Thrift Part 22

At length, an acc.u.mulation of money comes into the children's hands.

They have before been restricted in their expenditure; now they become lavish. They have been educated in no better tastes. They spend extravagantly. They will not be drudges in business as their father was.

They will be "gentlemen," and spend their money "like gentlemen." And very soon the money takes wings and flies away. Many are the instances in which families have been raised to wealth in the first generation, launched into ruinous expense in the second, and disappeared in the third,--being again reduced to poverty. Hence the Lancashire proverb, "Twice clogs, once boots." The first man wore clogs, and acc.u.mulated a "a power o' money;" his rich son spent it; and the third generation took up the clogs again. A candidate for parliamentary honours, when speaking from the hustings, was asked if he had plenty bra.s.s. "Plenty bra.s.s?"

said he; "ay, I've lots o' bra.s.s!--I stink o' bra.s.s!"

The same social transformations are known in Scotland. The proverb there is, "The grandsire digs, the father bigs, the son thigs,"[1]--that is, the grandfather worked hard and made a fortune, the father built a fine house, and the son, "an unthrifty son of Linne," when land and goods were gone and spent, took to thieving. Merchants are sometimes princes to-day and beggars to-morrow; and so long as the genius for speculation is exercised by a mercantile family, the talent which gave them landed property may eventually deprive them of it.

[Footnote 1: _Dublin University Magazine_.]

To be happy in old age--at a time when men should leave for ever the toil, anxiety, and worry of money-making--they must, during youth and middle life, have kept their minds healthily active. They must familiarize themselves with knowledge, and take an interest in all that has been done, and is doing, to make the world wiser and better from age to age. There is enough leisure in most men's lives to enable them to interest themselves in biography and history. They may also acquire considerable knowledge of science, or of some enn.o.bling pursuit different from that by which money is made. Mere amus.e.m.e.nt will not do.

No man can grow happy upon amus.e.m.e.nt. The mere man of pleasure is a miserable creature,--especially in old age. The mere drudge in business is little better. Whereas the study of literature, philosophy, and science is full of tranquil pleasure, down to the end of life. If the rich old man has no enjoyment apart from money-making, his old age becomes miserable. He goes on grinding and grinding in the same rut, perhaps growing richer and richer. What matters it? He cannot eat his gold. He cannot spend it. His money, instead of being beneficial to him, becomes a curse. He is the slave of avarice, the meanest of sins. He is spoken of as a despicable creature. He becomes base, even in his own estimation.

What a miserable end was that of the rich man who, when dying, found no comfort save in plunging his hands into a pile of new sovereigns, which had been brought to him from the bank. As the world faded from him, he still clutched them; handled and fondled them one by one,--and then he pa.s.sed away,--his last effort being to finger his gold! Elwes the miser died shrieking, "I will keep my money!--n.o.body shall deprive me of my property!" A ghastly and humiliating spectacle!

Rich men are more punished for their excess of economy, than poor men are for their want of it. They become miserly, think themselves daily growing poorer, and die the deaths of beggars. We have known several instances. One of the richest merchants in London, after living for some time in penury, went down into the country, to the parish where he was born, and applied to the overseers for poor's relief. Though possessing millions, he was horror-struck by the fear of becoming poor. Relief was granted him, and he positively died the death of a pauper. One of the richest merchants in the North died in the receipt of poor's relief. Of course, all that the parish authorities had doled out to these poor-rich men was duly repaid by their executors.

And what did these rich persons leave behind them? Only the reputation that they had died rich men. But riches do not const.i.tute any claim to distinction. It is only the vulgar who admire riches as riches. Money is a drug in the market. Some of the most wealthy men living are mere n.o.bodies. Many of them are comparatively ignorant. They are of no moral or social account. A short time since, a list was published of two hundred and twenty-four English millionaires. Some were known as screws; some were "smart men" in regard to speculations; some were large navvies, coal-miners, and manufacturers; some were almost unknown beyond their own local circle; some were very poor creatures; very few were men of distinction. All that one could say of them was, that they died rich men.

