Whoever has sixpence is sovereign over all men to the extent of that sixpence; commands cooks to feed him, philosophers to teach him, kings to mount guard over him, to the extent of that sixpence. — CARLYLE.

Seek not proud riches, but such as thou mayest get justly, use soberly, distribute cheerfully, and leave contentedly; yet have no abstract or friarly contempt of them. - BACON.

Economy is of itself a great revenue. CICERO.

No man is rich whose expenditures exceed his means; and no one is poor whose incomings exceed his outgoings. — HALIBURTON.

Les dettes abrégent la vie. -JOUBERT.

THAT

HAT Providence has endowed man with the organ of acquisitiveness, as phrenologists term it, for wise and beneficent purposes, and that the civilization, refinement, virtue, wisdom, and happiness of every community are largely dependent on its exercise, is a proposition which few persons will controvert. It is true there are declaimers on the incompatibility of wealth and virtue; but they are mere declaimers, and nothing more. In the same breath in which they decry the pursuit of pelf they will applaud or denounce an institution or measure according to its tendency to increase or to diminish the public wealth. To cry out against the universal craving and struggling for the good things of this world, for which money is a synonyme, — is to waste one's breath upon the air. Men will not listen to abstract arguments against the pursuit of gold or greenbacks while they fear the "wolf at the door," and the most eloquent sermon in praise of poverty provokes but a smile. "Believe not much them that seem to despise riches," says Bacon; "for they despise them that despair of

them; and none worse when they come to them." Rarely is their Spartan scorn proof against a fat legacy or other pecuniary windfall; and in nine cases out of ten their policy is that of Virgil's harpies, that sought to excite disgust at the banquet which they themselves were eager to devour.

There is no sacrifice which men will not make for money. They will face belching cannon, clog their lungs with the dust. of coal-mines or with the impalpable powder inhaled in the grinding of steel, become workers in arsenic, lead, phosphorus, or any of the other substances so fatal to life, blast with gunpowder, live amid malaria, and risk their soul's peace in this world and the next, for gold. No toil is so exhausting, no danger so appalling, that men will not confront the one and undergo the other, if the stakes are only sufficiently high. "A certain ten per cent.," says an English political economist, “will insure the employment of capital anywhere. Twenty per cent. certain will produce eagerness. Fifty per cent. positive, audacity. One hundred per cent. will make it ready to trample on all human laws. Three hundred per cent., and there is not a crime at which it will scruple, nor a risk it will not run, even to the chance of its owner being hanged." Even the preacher's call swells from "the still small voice " to a trumpet peal when it comes with the offer of a double salary. Harassing doubts and indecision vanish like dew before the logic of five thousand a year and a parsonage. The parish that is made up of rich merchants, brokers, and capitalists, is seen to be "a larger field of labor" when viewed through gold spectacles.

It is easy, of course, to point out the dangers resulting from a too intense devotion to money-getting. Bacon calls riches "the baggage of virtue"; and we all know how the Romans, in their heroic days, when they annihilated their foes, expressed their contempt by a similar word, impedimenta; and that when they grew weak and degraded they clung to their gold, with which they bought off the barbarians who invaded them. But whatever may be said of the dangers of riches, the dangers of poverty are tenfold greater. A condition in which one

is exposed to continual want, not only of the luxuries but of the veriest necessaries of life, as well as to disease and discouragement, is exceedingly unfavorable to the exercise of the higher functions of the mind and soul. The poor man is hourly beset by troops of temptations which the rich man never knows. Doubtless the highest virtues are sometimes found to flourish even in the cold clime and sterile soil of poverty. Not only industry, honesty, frugality, perseverance amid hardships and ever-baffling discouragements, but much more miraculous attributes, as meek contentment, severe self-sacrifice, tender affections, unwavering trust in Providence, all are found blooming in the hearts of the poorest poor, even in the sunless regions of absolute destitution, where honesty might be expected to wear an everlasting scowl of churlishness, and a bitter disbelief in the love of God to accompany obedience to the laws of man. But it is the most insufferable of all cants to hear these qualities spoken of as if they were indigenous to poverty, when we know that they flourish in spite of it.

