ure most carefully, is, indeed, a matter of
some importance; but this cannot be known by the mere fact of exchange.

127. The wealth of a nation then, first, and its peace and well-being
besides, depend on the number of persons it can employ in making good and
useful things. I say its well-being also, for the character of men
depends more on their occupations than on any teaching we can give them,
or principles with which we can imbue them. The employment forms the
habits of body and mind, and these are the constitution of the man,--the
greater part of his moral or persistent nature, whatever effort, under
special excitement, he may make to change or overcome them. Employment
is the half, and the primal half, of education--it is the warp of it; and
the fineness or the endurance of all subsequently woven pattern depends
wholly on its straightness and strength. And, whatever difficulty there
may be in tracing through past history the remoter connections of event
and cause, one chain of sequence is always clear: the formation, namely,
of the character of nations by their employments, and the determination
of their final fate by their character. The moment, and the first
direction of decisive revolutions, often depend on accident; but their
persistent course, and their consequences, depend wholly on the nature of
the people. The passing of the Reform Bill by the late English
Parliament may have been more or less accidental; the results of the
measure now rest on the character of the English people, as it has been
developed by their recent interests, occupations, and habits of life.
Whether, as a body, they employ their new powers for good or evil will
depend, not on their facilities of knowledge, nor even on the general
intelligence they may possess, but on the number of persons among them
whom wholesome employments have rendered familiar with the duties, and
modest in their estimate of the promises, of life.

128. But especially in framing laws respecting the treatment or
employment of improvident and more or less vicious persons, it is to be
remembered that as men are not made heroes by the performance of an act
of heroism, but must be brave before they can perform it, so they are not
made villains by the commission of a crime, but were villains before they
committed it; and the right of public interference with their conduct
begins when they begin to corrupt themselves,--not merely at the moment
when they have pr