"All the rich and all the covetous men in the world," said Jeremy Taylor, "will perceive, and all the world will perceive for them, that it is but an ill recompense for all their cares, that by this time all that shall be left will be this, that the neighbours shall say, _He died a rich man:_ and yet his wealth will not profit him in the grave, but hugely swell the sad accounts of his doomsday."

"One of the chief causes," says Mrs. Gore, "which render the pursuit of wealth a bitterer as well as more pardonable struggle in England than on the Continent, is the unequal and capricious distribution of family property.... Country gentlemen and professional men,--nay, men without the pretension of being gentlemen,--are scarcely less smitten with the mania of creating 'an eldest son' to the exclusion and degradation of their younger children; and by the individuals thus defrauded by their nearest and dearest, is the idolatry of Mammon pursued without the least regard to self-respect, or the rights of their fellow-creatures.

Injured, they injure in their turn. Their days are devoted to a campaign for the recovery of their birthright. Interested marriages, shabby bargains, and political jobbery, may be traced to the vile system of things which converts the elder son into a Dives, and makes a Lazarus of his brother."

But democrats have quite as great a love for riches as aristocrats; and many austere republicans are eager to be millionaires. Forms of government do not influence the desire for wealth. The elder Cato was a usurer. One of his means of making money was by buying young half-fed slaves at a low price; then, by fattening them up, and training them to work, he sold them at an enhanced price. Brutus, when in the Isle of Cyprus, lent his money at forty-eight per cent. interest,[1] and no one thought the worse of him for his Usury. Washington, the hero of American freedom, bequeathed his slaves to his wife. It did not occur to him to give them their liberty. Munic.i.p.al jobbery is not unknown in New York; and its influential citizens are said to be steeped to the lips in political corruption. Mr. Mills says, that the people of the North-Eastern States have apparently got rid of all social injustices and inequalities; that the proportion of population to capital and land is such as to ensure abundance for every able-bodied man; that they enjoy the six points of the Charter, and need never complain of poverty.

Yet "all that these advantages have done for them is, that the life of the whole of our s.e.x is devoted to dollar-hunting; and of the other, to breeding dollar-hunters. This," Mr. Mill adds, "is not a kind of social perfection which philanthropists to come will feel any very eager desire to a.s.sist in realizing."[2]

[Footnote 1: Cicero's Letters]

[Footnote 2: _Principles of Political Economy_, Book iv., ch. vi.]

Saladin the Great conquered Syria, Arabia, Persia, and Mesopotamia. He was the greatest warrior and conqueror of his time. His power and wealth were enormous. Yet he was fully persuaded of the utter hollowness of riches. He ordered, by his will, that considerable sums should be distributed to Mussulmans, Jews, and Christians, in order that the priests of the three religions might implore for him the mercy of G.o.d.

He commanded that the shirt or tunic which he wore at the time of his death should be carried on the end of a spear throughout the whole camp and at the head of his army, and that the soldier who bore it should pause at intervals and say aloud, "Behold all that remains of the Emperor Saladin!--of all the states he had conquered; of all the provinces he had subdued; of the boundless treasures he had ama.s.sed; of the countless wealth he possessed, he retained, in dying, nothing but this shroud!"

Don Jose de Salamanca, the great railway contractor of Spain, was, in the early part of his life, a student at the University of Granada. He there wore, as he himself says, the oldest and most worn of ca.s.socks. He was a diligent student; and after leaving college he became a member of the Spanish press. From thence he was translated to the Cabinet of Queen Christina, of which he became Finance Minister. This brought out his commercial capacities, and induced him to enter on commercial speculations. He constructed railways in Spain and Italy, and took the princ.i.p.al share in establishing several steam-shipping companies. But while pursuing commerce, he did not forget literature. Once a week he kept an open table, to which the foremost men in literature and the press were invited. They returned his hospitality by inviting him to a dinner on the most economic scale. Busts of Shakespeare, Cervantes, Dante, Schiller, and other literary men, adorned the room.