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We have had enough of that silly sentimentalism which would canonize the poor because they are such; which, because Jerrold has finely said, "Many a man who now lacks shoe-leather would wear golden spurs if knighthood were the reward of worth,” sees a hero in every chimney-sweep, and Wordsworth's pedler in peripatetics who probably much more resemble Canning's knife-grinder. Poverty is a condition. which no man should accept, unless it is forced upon him as an inexorable necessity or as the alternative of dishonor. No person has a right voluntarily to place himself in a position where he will be assailed hourly by the fiercest temptations, where he will be able to preserve his uprightness only by a strength little short of angelic, and where he will be liable at any moment to become by sickness a burden to his friends. Every man, too, should make some provision for old age; for an old man in the poor-house, or begging alms, is a sorry sight, and suggests the suspicion, however ill-founded, that his life has been foolishly, if not viciously spent. It is true we should

not be over-anxious about the morrow; but they strangely misunderstand the spirit of our Saviour's teachings, who think that words spoken with reference to the genial climate and the simple modes of living in Judea have a literal application in the high latitudes and amid the desperate competitions in which so many millions live in this country and in this nineteenth century.

We say, therefore, that the philosophy which affects to teach us a contempt of money does not run very deep. Indeed, it ought to be clearer to philosophers than to other men that money is of high importance, and that its importance increases with every generation. So manifold are its bearings upon the lives and characters of mankind, that, as Henry Taylor observes, in his "Notes on Life," an insight which should search out the life of a man in his pecuniary relations would penetrate into almost every cranny of his nature. "He who knows, like St. Paul, how to spare and how to abound, has a great knowledge : for, if we take account of all the virtues with which money is mixed up, honesty, justice, generosity, charity, frugality, forethought, self-sacrifice, and of their correlative vices, it is a knowledge which goes near to cover the length and breadth of humanity; and a right measure and manner in getting, saving, spending, giving, taking, lending, borrowing, and bequeathing would almost argue a perfect man."

It is money, or rather the want of it, which makes men workers. It is the appetizing provocative that teases the business nerve of more than half the world; while most of the results of ingenuity, skill, intellect, tact, address, and competition, depend upon its unremitting pursuit. Want of money is the great principle of moral gravitation, the only power that is strong enough to keep things in their places. It is this scantiness of means, this continual deficiency, this constant hitch, this perpetual struggle to keep the head above water and the wolf from the door, that keeps society from falling to pieces. Let every man in the community have, as a rule, a few dollars more than he wants, and anarchy would follow.

All labor, whether of the hand or brain, would become spasmodic and fitful, if, indeed, the great wheel of industry did not come to a stand-still. The very labor a man has to undergo, the self-denial he has to cultivate, in acquiring money, are of themselves an education. They compel him to put forth intelligence, skill, energy, vigilance, zeal, bring out his practical qualities, and gradually train his moral and intellectual powers. Mental discipline may be got from money-getting as real as that which is obtained from mathematics; "the soul is trained by the ledger as much as by the calculus, and can get exercise in the account of sales as much as in the account of stars." The provident man must of necessity be a thoughtful man, living, as he does, not for the present, but for the future; and he must also practise self-denial, that virtue which is one of the chief elements in a strong and well-formed character. As with the acquisition, so with the use of money; the way in which a man spends it is often one of the surest tests of character. As Bulwer says in one of the most thoughtful essays in Caxtoniana, "Money is a terrible blab; she will betray the secrets of her owner, whatever he do to gag her. His virtues will creep out in her whisper; his vices she will cry aloud at the top of her tongue."

Again, money is not only character, but it is power. It is not merely for the comforts, but for the influence they bring, that riches are so intensely desired, so long and painfully sought, by any sensible man. It is wealth that, above all other things, gives character, standing, and respectability in this country. With it, the pygmy in intellect becomes a giant in influence; without it, the best-informed man is but a dwarf in power. Now, as in Shakespeare's time, "the learned pate ducks to the golden fool." Who does not know what weight and significance are imparted to a truism, what raciness to a dull jest, if they are backed up by ten thousand a year, by bank shares, mortgages, and stocks? Rank, talents, eloquence, learning, and moral worth, all challenge a certain degree of respect; but, unconnected with property, they have