s, industrious and economical.

The love of wealth is a passion common to men, and when justly regulated
it is conducive to human happiness. Industry may be encouraged by good
laws; wealth may be protected by civil regulations; but we are not to
depend on these to create it for us, while we are indolent and luxurious.
Industry is most favourable to the moral virtue of the world; it is
therefore wisely ordered by the Author of Nature, that the blessings of
this world should be acquired by our own application in some business
useful to society; so that we have no reason to expect any climate or soil
will be found, or any age take place, in which plenty and wealth will be
spontaneously produced. The industry and labour of a people furnish a
general rule to measure their wealth, and if we use the means we may
promise ourselves the reward. The present state of America will limit the
greatest part of its inhabitants to agriculture; for as the art of tilling
the earth is easily acquired, the price of land low, and the produce
immediately necessary for life, greater encouragement to this is offered
here than in any country on earth. But still suffer me to enquire whether
we are not happily circumstanced and actually able to manage some
principal manufactories with success, and increase our wealth by
increasing the labour of the people, and saving the surplus of our
earnings for a better purpose than to purchase the labour of the European
nations. It is a remark often made, and generally believed, that in a
country so new as this, where the price of land is low and the price of
labour high, manufactories cannot be conducted with profit. This may be
true of some manufactures, but of others it is grossly false. It is now in
the power of New England to make itself more formidable to Great Britain
by rivaling some of her principal manufactures, than ever it was by
separating from her government. Woolen cloaths, the principal English
manufacture, may more easily be rivaled than any other. Purchasing all the
materials and labour at the common price of the country, cloths of
three-quarters width, may be fabricated for six shillings per yard, of
fineness and beauty equal to English cloths of six quarters width, which
fell at twenty shillings. The cost of our own manufacture is little more
than half of the imported, and for service it is allowed to be much
preferable. It is found that our wool is of equal quality with the
English, and tha