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From what has been said, an accurate idea may be formed of the excess of luxury in the United States; and if to the statements of which I have spoken, are added others of which mention is made in this memoir, it will be easy to calculate the annual consumption of these States. Habituated
the same time to furnish statistical views of their wealth and power, must necessarily lead him into absurd contradictions. It will hardly be credited, even in Spain, that a people, accustomed to regard all the luxuries he has enumerated, as articles of the first necessity, and to make such an enormous consumption of other articles of living previously pointed out, could content themselves, even when they had no guests at their dinners, with potatoes and cold salt meat. The Signor Don Luis de Onis, Gonzales, Lopez, and Vara, Lord of a thousand cities, and Chevalier of a thousand orders, was in the habit, while in this country, of courting the company of tea table tattlers, and even of questioning the kitchen servants of those whose hospitality he shared, with a view to collect these scandalous anecdotes. There are those in every country, who disgrace the dignity of their nature, by affecting a style of living beyond their rank or means—who, for the sake of making an ostentatious display before company, and of exhibiting a splendid hospitality to strangers, who despise them, will deprive their families of every comfort, and descend to every species of meanness in their domestick economy. But the great mass of the people of these States, according to the author's own showing, have the means of decent and comfortable living in greater abundance, and do actually live in more comfort, than any other people in the world. T.
