Читать книгу Encyclopedic Liberty - Jean Le Rond d'Alembert - Страница 39

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Savings ^†

(Epargne)

SAVINGS (Morality), signifies sometimes the treasury of the prince, savings treasurer, savings revenue.

Savings in this sense is hardly in use any more; today, one instead says royal treasury.

Savings, the law of savings, expression used by some modern scientists to express the decree by which God regulates, in the simplest and most constant manner, all the movements, all the alterations, and the other natural changes. See ACTION, COSMOLOGY, &c.

Savings, in the most common sense, is a function of economy; properly speaking, it is the care and skill necessary to avoid superfluous expenses, and to incur those expenses that are indispensable at little cost. The observations one is going to read here could have gone with the word ECONOMY, which has a broader sense, and which embraces all legitimate means, all the efforts necessary to preserve and increase any possession, and especially to dispense it appropriately. It is in this sense that one says family economy, bees’ economy, national economy. Notwithstanding, the terms savings and economy express virtually the same idea, and they will be employed indiscriminately in this essay, according as how they appear more convenient for exactness of expression.

Economic savings have always been regarded as a virtue, both under paganism and by Christians; there have even been heroes who have practiced it with perseverance. Nonetheless, we must admit that this virtue is too modest, or if you will, too obscure to be essential to heroism; few heroes

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Res Domestica (Frugality)

A woman with compasses (for measuring resources) in her right hand and a wand and ship’s rudder (for household leadership) in her left (alongside beehive).

In the background, a rich dissolute household is depicted on the left, a modest and frugal household on the right.

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are capable of reaching that far. Economy accords much better with politics; it is its basis, its support, and one may say in a word that it is inseparable from it. Indeed, the government ministry is properly the concern of public economy; thus, M. de Sully, that great minister, that such wise and zealous steward, entitled his memoirs, Royal Economies, &c.¹

Economic savings therefore join forces perfectly with piety; they are its faithful companion. It is there that a Christian soul finds resources assured for so many good works prescribed by charity.

In any case, there is perhaps no people today less fond of, nor less acquainted with, savings than the French. As a result, there is scarcely a people more agitated or more exposed to the sorrows and miseries of life. Despite this, the indifference, or rather the contempt, we have for this virtue is inspired in us from childhood by a bad education, and especially by the bad examples that we constantly see. We are forever hearing praise for sumptuous meals and feasts, magnificence in clothes, apartments, furniture, &c. All of this is represented not only as the purpose and reward of work and talent, but especially as the fruit of taste and genius, as the mark of a noble soul and an elevated mind.

Furthermore, whoever has a certain air of elegance and tidiness in everything around him, whoever knows how to do the honors in his house and at his table, will surely pass for a man of merit and a sophisticate, even if he lacks the essentials in everything else.

In the midst of these praises poured out to luxury and expense, how to plead the case for savings? Nowadays we don’t take care in studied speeches, education, or sermons to recommend work, savings, or frugality as useful and worthy qualities. It is unheard of to exhort young people to renounce wine, rich food, finery, to know how to do without vain superfluities, to adapt early on to simple necessities. Such exhortations would seem base and offensive. They are nonetheless quite consistent with the maxims of wisdom, and would perhaps be more efficacious than any other morality in making men orderly and virtuous. Unfortunately, they are not fashionable among us; we are becoming daily more alienated from them.

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Everywhere the reverse is insinuated: flabbiness and the comforts of life. I remember that in my youth, young people who were too preoccupied with their finery were observed with a sort of contempt: today, those who have a simple and unaffected air would be regarded with contempt. Education ought to teach us to become useful, sober, disinterested, beneficent citizens: how it estranges us from that great goal today! It teaches us to multiply our needs, and it thereby makes us more grasping, more burdensome to ourselves, harsher and more useless to others.

