Economy such as a woman of fortune is called on to
practise, is not merely the petty detail of small daily expenses, the shabby
curtailments and stinted parsimony of a little mind operating on little concerns;
but it is the exercise of a sound judgment exerted in the comprehensive outline of
order, of arrangement, of distribution ; of regulations by which alone well-
governed societies, great and small, subsist. She who has the best-regulated
mind will, other things being equal, have the best-regulated family. As in the
superintendence of the universe, wisdom is seen in its effects; and as in the
visible works of Providence, that which goes on with such beautiful regularity is
the result, not of chance, but of design; so, that management which seems the
most easy, is commonly the consequence of the best-concerted plan ; and a
well-concerted plan is seldom the offspring of an ordinary mind. A sound
economy is a sound understanding brought into action ; it is calculation realized;
it is the doctrine of proportion reduced to practice; it is foreseeing consequences,
and guarding against them ; it is expecting contingencies, and being prepared for
them
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