Slaney on Rural Expenditure. 183 



wife and daughters, if he has any, shall wear clean linen, and, moreover, 

 not wash it themselves, — and that when they travel, it shall be by the stage- 

 coach, and not by the waggon. Though he may do without some or other 

 of these things in a certain degree, when necessity presses hardest, he can- 

 not and will not do without them in the main. If, therefore, he is a man 

 of foresight, he will at all events defer adding to the population of shop- 

 keepers, till he sees a fair prospect of supporting a family in the way which 

 public opinion pronounces to be respectable. But if he engages in it with- 

 out foresight, he will keep down the population of shopkeepers in another 

 way ; for he will break. Bankruptcy is the check to the indefinite multi- 

 plication of traders, as the evils arising from diminished food are the check 

 to the indefinite multiplication of the lower classes of labourers. In the 

 same manner, if the higher orders of traders would, or could, do without a 

 certain rate of expenditure, they might remit something of their rate of 

 profits. If a great brewer, for example, would drive his family to the two- 

 shilling gallery in one of his own drays, or a banker be content, as in India, 

 to sit on a mud-floor in the shop of his forefathers, and retire to swallow 

 rice with the condiment of ghee, there would be some chance of the thing 

 being brought to'pass. But ' the crowning city ' has determined that her 

 merchants shall be princes, and her traffickers the honourable of the earth ; 

 and they neither can nor will resist the award. The opinion of society, 

 therefore, is what in the long run determines and keeps up the rate of re- 

 compense in this class as well as in the other ; and, though there may be 

 individual exceptions, men in general will break sooner than not live up to 

 what is expected from them. The difficulty is not in finding men who will 

 live up to this mark, but in finding men who will live within their means. 

 The profits of stock, like wages, may be momentarily elevated or depressed 

 by the fluctuations in the proportion between the business to be done, and 

 the men who are to do it. When business is scarce, the competition may 

 to a certain degree induce traders to do it at a cheaper rate, and the con- 

 trary. But if the scarcity of business is permanent, traders will begin to go 

 out by the horn gate of bankruptcy, and so the balance will be preserved." 

 (p. 32.) 



Having pointed out the cause of the evil, the remedy is not 

 obscure. Give a good education to your agricultural popula- 

 tion ; let a good moral and intellectual education expand their 

 views and wishes ; teach them to regard a reasonable prospect 

 of a greater portion of comforts, and those of a higher order, 

 as absolutely necessary to them, without which they would 

 no more think of marrying than they would at present, if they 

 had the prospect of an Irish mud cabin, children in rags, and 

 potatoes for their only food ; teach them, along with this 

 expansion of wishes, this elevation of character, to look to 

 themselves alone for all they need or desire ; for instance, let 

 them determine not to marry till they can give their children 

 a good useful education at their awn expence; and their wages 

 will in time rise so high as to enable them to accomplish it; 

 and this will in all respects be infinitely better than all schemes 

 for educating them by charitable assistance. 



But this must be a work of time, of another generation. 

 What, in the mean time, is to become of the present genera- 



N 4 