If a young man has more talent than fortune, one will at most say to him in a vague manner that he should think seriously about his advancement, that he should be faithful in his duties, avoid bad company, debauchery, &c. But no one will say to him what in fact needs to be said and repeated constantly: that to ensure the necessities of life and advance by legitimate means, to become an honorable man and a virtuous citizen, useful to himself and his Country, he must be hardy and patient, he must work without respite, avoid expense, contemn both pain and pleasure, and finally, rise above the prejudices that encourage luxury, dissipation, and flabbiness.

The efficacy of these means is well-enough known: nonetheless, since a certain idea of baseness is wrongly attached to everything that smacks of saving and economy, one would not dare give such advice, which would seem like preaching avarice—on which point, I would observe in passing that of all the vices combated by morality, none is less clearly defined than that one.

Misers are often depicted to us as people without honor and without humanity, people who live only to enrich themselves, and who sacrifice everything to the passion for accumulation; indeed, as unfeeling people who, in the midst of abundance, push far away from them all the sweet pleasures of life, and who deny themselves even the strict necessities. But few people would recognize themselves in this frightful painting, and if all these circumstances were necessary to constitute the miserly man, there would hardly be any on earth. To truly merit this odious characterization, it is enough to have a violent desire for wealth and few scruples about the means of acquiring it. Avarice is not essentially connected to stinginess; perhaps it is not even incompatible with splendor and prodigality.

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Nonetheless, by a lack of justice that is only too ordinary, the sober, attentive, and hardworking man who, by his work and savings, lifts himself imperceptibly above his fellows is commonly labeled a miser; but would to heaven that we had more misers of that kind. Society would find itself much better off that way, and we would not suffer as many injustices on men’s part. In general these men—repressed, if you will, but more economizers than misers—are almost always good company; sometimes, they even become compassionate. And if they are not found to be generous, they are at least found to be quite fair-minded. Finally, one almost never loses anything with them, whereas one loses more often than not with the spendthrifts. These economizers, in a word, function within the framework of honest saving, on which we wrongly lavish the word avarice.

The ancient Romans, more enlightened than us on this matter, were quite far from acting this way. Far from regarding parsimony as base or vicious conduct—an error that is too common among the French—they identified it, on the contrary, with the most complete probity. They considered these virtuous habits so inseparable that the well-known expression vir frugi signified at the same time the sober and economizing man, the honest man, the good man.

The Holy Spirit presents us with the same idea; in countless passages he sings the praises of economy, and everywhere he distinguishes it from avarice. He marks the difference in a quite concrete manner when he says, on the one hand, that there is nothing more wicked than avarice and nothing more criminal than the love of money (Ecclesiast. x.9.10.),² and on the other when he exhorts us to work, to savings, to sobriety, as the sole means of enrichment; when he shows us ease and wealth as desirable goods, as the happy fruits of a sober and industrious life.

Go, he says to the lazy man, go to the ant, and look at how she collects in the summer enough to live on during the other seasons. Prov. vi.6.

Whoever, says he again, is slothful and negligent in his work is hardly better than the spendthrift. Prov. xviii.9.

He likewise assures us that the lazy man who does not want to plow during the cold will be reduced to begging in the summer. Prov. xx.4.

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He tells us in another place: however little you may give way to the sweet pleasures of rest, indolence, and laziness, poverty will come and establish itself in your midst and will make itself strongest there. But, he continues, if you are active and industrious, your harvest will be like an abundant spring, and dearth will fly far away from you. Prov. vi.10.11.

He recalls the same lesson a second time by saying that he who plows his field will be satisfied, but that he who loves idleness will be overtaken by indigence. Prov. xxviii.19.

He warns us at the same time that the worker subject to drunkenness will never become rich. Ecclesiastes, xix.1.³

That whoever loves wine and rich food will not only not become wealthy, but will even fall into poverty. Prov. xxi.17.

He prohibits us from looking at wine when it is shining in a glass, for fear that that liquor may make impressions on us that are agreeable but dangerous, and that in the end, like the snake and the basilisk, it will kill us with its poison. Prov. xxiii.31.32.