In returning thanks for his health, Salamanca referred to his university experience, and to his labours in connection with the press. "Then," he went on to say, "the love of gold took possession of my soul, and it was at Madrid that I found the object of my adoration; but not, alas!

without the loss of my juvenile illusions. Believe me, gentlemen, the man who can satisfy all his wishes has no more enjoyment. Keep to the course you have entered on, I advise you. Rothschild's celebrity will expire on the day of his death. Immortality can be earned, not bought.

Here are before us the effigies of men who have gloriously cultivated liberal arts; their busts I have met with in every part of Europe; but nowhere have I found a statue erected to the honour of a man who has devoted his life to making money."

Riches and happiness have no necessary connection with each other. In some cases it might be said that happiness is in the inverse proportion to riches. The happiest part of most men's lives is while they are battling with poverty, and gradually raising themselves above it. It is then that they deny themselves for the sake of others,--that they save from their earnings to secure a future independence,--that they cultivate their minds while labouring for their daily bread,--that they endeavour to render themselves wiser and better--happier in their homes and more useful to society at large. William Chambers, the Edinburgh publisher, speaking of the labours of his early years, says, "I look back to those times with great pleasure, and I am almost sorry that I have not to go through the same experience again; for I reaped more pleasure when I had not a sixpence in my pocket, studying in a garret in Edinburgh, than I now find when sitting amidst all the elegancies and comforts of a parlour."

There are compensations in every condition of life. The difference in the lot of the rich and the poor is not so great as is generally imagined. The rich man has often to pay a heavy price for his privileges. He is anxious about his possessions. He may be the victim of extortion. He is apt to be cheated. He is the mark for every man's shaft. He is surrounded by a host of clients, till his purse bleeds at every pore. As they say in Yorkshire when people become rich, the money soon "broddles through." Or, if engaged in speculation, the rich man's wealth may fly away at any moment. He may try again, and then wear his heart out in speculating on the "chances of the market." _Insomnia_ is a rich man's disease. The thought of his winnings and losings keeps him sleepless. He is awake by day, and awake by night. "Riches on the brain"

is full of restlessness and agony.

The rich man over-eats or over-drinks; and he has gout. Imagine a man with a vice fitted to his toe. Let the vice descend upon the joint, and be firmly screwed down. Screw it again. He is in agony. Then suddenly turn the screw tighter--down, down! That is gout! Gout--of which Sydenham has said, that "unlike any other disease, it kills more rich men than poor, more wise than simple. Great kings, emperors, generals, admirals, and philosophers, have died of gout. Hereby nature shows her impartiality, since those whom she favours in one way, she afflicts in another Or, the rich man may become satiated with food, and lose his appet.i.te; while the poor man relishes and digests anything. A beggar asked alms of a rich man "because he was hungry." "Hungry?" said the millionaire; "how I envy you!" Abernethy's prescription to the rich man was, "Live upon a shilling a day, and earn it!" When the Duke of York consulted him about his health, Abernethy's answer was, "Cut off the supplies, and the enemy will soon leave the citadel." The labourer who feels little and thinks less, has the digestion of an ostrich; while the non-worker is never allowed to forget that he has a stomach, and is obliged to watch every mouthful that he eats. Industry and indigestion are two things seldom found united.

Many people envy the possessions of the rich, but will not pa.s.s through the risks, the fatigues, or the dangers of acquiring them. It is related of the Duke of Dantzic that an old comrade, whom he had not seen for many years, called upon him at his hotel in Paris, and seemed amazed at the luxury of his apartments, the richness of his furniture, and the magnificence of his gardens. The Duke, supposing that he saw in his old comrade's face a feeling of jealousy, said to him bluntly, "You may have all that you see before you, on one condition." "What is that?" said his friend. "It is that you will place yourself twenty paces off, and let me fire at you with a musket a hundred times." "I will certainly not accept your offer at that price." "Well," replied the Marshal, "to gain all that you see before you, I have faced more than a thousand gunshots, fired at not move than ten paces off."

