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.
No state, since the foundation of society, has been impoverished by that
species of profusion. Had the economy of selection and proportion been
at all times observed, we should not now have had an overgrown duke of
Bedford, to oppress the industry of humble men, and to limit, by the
standard of his own conceptions, the justice, the bounty, or, if he
pleases, the charity of the crown.