Cut back, he says elsewhere, cut back on the wine to those who are charged with public office, for fear that, inebriated on that treacherous beverage, they may come to forget justice, and may alter the rights of the poor. Prov. xxxi.4.5.

Be content, he says again, with goat’s milk for your food, and let it furnish the other needs of your house, &c. Prov. xxvii.27.

What instruction and encouragement to savings and frugal work do we not find in his eulogy to the strong woman! He depicts her as a careful and economizing mother and family woman, who brings sweetness to the life of her husband and spares him countless anxieties; who launches important enterprises and sets herself to work on them; who gets up before sunrise to distribute the work and food to her domestics; who augments her domain by new acquisitions; who plants vines; who makes fabric to furnish her house and for outside trade; who has no other finery but a simple and natural beauty; who nonetheless will on occasion put on the richest clothes; who offers only words of mildness and wisdom; who, finally, is compassionate and kindly toward the less fortunate. Prov. xxxi.10.11.12.13.14.15. &c.

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To these precepts, to these examples of economy so well traced in the books of wisdom, let us add a word from St. Paul, and let us confirm the whole by an act of saving that J. C. has left us. Writing to Timothy, the apostle wants bishops to be capable, among other qualities, of raising their children and ordering their domestic affairs—in a word, of being good stewards. Indeed, he says, if they cannot run their house, how can they run the affairs of the church? Si quis autem domui suae praeesse nescit, quomodò ecclesiae Dei diligentiam habebit? First epistle to Timothy, chap. iii.4–5.

The Savior himself also gives us an excellent lesson in economy when, after multiplying five loaves and two fishes to the point of satisfying a crowd of people following him, he then has the remaining pieces—which fill twelve baskets—collected, so that, as he says, nothing will be lost: colligite quae superaverunt fragmenta ne pereant. John vi.12.⁴

Despite these authorities, so respectable and so sacred, the taste for vain pleasures and foolish expenses is the dominant passion with us—or rather, it is a type of mania which possesses great and small, rich and poor, and for which we often sacrifice a goodly part of our necessities.

Nonetheless, only someone with no experience of the world would seriously propose the total abolition of luxury and superfluities; that is not my intention. The common run of men are too weak, too much the slaves of custom and opinion, to resist the torrent of bad example. But if it is impossible to convert the multitude, it is perhaps not difficult to persuade the people in office—enlightened and judicious people to whom one can exhibit the abuse of a thousand essentially useless expenses, whose suppression would in no way impede the public’s liberty; expenses, moreover, that have no properly virtuous end and that could be employed with more wisdom and utility: fireworks and other firecrackers, public balls and banquets, ambassadors’ ceremonial entrances, &c. What mummery, what child’s play, what millions are lavished in Europe to pay tribute to custom! Whereas there are real and pressing needs which cannot be satisfied because we are not faithful to the national “economy.”⁵

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But what am I saying? We began to sense the futility of these expenses and our ministry already recognized it when, after heaven gratified our wishes with the birth of the Duke of Burgundy⁶—that young prince so dear to France and to all of Europe—we preferred, in expressing the common joy at this happy event, we preferred, I say, to light up on all sides the flame of Hymen and show the people his laughter and his games for encouraging population through new marriages, than to follow custom by engaging in ill-advised extravagances or lighting up useless and expensive fireworks that shine for a moment and then go out.

This quite reasonable conduct returns perfectly in the thought of a wise Swede who, when he was giving a sum of money two years ago to begin an establishment useful to his Country, expressed himself in this way in a letter he wrote on the subject:

May heaven grant that the fashion be established among us, that for any event that causes public rejoicing, our joy may break out only in acts useful to society! Soon we would see numerous honorable monuments to our reason, which would much better perpetuate the memory of deeds worthy of passing into posterity, and would be much more glorious for humanity, than all those tumultuous trappings of festivals, banquets, balls, and other diversions commonly used on such occasions.

(Gazette de France, 8 December 1753. Sweden.)

