raiment, a thing much more imaginary than real. _The shame of poverty_,
the shame of being thought poor, is a great and fatal weakness, though
arising, in this country, from the fashion of the times themselves. When
a _good man_, as in the phraseology of the city, means a _rich man_, we
are not to wonder that every one wishes to be thought richer than he is.
When adulation is sure to follow wealth, and when contempt would be
awarded to many if they were not wealthy, who are spoken of with
deference, and even lauded to the skies, because their riches are great
and notorious; when this is the case, we are not to be surprised that
men are ashamed to be thought to be poor. This is one of the greatest of
all the dangers at the outset of life: it has brought thousands and
hundreds of thousands to ruin, even to _pecuniary_ ruin. One of the most
amiable features in the character of American society is this; that men
never boast of their riches, and never disguise their poverty; but they
talk of both as of any other matter fit for public conversation. No man
shuns another because he is poor: no man is preferred to another because
he is rich. In hundreds and hundreds of instances, men, not worth a
shilling, have been chosen by the people and entrusted with their rights
and interests, in preference to men who ride in their carriages.
58. This shame of being thought poor, is not only dishonourable in
itself, and fatally injurious to men of talent; but it is ruinous even
in a _pecuniary_ point of view, and equally destructive to farmers,
traders, and even gentlemen of landed estate. It leads to everlasting
efforts to _disguise one's poverty_: the carriage, the servants, the
wine, (oh, that fatal wine!) the spirits, the decanters, the glasses,
all the table apparatus, the dress, the horses, the dinners, the
parties, all must be kept up; not so much because he or she who keeps or
gives them, has any pleasure arising therefrom, as because not to keep
and give them, would give rise to a suspicion _of the want of means_ so
to give and keep; and thus thousands upon thousands are yearly brought
into a state of real poverty by their great _anxiety not to be thought
poor_. Look round you, mark well what you behold, and say if this be not
the case. In how many instances have you seen most amiable and even most
industrious families brought to ruin by nothing but this! Mark it well;
resolve to set this false shame at defiance, and when you have done
that, you have laid the first stone of the surest foundation of your
future tranquillity of mind. There are thousands of families, at this
very moment, who are thus struggling to keep up appearances. The farmers
accommodate themselves to circumstances more easily than tradesmen and
professional men. They live at a greater distance from their neighbours:
they can change their style of living unperceived: they can banish the
decanter, change the dishes for a bit of bacon, make a treat out of a
rasher and eggs, and the world is none the wiser all the while. But the
tradesman, the doctor, the attorney, and the trader, cannot make the
change so quietly, and unseen. The accursed wine, which is a sort of
criterion of the style of living, a sort of _scale_ to the _plan_, a
sort of _key_ to the _tune_; this is the thing to banish first of all;
because all the rest follow, and come down to their proper level in a
short time. The accursed decanter cries footman or waiting maid, puts
bells to the side of the wall, screams aloud for carpets; and when I am
asked, 'Lord, _what_ is a glass of wine?' my answer is, that, in this
country, it is _everything_; it is the pitcher of the key; it demands
all the other unnecessary expenses; it is injurious to health, and must
be injurious, every bottle of wine that is drunk containing a certain
portion of ardent spirits, besides other drugs deleterious in their
nature; and, of all the friends to the doctors, this fashionable
beverage is the greatest. And, which adds greatly to the folly, or, I
should say, the real vice of using it, is, that the parties themselves,
nine times out of ten, do not drink it by _choice_; do not like it; do
not relish it; but use it from mere ostentation, being ashamed to be
seen even by their own servants, not to drink wine. At the very moment I
am writing this, there are thousands of families in and near London, who
daily have wine upon their tables, and who _drink_ it too, merely
because their own servants should not suspect them to be poor, and not
deem them to be genteel; and thus families by thousands are ruined, only
because they are ashamed to be thought poor.
