find them excessively burthensome, and endeavour to retrench them
as soon as we can, not from frugality, God knows, but in
consequence of a change in our manners.
Besides providing this daily pension of three pence three
farthings a day for every citizen of Athens, rich and poor, he
proposed to build, at the public charge, many trading vessels, a
great many inns and houses of entertainment for all strangers in
the sea-ports, to erect shops, warehouses, exchanges, &c. the
rents of which would increase the revenue, and add great beauty
and magnificence to the city. In short, Xenophon recommends to
the state to perform, by the hands of their slaves and strangers,
what a free people in our days are constantly employed in doing
in every country and industry. While the Athenian citizens
continued to receive their daily pensions, proportioned to the
value of their pure physical-necessary, their business being
confined to their service in the army in time of war, their
attendance in public assemblies, and the theatres in times of
peace, clothed like a parcel of capucins, they, as became
freemen, were taught to despise industrious labour, and to glory
in the austerity and simplicity of their manners. The pomp and
magnificence of the Persian Emperors were a subject of ridicule
in Greece, and a proof of their barbarity, and of the slavery of
their subjects. From this plain representation of Xenophon's
plan, I hope, the characteristic difference between the ancient
and modern economy is manifest; and for such readers as take a
particular delight in comparing the systems of simplicity and
luxury, I recommend the perusal of this most valuable discourse.
To put this matter past all dispute, and to prove that the
simplicity of the manners, as well as the idleness of the common
people of Athens in Xenophon's time, proceeded from refinement
not from ignorance, I shall here insert a passage from President
Goguet's Origin of Laws, Arts, and Sciences, with the authorities
he cites in part 3d, book 4th, chap. 3d.
'Hesiod and Plutarch have observed,' says he, 'that, in the
ages I am now speaking of (before the reign of Cyrus) commerce
was held in great honour among the Greeks. No labour, say these
authors, was accounted shameful, no art, no trade, placed any
difference among men. This maxim, so reasonable and so useful to
such a nation as the Greeks, was, nevertheless, altered. We see
by the works of Xenophon, of Plato, of Aristotle, and of many
other writers of merit, that, in their age, all professions which
were calculated to gain money, were regarded as unworthy of a
freeman. Aristotle maintains, that, in a well ordered state, they
will never give the right of citizens to artisans. Plato would
have a citizen punished who should enter into commerce. In fine,
we see these two philosophers, whose sentiments, on the
principles and maxims of government, are otherwise so opposite,
agreeing to recommend that the lands should be cultivated by
slaves: only. It is very surprising,' concludes the President,
'that with such principles, which all the Greeks appear to have
imbibed, they should ever have been so intelligent in commerce,
and so powerful at sea, as they are known to have been in some
ages.'
Putting, therefore, all these circumstances together, and
comparing them with the contrast, which is found, as to every
particular, in our times, I think it is but doing justice to the
moderns, to allow, that the extensive luxury, which daily
diffuses itself through every class of a people, is more owing to
the abolishing of slavery, the equal distribution of riches, and
the circulation of an adequate equivalent for every service, than
to any greater corruption of our manners, than what prevailed