The Duke of Marlborough often faced death. He became rich, and left a million and a half to his descendants to squander. The Duke was a penurious man. He is said to have scolded his servant for lighting four candles in his tent, when Prince Eugene called upon him to hold a conference before the battle of Blenheim. Swift said of the Duke, "I dare hold a wager that in all his compaigns he was never known to lose his baggage." But this merely showed his consummate generalship. When ill and feeble at Bath, he is said to have walked home from the rooms to his lodgings, to save sixpence. And yet this may be excused, for he may have walked home for exercise. He is certainly known to have given a thousand pounds to a young and deserving soldier who wished to purchase a commission. When Bolingbroke was reminded of one of the weaknesses of Marlborough, he observed, "He was so great a man, that I forgot that he had that defect."

It is no disgrace to be poor. The praise of honest poverty has often been sung. When a man will not stoop to do wrong, when he will not sell himself for money, when he will not do a dishonest act, then his poverty is most honourable. But the man is not poor who can pay his way, and save something besides. He who pays cash for all that he purchases, is not poor but well off. He is in a happier condition than the idle gentleman who runs into debt, and is clothed, shod, and fed at the expense of his tailor, shoemaker, and butcher. Montesquieu says, that a man is not poor because he has nothing, but he is poor when he will not or cannot work. The man who is able and willing to work, is better off than the man who possesses a thousand crowns without the necessity for working.

Nothing sharpens a man's wits like poverty. Hence many of the greatest men have originally been poor men. Poverty often purifies and braces a man's morals. To spirited people, difficult tasks are usually the most delightful ones. If we may rely upon the testimony of history, men are brave, truthful, and magnanimous, not in proportion to their wealth, but in proportion to their smallness of means. And the best are often the poorest,--always supposing that they have sufficient to meet their temporal wants. A divine has said that G.o.d has created poverty, but He has not created misery. And there is certainly a great difference between the two. While honest poverty is honourable, misery is humiliating; inasmuch as the latter is for the most part the result of misconduct, and often of idleness and drunkenness. Poverty is no disgrace to him who can put up with it; but he who finds the beggar's staff once get warm in his hand, never does any good, but a great amount of evil.

The poor are often the happiest of people--far more so than the rich; but though they may be envied, no one will be found willing to take their place. Moore has told the story of the over-fed, over-satisfied eastern despot, who sent a messenger to travel through the world, in order to find out the happiest man. When discovered, the messenger was immediately to seize him, take his shirt off his back, and bring it to the Caliph. The messenger found the happiest man in an Irishman,--happy, dancing, and flourishing his shillelagh. But when the amba.s.sador proceeded to seize him, and undress him, he found that the Irishman had got no shirt to his back!

The portion of Agur is unquestionably the best: "Remove far from me vanity and lies; give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me." The unequal distribution of the disposition to be happy, is of far greater importance than the unequal distribution of wealth. The disposition to be content and satisfied, said David Hume, is at least equal to an income of a thousand a year. Montaigne has observed that Fortune confers but little. Human good or ill does not depend upon it. It is but the seed of good, which the soul, infinitely stronger than wealth, changes and applies as it pleases, and is thus the only cause of a happy or unhappy disposition.

England is celebrated for its charities. M. Guizot declares that there is nothing in this land that so fills the mind of the stranger with amazement at our resources, and admiration at our use of them, as the n.o.ble free-gift monuments raised on every side for the relief of multiform suffering. The home philanthropist, who looks a little deeper than the foreign visitor, may be disposed to take another view of the effects of money-giving. That charity produces unmixed good, is very much questioned. Charity, like man, is sometimes blind, and frequently misguided. Unless money is wisely distributed, it will frequently do more harm than good. If charity could help or elevate the poor, London would now be the happiest city in the world; for about three millions of money are spent on charity, and about one in every three of the London population are relieved by charitable inst.i.tutions.

It is very easy to raise money for charity. Subscription lists constantly attest the fact. A rich man is asked by some influential person for money. It is very easy to give it. It saves time to give it.