59. There is no shame belonging to poverty, which frequently arises from
the virtues of the impoverished parties. Not so frequently, indeed, as
from vice, folly, and indiscretion; but still very frequently. And as
the Scripture tells us, that we are not to 'despise the poor _because_
he is poor'; so we ought not to honour the rich because he is rich. The
true way is, to take a fair survey of the character of a man as depicted
in his conduct, and to respect him, or despise him, according to a due
estimate of that character. No country upon earth exhibits so many, as
this, of those fatal terminations of life, called suicides. These arise,
in nine instances out of ten, from this very source. The victims are, in
general, what may be fairly called insane; but their insanity almost
always arises from the dread of poverty; not from the dread of a want of
the means of sustaining life, or even decent living, but from the dread
of being thought or known to be poor; from the dread of what is called
falling in the scale of society; a dread which is prevalent hardly in
any country but this. Looked at in its true light, what is there in
poverty to make a man take away his own life? he is the same man that he
was before: he has the same body and the same mind: if he even foresee a
great alteration in his dress or his diet, why should he kill himself on
that account? Are these all the things that a man wishes to live for?
But, such is the fact; so great is the disgrace upon this country, and
so numerous and terrible are the evils arising from this dread of being
thought to be poor.
60. Nevertheless, men ought to take care of their means, ought to use
them prudently and sparingly, and to keep their expenses always within
the bounds of their income, be it what it may. One of the effectual
means of doing this is to purchase with ready money. ST. PAUL says,
'_Owe no man any thing_:' and of his numerous precepts this is by no
means the least worthy of our attention. _Credit_ has been boasted of as
a very fine thing: to decry credit seems to be setting oneself up
against the opinions of the whole world; and I remember a paper in the
FREEHOLDER or the SPECTATOR, published just after the funding system had
begun, representing 'PUBLIC Credit' as a GODDESS, enthroned in a temple
dedicated to her by her votaries, amongst whom she is dispensing
blessings of every description. It must be more than forty years since I
read this paper, which I read soon after the time when the late Mr. PITT
uttered in Parliament an expression of his anxious hope, that his 'name
would be inscribed on the _monument_ which he should raise to '_public
credit_.' Time has taught me, that PUBLIC CREDIT means, the contracting
of debts which a nation never can pay; and I have lived to see this
_Goddess_ produce effects, in my country, which Satan himself never
could have produced. It is a very bewitching Goddess; and not less fatal
in her influence in private than in public affairs. It has been carried
in this latter respect to such a pitch, that scarcely any transaction,
however low and inconsiderable in amount, takes place in any other way.
There is a trade in London, called the 'tally-trade,' by which,
household goods, coals, clothing, all sorts of things, are sold upon
credit, the seller keeping _a tally_, and receiving payment for the
goods, little by little; so that the income and the earnings of the
buyers are always anticipated; are always gone, in fact, before they
come in or are earned; the sellers receiving, of course, a great deal
more than the proper profit.
61. Without supposing you to descend to so low a grade as this, and even
supposing you to be lawyer, doctor, parson, or merchant; it is still the
same thing, if you purchase on credit, and not, perhaps, in a much less
degree of disadvantage. Besides the higher price that you pay there is
the temptation to have what you _really do not want_. The cost seems a
trifle, when you have not to pay the money until a future time. It has
been observed, and very truly observed, that men used to lay out a
one-pound note when they would not lay out a sovereign; a consciousness
of the intrinsic value of the things produces a retentiveness in the
latter case more than in the former: the sight and the touch assist the
mind in forming its conclusions, and the one-pound note was parted with,
when the sovereign would have been kept. Far greater is the difference
between Credit and Ready money. Innumerable things are not bought at all
with ready money, which would be bought in case of trust: it is so much
easier to _order_ a thing than to _pay_ for it. A future day; a day of
payment must come, to be sure, but that is little thought of at the
time; but if the money were to be drawn out, the moment the thing was
received or offered, this question would arise, '_Can I do without it_?'
Is this thing indispensable; am I compelled to have it, or suffer a loss
or injury greater in amount than the cost of the thing? If this question
were put, every time we make a purchase, seldom should we hear of those
suicides which are such a disgrace to this country.
