Be that as it may, the proposals and actions articulated above would seem more attractive to us if bad habit, ignorance, and flabbiness had not made us indifferent to the advantages of savings, and especially if such a precious habit had not been confused, more often than not, with avarice—an error we find exemplified in the mostly unfavorable judgment in our own time toward a virtuous and disinterested citizen, the late M. Godinot, canon of Rheims.
A passionate lover of agriculture, he dedicated all the leisure left over from his official duties to the study of natural science and rural pastimes. He was especially fond of perfecting the cultivation of vines, and even more the making of wines, and he soon found the art of making them so superior and so perfect that he later furnished them to all the potentates of Europe.15 That gave him the means to accumulate, in the course of a long life, prodigious sums of money. This Christian philosopher meditated for a long time over the noblest and worthiest use of his beneficence.
Moreover, he lived in the greatest simplicity, in the faithful and constant practice of visible savings, which even seemed excessive. Thus, common
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minds, who judge only by appearances, and who did not understand his grand designs, regarded him for many years with merely a sort of contempt. And they continued on in the same vein until, educated and completely won over by the useful establishments and constructions by which he decorated the city of Rheims, and especially by the immense projects he undertook at his own expense to bring abundant and salubrious water there which had been lacking before, they—along with the rest of France—finally lavished him with the praise and admiration they could no longer refuse to his generous patriotism.16
Such a splendid model will doubtless touch the hearts of Frenchmen, encouraged as well by the example of many societies established in England, Scotland, and Ireland—societies concerned solely with economizing views, which annually make substantial gifts out of their own funds to husbandmen and artisans17 who distinguish themselves by the superiority of their works and their discoveries. The same taste has spread to Italy. Last year, we learned about the new establishment of an academy of agriculture in Florence.
But it is mainly in Sweden that the economizing science seems to have fastened the seat of its empire. In other countries it is cultivated only by some amateurs, or by weak companies still little known and of little repute. In Sweden, it has a royal academy devoted solely to it, made up and maintained, moreover, by all the most learned and distinguished elements of the state—an academy that sets aside everything that is merely erudition, amusement, and curiosity, and that allows only research and observations tending toward palpable, physical utility.18
It is by this abundant source that our economizing journal is most often enriched—a new production whose purpose makes it worthy of the ministry’s full attention, and whose utility would make it win out over all those academy compendia of ours if the government put in charge men perfectly familiar with the economizing sciences and arts; and if these precious men, animated and guided by an enlightened superior, were never at the mercy
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of the enterprisers and thus never deprived of the just honoraria so much owing to their work.
It would in fact be entirely consistent with justice and public economy not to abandon the majority of subjects to the rapacity of those who employ them and whose main goal, or rather only goal, is to profit from the labor of another without regard to the workers’ good. On this, I observe that in this conflict of interests, the government ought to abrogate every concession19 of exclusive rights, to close its ears to every representation which, dressed up as the public good, is in essence suggested by the spirit of monopoly, and that it ought to effect without manipulation what is equitable in itself and favorable to the openness and liberty of the arts and of commerce.
Be that as it may, we can congratulate France for the fact that in the midst of so many academy members devoted to the craze for sophistication but mostly untouched by useful research, she counts some superior talents, men accomplished in every kind of science, who have continued to combine beauty of style and even the graces of eloquence with the most solid studies. These men, having dedicated themselves for quite a few years now to economizing works and experiments, have enriched us, as is well known, with the most important discoveries.
Finally, it appears that since the peace of 1748,20 the taste for public economy is imperceptibly winning over all of Europe. More enlightened than in the past, princes today are much less ambitious about aggrandizing themselves through war. Both history and experience have taught them that it is an uncertain and destructive path. The improvement of their states shows them another way, shorter and more assured. Thus, they are virtually competing with each other for improvements and seem more disposed than ever to profit from the many works published in our time on commerce, shipping, and finance, on the exploitation of the land, on the establishment and progress of the most useful arts. These are favorable inclinations, which would contribute to make the subjects more frugal, healthier, happier, and I even think more virtuous.
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Indeed, true economy, which is equally unknown to the miser and the spendthrift, holds a golden mean between the opposing extremes. It is to the lack of that much reviled virtue that one must attribute most of the evils that cover the face of the earth. The only-too-frequent taste for amusements, superfluities, and delights brings about flabbiness, idleness, expense, and often scarcity, but always at least a thirst for riches, which become all the more necessary as one becomes subject to more needs. These then produce ruses and detours, rapacity, violence, and so many other excesses that arise from the same source.
Thus, I am loudly preaching public and private savings, but it is a wise and disinterested savings, one that brings courage against pain, firmness against pleasure, and that is in the end the best resource of beneficence and generosity. It is that honest parsimony that was so dear in the past to Pliny the Younger, and that enabled him, as he said himself, to make large public and private liberalities out of a modest fortune. Quidquid mihi pater tuus debuit, acceptum tibi ferri jubeo; nec est quod verearis ne sit mihi ista onerosa donatio. Sunt quidem omnino nobis modicae facultates, dignitas sumptuosa, reditus propter conditionem agellorum nescio minor an incertior; sed quod cessat ex reditu, frugalitate suppletur, ex quâ velut a fonte liberalitas nostra decurrit. Letters of Pliny, book II. letter iv. Countless gestures of beneficence are found in all these letters. See especially bk. III. lett. xi., bk. IV. lett. xiii., &c.21
Nothing ought to be more strongly recommended to young people than this virtuous habit, which would become for them a protection against all the vices. This is where ancient education was more coherent and more reasonable than our own. They accustomed children early on to household management, as much by their own example as by the nest egg22 they gave them, which the latter, although young and dependent, turned to good
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account. This light administration gave them the beginnings of diligence and solicitude, which became useful for the rest of their lives.
How different from the ancients’ is our thinking about these things! Today, one wouldn’t dare turn young people toward economy; it would be thought unfeeling to inspire them with a taste and esteem for it: a quite common error in our age, but a pernicious error that does endless harm to our mores. Prizes for eloquence and poetry have been established in countless places; who among us will establish prizes for saving and frugality?
What’s more, these proposals have no other goal but to enlighten men on their interests, to make them more attentive to necessities, less ardent for superfluities—in a word, to apply their ingenuity to more fruitful purposes, and to employ a greater number of subjects for the moral, physical, and palpable good of society. May heaven grant that such mores take the place of interest, luxury, and pleasure among us; what ease, what happiness and peace would result for all our citizens! This article is by M. FAIGUET.