should at present be our guide in determining the nature and
tendency of human actions. A mariner guided by such a polar star
is in danger of shipwreck.

Perhaps there is no possible way in which wealth could in
general be employed so beneficially to a state, and particularly
to the lower orders of it, as by improving and rendering
productive that land which to a farmer would not answer the
expense of cultivation. Had Mr Godwin exerted his energetic
eloquence in painting the superior worth and usefulness of the
character who employed the poor in this way, to him who employed
them in narrow luxuries, every enlightened man must have
applauded his efforts. The increasing demand for agricultural
labour must always tend to better the condition of the poor; and
if the accession of work be of this kind, so far is it from being
true that the poor would be obliged to work ten hours for the
same price that they before worked eight, that the very reverse
would be the fact; and a labourer might then support his wife and
family as well by the labour of six hours as he could before by
the labour of eight.

The labour created by luxuries, though useful in distributing
the produce of the country, without vitiating the proprietor by
power, or debasing the labourer by dependence, has not, indeed,
the same beneficial effects on the state of the poor. A great
accession of work from manufacturers, though it may raise the
price of labour even more than an increasing demand for
agricultural labour, yet, as in this case the quantity of food in
the country may not be proportionably increasing, the advantage
to the poor will be but temporary, as the price of provisions