It is an easy matter, in a rich country, to pay for a fine piece of art, but a difficult matter to find a price for the bringing up a fine artist. {95}
The fine arts have not, indeed, any intimate or immediate connection with the wealth or strength of a nation. The balance of trade has never been greatly increased by the exportation of great masterpieces of art, nor have nations been subdued by the powers of oratory; but the knowledge and the arts, by which wealth and greatness are obtained, follow in the train of the finer performances of human genius.
Where money becomes the universal agent, where it is impossible to enjoy ease or comfort for a single day without it, it becomes an object of adoration, as it were. To despise gold, which purchases all things, is reckoned a greater crime than to despise him to whose bounty we are indebted for all things; consequently, ambition, without which there never is excellence, is, at an early period of life, bent towards the gaining a fortune. A man, indeed, must either be of a singularly odd and obstinate disposition, or very indifferent about the opinion of others, and even about the good things of this world, (as they are termed,) to persevere in obtaining perfection in science or art, while without bread, when he might, with a tenth part of the care and study, live in affluence, and get money from day to day. There are few such obstinate fools; and without them, in a wealthy country, there can be found few men profound in science, or excelling in any of the arts.
The augmentation of taxes, by rendering the produce of industry dearer than in other countries, tends to cut off a nation of that de-
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{95} This is liable to some exceptions. Natural genius may make a man excel; but, even then, it is ten to one if he is not compelled to labour in order to get bread, in place of trying to obtain fame. It was thus the great Dr. Johnson, with a genius that might have procured him immortal fame, drudged, during life, on weekly or daily labours, which will soon be forgotten. Even his dictionary, wonderful as it is for a single man, is not worthy of the English nation, and Johnson's name is little known beyond the limits of his own country. His genius was great, but his labours were little. His mind was in fetters; it was Sampson grinding at the mill to amuse the Philistines; not Sampson slaying lions, and putting to flight armies.
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scription, from the markets in poorer countries. If all other countries are poorer; and the taxes lower; it has a tendency to shut it out from all the markets in the world.
An operation, that, at the same time that it renders people less happy, less contented, and more indifferent to the fate of their country, and at the same time tends to shut them out from foreign markets, is certainly very hurtful to any country, but particularly so to one, the greatness of which is founded on manufactures and commerce.