Page:Hazlitt, Political Essays (1819).djvu/299

 for a person who wants them. But in the one case he is employed in unproductive, in the other in productive labour. In the one, he is employed and paid and receives a subsistence for doing that which might as well be let alone; in the other, for doing that which is of use and importance, and which must either be done by him, or give some one else double trouble to do it. If I hire a livery-servant, and keep him fine and lazy and well-fed to stand behind my chair while I eat turtle or venison, this is another instance of unproductive labour. Now the person who is in real want of a pair of shoes, and who has by his own labour and skill raised money enough to pay for them, will not assuredly lay it out, in preference, in hiring the shoemaker to run up a hill for him, or to stand upon his head, or behind a chair for his amusement. But if I have received this money from him in the shape of taxes, having already received enough in the same way to pay for my shoes, my stockings, my house, my furniture, &c. then it is very likely (as we see it constantly happen) that I shall lay out this last five shillings worth of taxes, which I probably get for doing nothing, in employing another person to do nothing,—or to run up a hill, or to stand upon his head, or wait behind me at dinner, while the poor man, who pays me the tax, goes without his shoes and his dinner. Is this clear? Or put it thus in two words. That is productive labour, for which a man will give the only money he has in the world, or a certain sum, having no more than other people: that is unproductive labour, for which a man will never give the only money he is worth, the money he has earned by his own labour, nor any money at all, unless he has ten times as much as he wants, or as other people