No fool to laugh at, which he valued more;
There victor of his health, of fortune, friends,
And fame; this lord of useless thousands ends."

If these be the effects of luxuries, why is it that we continue to strive
to increase them with all our might? I have already insisted that I am
not speaking of such things as are beneficial to body and soul, but such
as are detrimental. But it will be said, you are spending money, and to
gratify your longings labourers of different sorts have been employed,
and the wealth of the world is thereby increased. But we must consider
the loss to the man who is indulging himself, and therefore the loss to
the community; and further, that his money might have gone in producing
something necessary, and not noxious, something in its turn reproductive.
In Boswell's _Life of Johnson_ is this passage, "Johnson as usual
defended luxury. You cannot spend money in luxury without doing good to
the poor. Nay, you do more good to them by spending it in luxury; you
make them exert industry, whereas by giving it you keep them idle. I own
indeed there may be more virtue in giving it immediately in charity, than
in spending it in luxury." He was then asked if this was not
Mandeville's doctrine of "private vices are public benefits." Of course
this did not suit him, and he demolished it. He said, "Mandeville puts
the case of a man who gets drunk at an alehouse, and says it is a public
benefit, because so much money is got by it to the public. But it must
be considered that all the good gained by this through the gradation of
alehouse-keeper, brewer, maltster, and farmer, is overbalanced by the
evil caused to the man and his family by his getting drunk."

Perhaps you will say, what is a man to do with his money, if he may not
spend it in luxury? If, as Dr. Johnson says, and as we all of us find
out occasionally, it is worse spent if given in charity, are we to hoard