The same proposal is well confirmed by the example of an emperor of China who lived in the last century, and who, during one of the great events of his reign, forbade his subjects to engage in the ordinary rejoicings consecrated by custom, whether to spare them the useless and misplaced costs, or to engage them more plausibly in effecting some durable good—more glorious for himself, more advantageous to his whole people than the frivolous and passing amusements of which no visible utility remains.

Here is another striking example I should not forget:

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“The ministry of England,” says a gazette … from the year 1754, “had a thousand guineas counted out for M. Wal, ex-ambassador of Spain in London, which is, it is said, the normal present that the state gives to foreign ministers on leaving Great Britain.”

Who doesn’t see that a thousand guineas or a thousand louis make for a more useful and reasonable present than would a jewel, designed solely for the adornment of an office?

After these great examples of political savings, would anyone dare blame that Dutch ambassador who, receiving upon his departure from a foreign court a portrait of the prince bedecked with diamonds, but finding this magnificent present quite meaningless, frankly asked what it might be worth? When he was assured that the whole thing cost forty thousand gold crowns, he said: “couldn’t I have been given a bill of exchange for a similar sum to draw on an Amsterdam banker?” This Dutch naïvete makes us laugh at first, but in examining it closely, sensible people will manifestly consider that he was right, and that a good bill for forty thousand crowns is much more serviceable than a portrait.

In following the same taste for saving, how many cutbacks, how many useful and practicable establishments of so many different kinds! What savings are possible in the dispensing of justice, in administration and in finance, since it would be easy, by simplifying the collection of taxes and other matters, to employ many fewer people in all those things than at present! This item is important enough to merit specific treatises; we have many on this subject that one may very fruitfully read.

What savings are possible in the discipline of our troops, and what advantages could be drawn from it for king and state, if we devoted ourselves as the ancients did to occupying them usefully! I will talk about it on some other occasion.

What savings are possible in the administration of the arts and commerce, by lifting the obstacles found at every turn to the transport and sale of merchandise and commodities—but especially by restoring little by little the general liberty of the crafts and trades, such as it existed in the past in France, and such as it still exists today in many neighboring states; for that reason abolishing the onerous formalities of masterships, initiations,

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notarized letters of apprenticeship, and other such practices that stop the activity of workers, often alienating them completely from useful occupations and then consigning them to miserable extremities; practices, finally, that the spirit of monopoly introduced into Europe and that are only maintained in these enlightened times by the inattentiveness of legislators. All of us have only too much aversion to arduous work; we must not increase its difficulty, nor generate occasions or pretexts for our laziness.⁷

Moreover, independent of the masterships, there are countless abusive and ruinous customs among the workers that ought to be abolished pitilessly: such, for example, as all rights of compagnonnage,⁸ all feasts of the workers’ community, all assembly fees, cameos, wax candles, feasts, and drinking parties—perpetual occasions of idleness, excess, and waste, which inevitably redound against the public, and which do not accord with national economy.

What savings would be possible, finally, in the exercise of religion, by abolishing three-quarters of our feast days, as has been done in Italy, in Austria, in the Low Countries, and elsewhere. France would gain millions every year; besides which, many expenses incurred these days in our churches would be saved. On this score, may the reader pardon a citizen animated by love of the public good for the following details.

What relief and what savings for the public if the distribution of consecrated bread were cut back!⁹ It is one of the most useless expenses, a nonetheless substantial expense that makes plenty of people complain aloud. It is said that certain parish officers make petty exactions from them—doubtless unknown by the police—and that since there is no settled law on it, they fleece the citizens with impunity according to how easy it is to do so. Be that as it may, it is demonstrated by an exact calculation that consecrated bread costs many millions per year in France. And yet there is no need for

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it, indeed there are regions in the realm where it is not given out at all. In a word, it carries no more benediction than the water employed in blessing it, and consequently, one could stick to the water that costs nothing, and abolish the expense of the consecrated bread as being onerous to plenty of people.