It is considered a religious duty to give it. Yet to give money unthinkingly, to give it without considering how it is to be used,--instead of being for the good of our fellow-creatures,--may often prove the greatest injury we could inflict upon them. True benevolence does not consist in giving money. Nor can charitable donations, given indiscriminately to the poor, have any other effect than to sap the foundations of self-respect, and break down the very outworks of virtue itself. There are many forms of benevolence which create the very evils they are intended to cure, and encourage the poorer cla.s.ses in the habit of dependence upon the charity of others,--to the neglect of those far healthier means of social well-being which lie within their own reach.

One would think that three million a year were sufficient to relieve all the actual distress that exists in London. Yet the distress, notwithstanding all the money spent upon it, goes on increasing. May not the money spent in charity, create the distress it relieves,--besides creating other distress which it fails to relieve? Uneducated and idle people will not exert themselves for a living, when they have the hope of obtaining the living without exertion. Who will be frugal and provident, when charity offers all that frugality and providence can confer? Does not the gift of the advantages, comforts, and rewards of industry, without the necessity of labouring for them, tend to sap the very foundations of energy and self-reliance? Is not the circ.u.mstance that poverty is the only requisite qualification on the part of the applicant for charity, calculated to tempt the people to self-indulgence, to dissipation, and to those courses of life which keep them poor?

Men who will not struggle and exert themselves, are those who are helped first. The worst sort of persons are made comfortable: whilst the hard-working, self-supporting man, who disdains to throw himself upon charity, is compelled to pay rates for the maintenance of the idle.

Charity stretches forth its hand to the rottenest parts of society; it rarely seeks out, or helps, the struggling and the honest. As Carlyle has said, "O my astonishing benevolent friends! that never think of meddling with the material while it continues sound; that stress and strain it with new rates and a.s.sessments, till even it has given way and declared itself rotten; whereupon you greedily s.n.a.t.c.h at it, and say, 'Now let us try to do some good upon it!'"

The charity which merely consists in giving, is an idle indulgence--often an idle vice. The mere giving of money will never do the work of philanthropy. As a recent writer has said, "The crimes of the virtuous, the blasphemies of the pious, and the follies of the wise, would scarcely fill a larger volume than the cruelties of the humane. In this world a large part of the occupation of the wise has been to neutralize the efforts of the good."

"Public charities," said the late Lord Lytton, "are too often merely a bonus to public indolence and vice. What a dark lesson of the fallacy of human wisdom does this knowledge strike into the heart! What a waste of the materials of kindly sympathies! What a perversion individual mistakes can cause, even in the virtues of a nation! Charity is a feeling dear to the pride of the human heart--it is an aristocratic emotion! Mahomet testified his deep knowledge of his kind when he allowed the vice hardest to control,--s.e.xual licentiousness; and encouraged the virtue easiest to practise,--charity."[1]

[Footnote 1: LORD LYTTON--_England and the English_, p. 124.]

There are clergymen in London who say that charity acts against the extension of religion amongst the people. The Rev. Mr. Stone says, "He is an unwelcome visitor to the poor who brings the Bible in one hand, without a loaf, a blanket, or a shilling in the other. And no wonder. By the prevailing system of charitable relief they have been _nursed_ in this carnal spirit; they have been justified in those selfish expectations. Instead of being allowed to learn the great and salutary lesson of providence, that there is a necessary connection between their conduct and their condition, they have, by this artificial system, been taught that indigence is _of itself_ sufficient to const.i.tute a claim to relief. They have been thus encouraged in improvidence, immorality, fraud, and hypocrisy."

The truest philanthropists are those who endeavour to prevent misery, dependence, and dest.i.tution; and especially those who diligently help the poor to help themselves. This is the great advantage of the "Parochial Mission-Women a.s.sociation."[1] They bring themselves into close communication with the people in the several parishes of London, and endeavour to a.s.sist them in many ways. But they avoid giving indiscriminate alms. Their objects are "to help the poor to help themselves, and to raise them by making them feel that they _can_ help themselves." There is abundant room for philanthropy amongst all cla.s.ses; and it is most gratifying to find ladies of high distinction taking part in this n.o.ble work.