62. I am aware, that it will be said, and very truly said, that the
concerns of merchants; that the purchasing of great estates, and various
other great transactions, cannot be carried on in this manner; but these
are rare exceptions to the rule; even in these cases there might be much
less of bills and bonds, and all the sources of litigation; but in the
every-day business of life; in transactions with the butcher, the baker,
the tailor, the shoemaker, what excuse can there be for pleading the
example of the merchant, who carries on his work by ships and exchanges?
I was delighted, some time ago, by being told of a young man, who, upon
being advised _to keep a little account_ of all he received and
expended, answered, 'that his business was not to keep account books:
that he was sure not to make a mistake as to his income; and that, as to
his expenditure, the little bag that held his sovereigns would be an
infallible guide, as he never bought anything that he did not
immediately pay for.'
63. I believe that nobody will deny, that, generally speaking, you pay
for the same article a fourth part more in the case of trust than you do
in the case of ready money. Suppose, then, the baker, butcher, tailor,
and shoemaker, receive from you only one hundred pounds a year. Put that
together; that is to say, multiply twenty-five by twenty, and you will
find, that, at the end of twenty years, you have 500_l._, besides the
accumulating and growing interest. The fathers of the Church (I mean the
ancient ones), and also the canons of the Church, forbade selling on
trust at a higher price than for ready money, which was in effect to
forbid _trust_; and this, doubtless, was one of the great objects which
those wise and pious men had in view; for they were fathers in
legislation and morals as well as in religion. But the doctrine of these
fathers and canons no longer prevails; they are set at nought by the
present age, even in the countries that adhere to their religion.
ADDISON'S Goddess has prevailed over the fathers and the canons; and men
not only make a difference in the price regulated by the difference in
the mode of payment; but it would be absurd to expect them to do
otherwise. They must not only charge something for the want of the _use_
of the money; but they must charge something additional for the _risk_
of its loss, which may frequently arise, and most frequently does arise,
from the misfortunes of those to whom they have assigned their goods on
trust. The man, therefore, who purchases on trust, not only pays for the
trust, but he also pays his due share of what the tradesman loses by
trust; and, after all, he is not so good a customer as the man who
purchases cheaply with ready money; for there is his name indeed in the
tradesman's book; but with that name the tradesman cannot go to market
to get a fresh supply.
64. Infinite are the ways in which gentlemen lose by this sort of
dealing. Servants go and order sometimes things not wanted at all; at
other times, more than is wanted; at others, things of a higher quality;
and all this would be obviated by purchasing with ready money; for,
whether through the hands of the party himself, or through those of an
inferior, there would always be an actual counting out of the money;
somebody would _see_ the thing bought and see the money paid; and, as
the master would give the housekeeper or steward a bag of money at the
time, he would _see_ the money too, would set a proper value upon it,
and would just desire to know upon what it had been expended.
65. How is it that farmers are so exact, and show such a disposition to
retrench in the article of labour, when they seem to think little, or
nothing, about the sums which they pay in tax upon malt, wine, sugar,
tea, soap, candles, tobacco, and various other things? You find the
utmost difficulty in making them understand, that they are affected by
these. The reason is, that they _see_ the money which they give to the
labourer on each succeeding Saturday night; but they do not see that
which they give in taxes on the articles before mentioned. Why is it
that they make such an outcry about the six or seven millions a year
which are paid in poor-rates, and say not a word about the sixty
millions a year raised in other taxes? The consumer pays all; and,
therefore, they are as much interested in the one as the other; and yet
the farmers think of no tax but the poor tax. The reason is, that the
latter is collected from them in _money_: they _see_ it go out of their
hands into the hands of another; and, therefore, they are everlastingly
anxious to reduce the poor-rates, and they take care to keep them within
the smallest possible bounds.
66. Just thus would it be with every man that never purchased but with
ready money: he would make the amount as low as possible in proportion
to his means: this care and frugality would make an addition to his
means, and therefore, in the end, at the end of his life, he would have
had a great deal more to spend, and still be as rich as if he had gone
in trust; while he would have lived in tranquillity all the while, and
would have avoided all the endless papers and writings and receipts and
bills and disputes and law-suits inseparable from a system of credit.