After pointing to the abolition of consecrated bread, I don’t think I need to spare most of the collection plates in use among us, especially for the location of seats. All trafficking is prohibited in the temple of the Lord; he himself proscribed it loudly, and I see nothing in the Gospel on which he spoke out more forcefully. Domus mea domus orationis est, vos autem fecistis illam speluncam latronum. Luke, xix.46.¹⁰ It seems to me that this is a lesson both for pastors and for magistrates.

Nothing more indecent than selling places in church. Our ecclesiastical gentlemen take great care to place themselves comfortably and properly, seated and kneeling; it is fitting for all the faithful to do likewise—conveniently, and without ever paying up for it. For this, there should be benches suited to the purpose, benches that would fill the nave and the sides and that would leave only simple passageways. I have seen something approaching this in a province of the realm, but much better in England and Holland, where one is seated in the church without cost, and without being interrupted by beggars, collectors, or seat renters. Here, the Protestants give us a fine example to follow, if we were reasonable enough and disinterested enough for that.

It will doubtless be asked: how to provide for ordinary expenses, given this cutback in receipts? Here is the sure and easy means: cut out a good part of these expenses completely, and moderate where possible those believed to be indispensable. What is the necessity for so many cantors and other officers in the parishes? What good are so many lanterns, so many ornaments, so many bells, &c.? If one were a bit more reasonable, would there have to be so much display, so many lamps, so much ringing to bury the dead? One could say the same about countless other onerous superfluities, which bespeak more love of loot (in some) and love of ostentation (in others) than zeal for religion and true piety.

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What’s more, it is not always possible for simple individuals to remedy such abuses. Each person knows the tyranny of custom, each person even groans under it as an individual; nonetheless, everyone bears the yoke. The man-child fears censure and the “what will they say?” and no one dares resist the torrent. Thus, it is up to government to determine once and for all, depending on differences in social condition, all funerary expenses, marriage and baptism expenses, &c. I think we could reduce them to about a third of what they cost today, to the great benefit of the public, in such a way that it would be a firm rule for all families, and it would be absolutely forbidden to individuals and priests to make or bear any expense beyond that.

Some modern political men have wisely observed that the excessive number of clergy is manifestly contrary to national opulence, which is mainly true of the regular clergy of both sexes. In fact, except for those who have a useful and recognized ministry, all the others live at the expense of the true workers, without producing anything profitable to society; they do not even contribute to their own subsistence, fruges consumere nati; Hor. bks. I. ep. ii.v.29.¹¹ And though born for the most part into the most modest circumstances, and subject by their condition to the rigors of penitence, they find means of eluding the ancient law of work, and of leading a sweet and tranquil life without being obliged to wipe away the sweat from their faces.

To arrest such a big political problem, only the number of subjects necessary for the service of the church ought to be admitted to orders. As for the cloistered who have a public ministry, one can only praise their zeal in fulfilling their arduous functions, and one should regard them as precious subjects for the state. As for those who have no important occupations, it would seem appropriate to reduce their number in the future, and to look for ways of making them more useful.

There you have many means of saving that political men have already lighted upon. But here is another one of which they have not yet scratched the surface, though it is among the most interesting: I am talking about gambling casinos,¹² which are manifestly contrary to the national good.

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But I am talking especially about the taverns which have so multiplied and are so harmful among us that they are the most common cause of the poverty and disorder of the people.

The taverns,¹³ properly understood, are a constant occasion for excess and waste, and it would be very useful, from a religious and a political perspective, to abolish the greater portion of them as they come to be vacant. It would be no less important to forbid all settled and recognized persons in each parish to frequent them during work days; to close them with strict precision at nine o’clock in the evening in every season, and finally, to subject all violators to a stiff fine, half of which would go to the informers and half to the inspectors.

It will be said that these regulations, although useful and reasonable, would diminish the yield on the excise taxes. But firstly, the realm is not made for excise taxes, excise taxes are made for the realm; they are properly speaking a resource for meeting its needs. If, however, by whatever cause it may be, they become harmful to the state, there is no doubt they must be rectified or other less ruinous measures sought—somewhat as we change or discontinue a remedy when it becomes harmful to the sick person.

