There is no doubt, but more health and vigour is expected among the people, and their offspring, from temperance and sobriety, than there is from gluttony and drunkenness; yet I confess, that as to luxury's effeminating and enervating a nation, I have not such frightful notions now, as I have had formerly. When we hear or read of things which we are altogether strangers to, they commonly bring to our imagination such ideas of what we have seen, as (according to our apprehension) must come the nearest to them: And I remember, that when I have read of the luxury of Persia, Egypt, and other countries where it has been a reigning vice, and that were effeminated and enervated by it, it has sometimes put me in mind of the cramming and swilling of ordinary tradesmen at a city feast, and the beastliness their overgorging themselves is often attended with; at other times, it has made me think on the distraction of dissolute sailors, as I had seen them in company of half a dozen lewd women, roaring along with fiddles before them; and was I to have been carried into any of their great cities, I would have expected to have found one third of the people sick a-bed with surfeits; another laid up with the gout, or crippled by a more ignominious distemper; and the rest, that could go without leading, walk along the streets in petticoats. It is happy for us to have fear for a keeper, as long as our reason is not strong enough to govern our appetites: And I believe, that the great dread I had more particularly against the word, to enervate, and some consequent thoughts on the etymology of it, did me abundance of good when I was a school boy: But since I have seen something in the world, the consequences of luxury to a nation seem not so dreadful to me as they did. As long as men have the same appetites, the same vices will remain. In all large societies, some will love whoring, and others drinking. The lustful that can get no handsome clean women, will content themselves with dirty drabs: and those that cannot purchase true Hermitage or Pontack, will be glad of more ordinary French claret. Those that cannot reach wine, take up with most liquors, and a foot soldier or a beggar may make himself as drunk with stale beer or malt spirits, as a lord with Burgundy, Champaign, or Tockay. The cheapest and most slovenly way of indulging our passions, does as much mischief to a man's constitution, as the most elegant and expensive.