[Footnote 1: See _East and West_, edited by the Countess Spencer.]

There are numerous other societies established of late years, which afford gratifying instances of the higher and more rational, as well as really more Christian, forms of charity. The societies for improving the dwellings of the industrial cla.s.ses,--for building baths and washhouses,--for establishing workmen's, seamen's, and servants'

homes,--for cultivating habits of providence and frugality amongst the working-cla.s.ses,--and for extending the advantages of knowledge amongst the people,--are important agencies of this kind. These, instead of sapping the foundations of self-reliance, are really and truly helping the people to help themselves, and are deserving of every approbation and encouragement. They tend to elevate the condition of the ma.s.s; they are embodiments of philanthropy in its highest form; and are calculated to bear good fruit through all time.

Rich men, with the prospect of death before them, are often very much concerned about their money affairs. If unmarried and without successors, they find a considerable difficulty in knowing what to do with the pile of gold they have gathered together during their lifetime.

They must make a will, and leave it to somebody. In olden times, rich people left money to pay for ma.s.ses for their souls. Perhaps many do so still. Some founded almshouses; others hospitals. Money was left for the purpose of distributing doles to poor persons, or to persons of the same name and trade as the deceased.

"These doles," said the wife of a clergyman in the neighbourhood of London, "are doing an infinite deal of mischief: they are rapidly pauperising the parish." Not long since, the town of Bedford was corrupted and demoralized by the doles and benefactions which rich men had left to the poorer cla.s.ses. Give a man money without working for it, and he will soon claim it as a right. It practically forbids him to exercise forethought, or to provide against the vicissitudes of trade, or the accidents of life. It not only breaks down the bulwarks of independence, but the outposts of virtue itself.

Large sums of money are left by rich men to found "Charities." They wish to do good, but in many cases they do much moral injury. Their "Charities" are anything but charitable. They destroy the self-respect of the working-cla.s.ses, and also of the cla.s.ses above them. "We can get this charity for nothing. We can get medical a.s.sistance for nothing. We can get our children educated for nothing. Why should we work? Why should we save?" Such is the idea which charity, so-called, inculcates.

The "Charitable Inst.i.tution" becomes a genteel poor-house; and the lesson is extensively taught that we can do better by begging than by working.

The bequeathment of Stephen Girard, the wealthy American merchant, was of a different character. Girard was a native of Bordeaux. An orphan at an early age, he was put on board a ship as a cabin boy. He made his first voyage to North America when about ten or twelve years old. He had little education, and only a limited acquaintance with reading and writing. He worked hard. He gradually improved in means so that he was able to set up a store. Whilst living in Water Street, New York, he fell in love with Polly Luna, the daughter of a caulker. The father forbade the marriage. But Girard persevered, and at length he won and married Polly Lum. It proved a most unfortunate marriage. His wife had no sympathy with him; and he became cross, snappish, morose. He took to sea again; and at forty he commanded his own sloop, and was engaged in the coasting trade between New York, Philadelphia, and New Orleans.

Then he settled in Philadelphia, and became a merchant. He devoted his whole soul to his business; for he had determined to become rich. He practised the most rigid economy. He performed any work by which money could be made. He shut his heart against the blandishments of life. The desire for wealth seems to have possessed his soul. His life was one of unceasing labour. Remember, that Girard was unhappy at home. His nature might have been softened, had he been blessed with a happy wife. He led ten miserable years with her; and then she became insane. She lay for about twenty years in the Pennsylvania hospital, and died there.

Yet there was something more than hardness and harshness in Girard.

There was a deep under-current of humanity in him. When the yellow fever broke out in Philadelphia, in 1793, his better nature showed itself. The people were smitten to death by thousands. Nurses could not be found to attend the patients in the hospital. It was regarded as certain death to nurse the sick.

"Wealth had no power to bribe, nor beauty to charm, the oppressor; But all perished alike beneath the scourge of his anger; Only, alas I the poor, who had neither friends nor attendants, Crept away to die in the almshouse, home of the homeless."