They pass
from hand to hand with a more rapid circulation than any other. No
excess is good; and therefore too great a proportion of landed property
may be held officially for life: but it does not seem to me of material
injury to any commonwealth, that there should exist some estates that
have a chance of being acquired by other means than the previous
acquisition of money.
PARSIMONY NOT ECONOMY.
I beg leave to tell him, that mere parsimony is not economy. It is
separable in theory from it; and in fact it may, or it may not, be a
PART of economy, according to circumstances. Expense, and great expense,
may be an essential part in true economy. If parsimony were to be
considered as one of the kinds of that virtue, there is, however,
another and a higher economy. Economy is a distributive virtue, and
consists not in saving, but in selection. Parsimony requires no
providence, no sagacity, no powers of combination, no comparison, no
judgment. Mere instinct, and that not an instinct of the noblest kind,
may produce this false economy in perfection. The other economy has
larger views. It demands a discriminating judgment, and a firm,
sagacious mind. It shuts one door to impudent importunity, only to open
another, and a wider, to unpresuming merit. If none but meritorious
service or real talent were to be rewarded, this nation has not wanted,
and this nation will not want, the means of rewarding all the service it
ever will receive, and encouraging all the merit it ever will produce.
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