The Hillsborough Recorder

ECONOMY.

A celebrated French writer on political economy, M. Say, has this story:—“Being in the country, I had an example of one of those small losses which a family is exposed to through negligence. From the want of a latch of small value, the wicket of a barnyard, looking to the fields, was often left open: every one who went through drew the door to, but having no means to fasten it, it remained flapping: the poultry escaped and were lost. One day a fine pig got out and ran into the woods. Immediately all the world is after it; the gardener, the cook, the dairy-maid, all run to recover the swine. The gardener got sight of him first, and jumping over a ditch to stop him, he sprained his ankle, & was confined a fortnight to the house. The cook on her return, found all the linen she had left to dry by the fire, burned; and the dairy-maid having run off before she tied up the cows, one of them broke the leg of a colt in the stable. The gardener's lost time was worth twenty crowns, valuing his pain at nothing: the linen burned and the colt spoiled, were worth as much more. Here is a loss of forty crowns, and much pain, trouble, and vexation and inconvenience, for the want of a latch, which would not cost three pence, and this loss, through careless neglect, falls on a family little able to support it."”