Page:Works of the Late Doctor Benjamin Franklin (1793).djvu/286

276 multitude of poor, abject, rack-rented, tythe-paying tenants, and half-paid and half-ſtarved ragged labourers; and views here the happy mediocrity that ſo generally prevails throughout theſe ſtates, where the cultivator works for himſelf, and ſupports his family in decent plenty; will, methinks, ſee abundant reaſon to bleſs Divine Providence for the evident and great difference in our favour, and be convinced that no nation known to us enjoys a greater ſhare of human felicity.

It is true, that in ſome of the ſtates there are parties and diſcords; but let us look back, and aſk if we were ever without them? Such will exiſt wherever there is liberty; and perhaps they help to preſerve it. By the colliſion of different ſentiments, ſparks of truth are ſtruck out, and political light is obtained. The different faſhions, which at preſent divide us, aim all at the public good; the differences are only about the various modes of promoting it. Things, actions, meaſures, and objects of all kinds, preſent themſelves to the minds of men in ſuch a variety of lights, that it is not poſſible we ſhould all think alike at the fame time on every ſubject, when hardly the fame man retains at all times the fame ideas of it. Parties are therefore the common lot of humanity; and ours are by no means more miſchievous or leſs beneficial than thoſe of other countries, nations, and ages, enjoying in the fame degree the great bleſſing of political liberty.

Some indeed among us are not ſo much grieved for the preſent ſtate of our affairs, as apprehenſive for the future. The growth of luxury alarms them, and they think we are from that alone in the high road to ruin. They obſerve, that no revenue is ſufficient without œconomy, and that the moſt plentiful income of a whole people from