Moreover, the proposed regulations should not alarm royal budget officials for the very good reason that what is not consumed in the taverns will be consumed even more—and more universally—in private homes, though ordinarily without excess and without waste of time; whereas the taverns, always open, disrupt our workers so much that one cannot usually count on them or see the end of a work once begun. We complain constantly about the harshness of the weather; why don’t we rather complain about our imprudence, which leads us to make and to tolerate countless expenses and waste?

Another proposal that belongs to public saving would be to found state pawnshops in all our big cities, where people could procure money on collateral and without interest, or perhaps one could get two percent per year to provide for administrative costs. The lender-usurers are known to be very harmful to the public, and thus quite a few losses would be avoided if

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one could bypass their services. It would thus be very desirable for pious souls and kindly hearts to think seriously about effecting the auspicious foundations of which we speak.

Aside from the general convenience of free and easy loans for the people, I regard it as one of the advantages of these establishments that they would be so many known offices where one could with confidence deposit sums that one is not always in a position to place usefully, and that one sometimes finds awkward. How many misers are there who, fearing for the future, don’t dare part with their money, and who, despite their precautions, always have to fear theft, fire, pillage, &c.? How many workers, how many domestics and other isolated people are there who, having saved a small sum—ten pistoles (a hundred crowns, more or less)—do not in fact know what to do, and are with reason apprehensive about dissipating or losing it? I thus find it advantageous in all these cases to be able to deposit any sum whatsoever with certainty, and to be free to withdraw it at will. Countless sums, small and large, that today remain inactive would thereby be made to circulate throughout the public. On the other hand, the individual depositors would avoid many anxieties and swindles; moreover, they would be less liable to lend their money unsuitably or spend it foolishly. Thus, each person would recover his funds or his savings if his business was in order, and most workers and domestics would become more orderly and economizing.

This habit of economy in the smallest matters is more important to the general good than people think, and on this count we are far behind neighboring nations, which are almost all more accustomed than we are to saving and to the economizing mentality. Here we see an item that is distinctive of the English and that deserves to be reported. We are assured that in most of their big houses, there is what they call a saving-man¹⁴—that is, a careful and thrifty domestic who is on constant alert that nothing is out of place, nothing gets lost or wasted. His sole job is to wander around at all hours through the nooks and crannies of a big house, from the cellar to the attic, in the courtyards, stables, gardens, and other appendages, to put back in its place everything he finds displaced, and to bring into its pantry everything he encounters that is scattered and abandoned—all sorts of used metal,

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the ends of boards and other wood, rope, leather, candles, all sorts of rags, furniture, utensils, tools, &c.

Aside from countless small things—each of little value, though together amounting to something and being saved from loss by this economizing—he just as often saves things of value, which the masters, domestics, or workers leave out of place by forgetfulness or by whatever other reason it may be. His vigilance stirs the attentiveness of the others, and his position makes him the antagonist of mischief and the repairer of negligence.

I already indicated above that it is a question here of public savings, and that I would be touching hardly at all on the conduct of private individuals. Many people, however, have only countered me with the supposed disadvantages of totally abolishing our luxury, a charge which does not attack my thesis and which therefore goes awry. Nonetheless I will attempt to respond to the objection as if I found that it had some solid basis.

If, it is said, so many projects of reform and perfection were followed, such that on the one hand, useless expenses were abolished, and on the other, people dedicated themselves on all sides to fruitful enterprises—in a word, such that economy became fashionable among the French—one would indeed soon see our opulence noticeably increase. But what would be done with so much accumulated wealth? Moreover, most subjects, less employed in the arts of splendor, would scarcely have a share in such opulence and would no doubt languish in the midst of the general abundance.

