Page:The Effects of Civilisation on the People in European States.djvu/54

32 production of such things as are enjoyed only by the few, and by them may be easily dispensed with. This cause, whatever it be, must be a very powerful one, since it turns things from the course to which they are naturally and strongly inclined.

The cause that can divert the labour of the people of most civilised countries from such occupations as have such an evident and direct tendency to produce for themselves the necessaries and comforts of life, and direct it to others which have not that obvious tendency, may be threefold: first, optional; second, delusive; third, compulsive.

As to the first, it has been remarked that nations, in their progress from a savage to a civilised state, have shown a great reluctance to quit the employment of their former state, namely, that of hunting, which is probably natural to man, he being of the carnivorous species of animals, and, consequently, of that of prey; and hunting is nothing but the mode or act of taking prey. The life of hunters consists in reverses either of violent exercise or total inaction, neither of which fits them for the confinement and long-continued labour of manufactures, which, therefore, they have always shown an aversion from; and it is a long time, even where they have the advantages of it before their eyes, in the practice of neighbouring Europeans, before they confine themselves to