VI.: Industry the source of wealth, and good order that of industry: Public spirit the great fountain of national grande

18. I shall conclude this chapter, with observing again; that labour, skill, and industry, are the true sources of wealth; and the means of distributing it, in a due proportion, among all the members of the body politic. It is not any specific quantity of money, but the due distribution of it, that renders that body healthy and vigorous in all its parts. Idleness is the bane of society; the great source of vice and confusion; the fore-runner of public distress and calamity. Industry produces the contrary effects; and is to be promoted by all possible methods: These are various; they are chiefly good laws, speedily, righteously, and cheaply executed; wise regulations of commerce, as well internal as foreign; good examples; a watchful care in the magistrates, to suppress in the first instances, vice, sloth, and all kinds of immoralities; a due care of the indigent and feeble, that none perish from want, when there is more than sufficient for all; the securing of private property; a due disdain of all chicanery, quibbling and sophistry, more especially, in schools and courts of justice; ability, uprightness and dispatch in public offices; the countenancing of probity, of plain dealing, of arts and sciences; and in all cases, an inviolable maintenance of public faith. These, are some of the ways, to breed and cherish a public spirit, among all ranks of people; without which, no nation can be happy; no community can long subsist.

A nation skilful in arts, abounding in products, untainted in its morals; where public spirit prevails, above local and personal interests; and under a wise and righteous government, duly tempered, so as to be secure itself, and all under it secure; a nation, I say, under these circumstances, must needs within itself, be rich, flourishing and happy. But power, grandeur, and influence abroad, depend chiefly on the numbers of industrious inhabitants at home. A limited number, cannot acquire above a limited degree of wealth, or strength: The way to increase both, is to break down the barricadoes of local enfranchisements; to encourage matrimony among the lower class, by giving some privileges to those who have children; finding employments for those who are able; and supplying with necessaries, the helpless and indigent. Moreover, if you please, you may invite hither foreign Protestants; by giving the privileges of free denisons, to all that are desirous of incorporating themselves under the banner of our laws, and enjoying the benefits of our happy constitution. But some better regulations should be made with regard to our own poor, before strangers can be induced to come among us.