A Treatise on Domestic Economy; For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School

millions of the people in the United States, were conscientious persons, and relinquished the use of every thing not absolutely necessary to life and health. It would instantly throw out of employment one half of the whole community. The manufacturers, mechanics, merchants, agriculturists, and all the agencies they employ, would be beggared, and one half of those not reduced to poverty, would be obliged to spend all their extra means, in simply supplying necessaries to the other half. The use of superfluities, therefore, to a certain extent, is as indispensable to promote industry, virtue, and religion, as any direct giving of money or time; and it is owing entirely to a want of reflection, and of comprehensive views, that any men ever make so great a mistake, as is here exhibited. Instead, then, of urging a rule of duty which is at once irrational and impracticable, there is another course, which commends itself to the understandings of all. For whatever may be the _practice_, of intelligent men, they universally concede the _principle_, that our physical gratifications should always be made subordinate to social, intellectual, and moral, advantages. And all that is required, for the advancement of our whole race to the most perfect state of society, is, simply, that men should act in agreement with this principle. And, if only a very small portion, of the most intelligent of our race, should act according to this rule, under the control of Christian benevolence, the immense supplies, furnished, for the general good, would be far beyond what any would imagine, who had never made any calculations on the subject. In this Nation, alone, suppose the one million and more, of professed followers of Christ, should give a larger portion of their means, for the social, intellectual, and moral, wants of mankind, than for the superfluities that minister to taste, convenience, and appetite; it would be enough to furnish all the schools, colleges, Bibles, ministers, and missionaries, that the whole world could demand; or, at least, it would be far more, than properly qualified agents to administer it, could employ. But, it