Ease, that is, too great a fondness for it, destroys activity, damps our resolutions, and misleads the decisions of our judgment on every occasion, where one side of the question implies an obstacle to the enjoyment of a favourite indolence.
These are examples of the evils proceeding from luxury in the most general acceptation of the term. While the gratification of those desires is accompanied by no such inconveniencies, I think it is a proof, that there has been no moral excess, or that no moral evil has been directly implied in the gratification. But I cannot equally determine, that there has been no luxury in the enjoyment of superfluity.
2do. The physical inconveniencies which follow from all the four, terminate in the hurt they do the body, health or constitution. If no such harm follows upon the gratification of our desires, I find no physical evil: but still luxury, I think, may be applied in every acceptation in which the term can be taken.
3tio. If the domestic inconveniences of the four species be examined, they all center in one, viz. the dissipation of fortune, upon which depends the future ease of the proprietor, and the well-being of his posterity. When luxury is examined with respect to this object, the idea we conceive of it admits of a new modification. An excess here, is compatible with a very moderate gratification of our most natural desires. It is not eating, nor drinking, love, nor indolence which are hurtful to the fortune, but the expence attending such gratifications. All these are frequently indulged even to excess, in a moral and physical sense, by people who are daily becoming more wealthy by these very means.
4to. Some political inconveniencies of luxury have been already pointed out. The extinction of foreign trade is the most striking. But the loss of trade, conveys no ideas of any moral, physical, or domestic excess; and still it is vicious in so far as it affects the well-being of a state. Besides this particular evil, I very willingly agree, that in as far as the good government of a state depends upon the application and capacity, as well as the integrity of those who sit at the helm, or who are employed in the administration, or direction of public affairs, in so far may the moral inconveniencies of luxury mentioned above, affect the prosperity of a state. The consequences of excessive luxury, moral and physical, as well as the dissipation of private fortunes, may render both the statesman, and those whom he employs, negligent in their duty, unfit to discharge it, rapacious and corrupt. These may, indirectly, be reckoned among the political evils attending luxury, in so far as they take place. But on the other hand, as they cannot be called the necessary effects of the cause to which they are here ascribed, that is, to moral, physical, and domestic luxury, I do not think they can with propriety be implied in the definition of the term. They are rather to be attributed to the imperfection of the human mind, than to any other second cause, which might occasionally contribute to their production. They may proceed from avarice, as well as from prodigality.
I hope this short exposition of a matter, not absolutely falling within the limits of my subject, will suffice to prove that my definition of luxury, describes at least the most essential requisite towards determining it: the providing of superfluity with a view to consumption. This is inseparable from our ideas of luxury; but vicious excess certainly is not. A sober man may have a most delicate table, as well as a glutton; and a virtuous man may enjoy the pleasures of love and ease with as much sensuality as Heliogabalus. But no man can become luxurious, in our acceptation of the word, without giving bread to the industrious, without encouraging emulation, industry, and agriculture; and without producing the circulation of an adequate equivalent for every service. This last is the palladium of liberty, the fountain of gentle dependence, and the agreeable band of union among free societies.
Let me therefore conclude my chapter, with a metaphysical observation. The use of words, is to express ideas; the more simple any idea is, the more easy it is to convey it by a word. Whenever, therefore, language furnishes several words, which are called synonimous, we may conclude, that the idea conveyed by them is not simple. On every such occasion, it is doing a service to learning, to render them as little synonimous as possible, and to point out the particular differences between the ideas they convey.
Now as to the point under consideration. I find the three terms, luxury, sensuality, and excess, generally considered in a synonimous light, notwithstanding the characteristic differences which distinguish them. Luxury consists in providing the objects of sensuality, in so far as they are superfluous. Sensuality consists in the actual enjoyment of them; and excess implies an abuse of enjoyment. A person, therefore, according to these definitions, may be very luxurious from vanity, pride, ostentation, or with a political view of encouraging consumption, without having a turn for sensuality, or a tendency to fall into excess. Sensuality, on the other hand, might have been indulged in a Lacedemonian republic, as well as at the court of Artaxerxes. Excess, indeed, seems more closely connected with sensuality, than with luxury; but the difference is so great, that I apprehend sensuality must in a great measure be extinguished, before excess can begin.