It is easy to respond to this difficulty. If economic savings took root among us and we gave more attention to the necessities and less to superfluities, I agree that there would indeed be fewer frivolous and misplaced expenses, but there would also be many more reasonable and virtuous ones. The rich and the great, being less indebted, would be more likely to pay off their creditors. Moreover, being more powerful and more flush with cash, they would find it easier to marry off their children. Instead of placing one in marriage, they would place two, and instead of two, they would place four, so that fewer reversals of fortune and extinctions of family lines would be seen. We would pay less attention to splendor, caprice, and vanity, but more to justice, beneficence, and true glory. In a word, many fewer subjects would be employed in sterile arts, arts of amusement and frivolity, but many more in worthwhile and necessary arts. At that point, if

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there were fewer artisans of luxury and pleasure, fewer useless domestics at loose ends, there would in recompense be more cultivators and other precious instruments of true wealth.

It has been demonstrated, to whoever reflects on it, that subjects’ differences in occupation produce national opulence or scarcity—in a word, what is good or bad for society. It is perfectly well known that if someone can keep a man on a wage basis, it will be more advantageous to him to have a good gardener than to maintain an ornamental domestic. Some jobs, then, are infinitely more useful than others. And if most men were employed more intelligently and usefully, the nation would be more powerful, and individuals more comfortable.

Moreover, since the habitual practice of savings would produce, at least among the rich, a superabundance of goods that are almost never seen here, a noticeable relief for the people would ensue, in that the lower classes would then feel less anxiety and would be less crushed by the great. Let the wolf cease to be hungry and he will no longer ravage the sheepfolds.

Be that as it may, the proposals and actions articulated above would seem more attractive to us if bad habit, ignorance, and flabbiness had not made us indifferent to the advantages of savings, and especially if such a precious habit had not been confused, more often than not, with avarice—an error we find exemplified in the mostly unfavorable judgment in our own time toward a virtuous and disinterested citizen, the late M. Godinot, canon of Rheims.

A passionate lover of agriculture, he dedicated all the leisure left over from his official duties to the study of natural science and rural pastimes. He was especially fond of perfecting the cultivation of vines, and even more the making of wines, and he soon found the art of making them so superior and so perfect that he later furnished them to all the potentates of Europe.¹⁵ That gave him the means to accumulate, in the course of a long life, prodigious sums of money. This Christian philosopher meditated for a long time over the noblest and worthiest use of his beneficence.

Moreover, he lived in the greatest simplicity, in the faithful and constant practice of visible savings, which even seemed excessive. Thus, common

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minds, who judge only by appearances, and who did not understand his grand designs, regarded him for many years with merely a sort of contempt. And they continued on in the same vein until, educated and completely won over by the useful establishments and constructions by which he decorated the city of Rheims, and especially by the immense projects he undertook at his own expense to bring abundant and salubrious water there which had been lacking before, they—along with the rest of France—finally lavished him with the praise and admiration they could no longer refuse to his generous patriotism.¹⁶

Such a splendid model will doubtless touch the hearts of Frenchmen, encouraged as well by the example of many societies established in England, Scotland, and Ireland—societies concerned solely with economizing views, which annually make substantial gifts out of their own funds to husbandmen and artisans¹⁷ who distinguish themselves by the superiority of their works and their discoveries. The same taste has spread to Italy. Last year, we learned about the new establishment of an academy of agriculture in Florence.

But it is mainly in Sweden that the economizing science seems to have fastened the seat of its empire. In other countries it is cultivated only by some amateurs, or by weak companies still little known and of little repute. In Sweden, it has a royal academy devoted solely to it, made up and maintained, moreover, by all the most learned and distinguished elements of the state—an academy that sets aside everything that is merely erudition, amusement, and curiosity, and that allows only research and observations tending toward palpable, physical utility.¹⁸

It is by this abundant source that our economizing journal is most often enriched—a new production whose purpose makes it worthy of the ministry’s full attention, and whose utility would make it win out over all those academy compendia of ours if the government put in charge men perfectly familiar with the economizing sciences and arts; and if these precious men, animated and guided by an enlightened superior, were never at the mercy

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of the enterprisers and thus never deprived of the just honoraria so much owing to their work.

