction of present wants: avarice postpones too much the present wants to the possible wants of the future. Real economy is the happy measure between the two extremes; and that only "makes good for trade," because, while it carries on a steady demand for industry, it accumulates a portion of the production of a country to stimulate new production. That judicious expenditure consists in "The sense to value riches, with the art T' enjoy them." The fashion of "making good for trade" by unprofitable consumption is a relic of the barbarous ages. In the twelfth century a count of France commanded his vassals to plough up the soil round his castle, and he sowed the ground with coins of gold, to the amount of fifteen hundred guineas, that he might have all men talk of his magnificence. Piqued at the lordly prodigality of his neighbour, another noble ordered thirty of his most valuable horses to be tied to a stake and burnt alive, that he might exhibit a more striking instance of contempt for accumulation. In the latter part of the fourteenth century, a Scotch noble, Colin Campbell, on receiving a visit from the O'Neiles of Ireland, ostentatiously burnt down his house at Inverary upon their departure; and an Earl of Athol pursued the same course in 1528, after having entertained the papal legate, upon the pretence that it was "the constant habitude of the high-landers to set on fire in the morning the place which had lodged them the night before." When the feudal lords had so little respect for their own property, it was not likely that they would have much regard for the accumulation of others. The Jews, who were the great capitalists of the middle ages, and who really merit the gratitude of Europeans for their avarice, as that almost alone enabled any accumulation to go forward, and any production to increase, were, as it is well known, persecuted in every direction by the crown, by the nobles, by the people. When a solitary farmer or abbot attempted to accumulate corn, which accumulation could alone prevent the dreadful famines invariably resulting from having no stock that might be available upon a bad harvest, the people burnt the ricks of the provident men, by way of lessening the evils of scarcity. The consequence was, that no person thought of accumulating at all, and that the price of wheat often rose, just before the harvest, from five shillings a quarter to five pounds.