298 REPORT— 1882. 



importance, the consumption of wealtla forming one of the great divisions 

 of political economy, though it has received, but scanty attention from 

 English writers on that science. The question, indeed, does not admit of 

 exact statistical analysis, the personal expenditure of the people being of 

 an elastic character, and depending, in a great measure, on the varying 

 wants of man, which seem to increase with the power of satisfying them. 

 It is easy to say that the wages and other sources of income are appro- 

 priated in accordance with the economic progress of the people in pro- 

 portion as they are expended in articles directed to maintain, or to add to, 

 the productive forces of the nation, but there remains the grave difficulty 

 to define what is necessary for such maintenance or addition, and upon 

 this the opinions of men differ considerably. 



Man's real wants are very few. ' Allow not nature more than nature 

 needs ; man's life is cheap as beasts'.' But increasing civilisation pro- 

 duces increasing wants. It is not only our physical wants that we have 

 to satisfy, but our moral and intellectual wants. The boundaiy-line 

 between the necessary and the luxurious cannot well be marked. Luxury 

 is a relative term. It has been defined as the use of the superfluous ; but 

 what is superfluous in one state of society, or to one class in society, may 

 be necessary in another state or to another class. Tea, sugar, wheaten 

 bread, meat, and even the education of children, were accounted as super- 

 fluities in England years ago. They are now necessaries, even to working 

 men. Luxury does not necessarily consist of whatever is costly. The 

 most costly things are often the most economical. "Wants differ greatly. 

 A man of letters may find it necessary to possess a well-stored library ; 

 a man of taste, an artist, will require works of art ; a person of position 

 and rank will need a residence suited to his condition. What is necessary 

 to one who spends a life of labour and industry may be useless to another 

 who indulges in dolce far niente. For the performance of intellectual, 

 and even manual, labour of the highest order, comforts and conveniences 

 are needed which may appear luxuries and superfluities to those incapable 

 of such efibrts. 



There is a considerable diflerence, however, between what is expended 

 in pure luxuries, such as ornaments and legitimate pleasures, and what is 

 expended in dissipation, vice, or in the absolute destruction of wealth. 

 Ornaments and legitimate pleasure may, both directly and indirectly, 

 promote production, as an occasional amusement may lighten the mind, 

 and make it the better fitted for close application ; but dissipation and 

 vice are directly antagonistic to the production and maintenance of 

 wealth. Luxury manifests itself in the prodigal use of jewellery, the ex- 

 pensiveness of entertainments, the richness of female apparel, the gorgeous- 

 ness of Court pageantry, and the magnificence of household furniture 

 and appointments. Luxury, it has been said, is the indigenous product 

 of monarchies, monarchs having always found it useful to require a high 

 etiquette and an imposing external to maintain power. But luxuiy 

 of this nature is not confined to Courts. It is the child of wealth and 

 pomp among the higher classes, greedily followed and copied by the 

 lower. Luxury of such a character is condemned by moralists as intended 

 to satisfy vanity and to engender egoism and ostentation. What political 

 economy especially condemns is whatever is hurtful to the productive 

 forces of the nation. An inordinate and wasteful indulgence in alcoholic 

 drinks and tobacco in England, in the same manner as in opium in China 

 and absinthe in Prance, is condemned by economic science because it 