It would in fact be entirely consistent with justice and public economy not to abandon the majority of subjects to the rapacity of those who employ them and whose main goal, or rather only goal, is to profit from the labor of another without regard to the workers’ good. On this, I observe that in this conflict of interests, the government ought to abrogate every concession¹⁹ of exclusive rights, to close its ears to every representation which, dressed up as the public good, is in essence suggested by the spirit of monopoly, and that it ought to effect without manipulation what is equitable in itself and favorable to the openness and liberty of the arts and of commerce.

Be that as it may, we can congratulate France for the fact that in the midst of so many academy members devoted to the craze for sophistication but mostly untouched by useful research, she counts some superior talents, men accomplished in every kind of science, who have continued to combine beauty of style and even the graces of eloquence with the most solid studies. These men, having dedicated themselves for quite a few years now to economizing works and experiments, have enriched us, as is well known, with the most important discoveries.

Finally, it appears that since the peace of 1748,²⁰ the taste for public economy is imperceptibly winning over all of Europe. More enlightened than in the past, princes today are much less ambitious about aggrandizing themselves through war. Both history and experience have taught them that it is an uncertain and destructive path. The improvement of their states shows them another way, shorter and more assured. Thus, they are virtually competing with each other for improvements and seem more disposed than ever to profit from the many works published in our time on commerce, shipping, and finance, on the exploitation of the land, on the establishment and progress of the most useful arts. These are favorable inclinations, which would contribute to make the subjects more frugal, healthier, happier, and I even think more virtuous.

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Indeed, true economy, which is equally unknown to the miser and the spendthrift, holds a golden mean between the opposing extremes. It is to the lack of that much reviled virtue that one must attribute most of the evils that cover the face of the earth. The only-too-frequent taste for amusements, superfluities, and delights brings about flabbiness, idleness, expense, and often scarcity, but always at least a thirst for riches, which become all the more necessary as one becomes subject to more needs. These then produce ruses and detours, rapacity, violence, and so many other excesses that arise from the same source.

Thus, I am loudly preaching public and private savings, but it is a wise and disinterested savings, one that brings courage against pain, firmness against pleasure, and that is in the end the best resource of beneficence and generosity. It is that honest parsimony that was so dear in the past to Pliny the Younger, and that enabled him, as he said himself, to make large public and private liberalities out of a modest fortune. Quidquid mihi pater tuus debuit, acceptum tibi ferri jubeo; nec est quod verearis ne sit mihi ista onerosa donatio. Sunt quidem omnino nobis modicae facultates, dignitas sumptuosa, reditus propter conditionem agellorum nescio minor an incertior; sed quod cessat ex reditu, frugalitate suppletur, ex quâ velut a fonte liberalitas nostra decurrit. Letters of Pliny, book II. letter iv. Countless gestures of beneficence are found in all these letters. See especially bk. III. lett. xi., bk. IV. lett. xiii., &c.²¹

Nothing ought to be more strongly recommended to young people than this virtuous habit, which would become for them a protection against all the vices. This is where ancient education was more coherent and more reasonable than our own. They accustomed children early on to household management, as much by their own example as by the nest egg²² they gave them, which the latter, although young and dependent, turned to good

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account. This light administration gave them the beginnings of diligence and solicitude, which became useful for the rest of their lives.

How different from the ancients’ is our thinking about these things! Today, one wouldn’t dare turn young people toward economy; it would be thought unfeeling to inspire them with a taste and esteem for it: a quite common error in our age, but a pernicious error that does endless harm to our mores. Prizes for eloquence and poetry have been established in countless places; who among us will establish prizes for saving and frugality?

What’s more, these proposals have no other goal but to enlighten men on their interests, to make them more attentive to necessities, less ardent for superfluities—in a word, to apply their ingenuity to more fruitful purposes, and to employ a greater number of subjects for the moral, physical, and palpable good of society. May heaven grant that such mores take the place of interest, luxury, and pleasure among us; what ease, what happiness and peace would result for all our citizens! This article is by M. FAIGUET.