Pagina 209 van 2651

It deserves to be remarked, perhaps, that it is in the

progressive state, while the society is advancing to the further

acquisition, rather than when it has acquired its full complement

of riches, that the condition of the labouring poor, of the great

body of the people, seems to be the happiest and the most

comfortable. It is hard in the stationary, and miserable in the

declining state. The progressive state is, in reality, the

cheerful and the hearty state to all the different orders of the

society; the stationary is dull; the declining melancholy.