This is by no means a lesson of _stinginess_; by no means tends to
inculcate a heaping up of money; for the purchasing with ready money
really gives you more money to purchase with; you can afford to have a
greater quantity and variety of things; and I will engage that, if
horses or servants be your taste, the saving in this way gives you an
additional horse or an additional servant, if you be in any profession
or engaged in any considerable trade. In towns, it tends to accelerate
your pace along the streets; for the temptation of the windows is
answered in a moment by clapping your hand upon your thigh; and the
question, 'Do I really want that?' is sure to occur to you immediately,
because the touch of the money is sure to put that thought in your mind.
67. Now, supposing you to have a plenty; to have a fortune beyond your
wants, would not the money which you would save in this way be very well
applied in acts of real benevolence? Can you walk many yards in the
streets; can you ride a mile in the country; can you go to half-a-dozen
cottages; can you, in short, open your eyes, without seeing some human
being, some one born in the same country with yourself, and who, on that
account alone, has some claim upon your good wishes and your charity;
can you open your eyes without seeing some person to whom even a small
portion of your annual savings would convey gladness of heart? Your own
heart will suggest the answer; and, if there were no motive but this,
what need I say more in the advice which I have here tendered to you?
68. Another great evil arising from this desire to be thought rich; or,
rather from the desire not to be thought poor, is the destructive thing
which has been honoured by the name of '_speculation_;' but which ought
to be called Gambling. It is a purchasing of something which you do not
want either in your family or in the way of ordinary trade: a something
to be sold again with a great profit; and on the sale of which there is
a considerable hazard. When purchases of this sort are made with ready
money, they are not so offensive to reason and not attended with such
risk; but when they are made with money _borrowed_ for the purpose, they
are neither more nor less than gambling transactions; and they have
been, in this country, a source of ruin, misery, and suicide, admitting
of no adequate description. I grant that this gambling has arisen from
the influence of the '_Goddess_' before mentioned; I grant that it has
arisen from the facility of obtaining the fictitious means of making the
purchases; and I grant that that facility has been created by the system
under the baneful influence of which we live. But it is not the less
necessary that I beseech you not to practise such gambling; that I
beseech you, if you be engaged in it, to disentangle yourself from it as
soon as you can. Your life, while you are thus engaged, is the life of
the gamester; a life of constant anxiety; constant desire to over-reach;
constant apprehension; general gloom, enlivened, now and then, by a
gleam of hope or of success. Even that success is sure to lead to
further adventures; and, at last, a thousand to one, that your fate is
that of the pitcher to the well.
69. The great temptation to this gambling is, as is the case in other
gambling, the _success of the few_. As young men who crowd to the army,
in search of rank and renown, never look into the ditch that holds their
slaughtered companions; but have their eye constantly fixed on the
General-in-chief; and as each of them belongs to the _same profession_,
and is sure to be conscious that he has equal merit, every one deems
himself the suitable successor of him who is surrounded with _Aides des
camps_, and who moves battalions and columns by his nod; so with the
rising generation of 'speculators:' they see the great estates that have
succeeded the pencil-box and the orange-basket; they see those whom
nature and good laws made to black shoes, sweep chimnies or the streets,
rolling in carriages, or sitting in saloons surrounded by gaudy footmen
with napkins twisted round their thumbs; and they can see no earthly
reason why they should not all do the same; forgetting the thousands and
thousands, who, in making the attempt, have reduced themselves to that
beggary which, before their attempt, they would have regarded as a thing
wholly impossible.
70. In all situations of life, avoid the _trammels of the law_. Man's
nature must be changed before law-suits will cease; and, perhaps, it
would be next to impossible to make them less frequent than they are in
the present state of this country; but though no man, who has any
property at all, can say that he will have nothing to do with law-suits,
it is in the power of most men to avoid them in a considerable degree.
One good rule is to have as little as possible to do with any man who is
fond of law-suits, and who, upon every slight occasion, talks of an
appeal to the law. Such persons, from their frequent litigations,
contract a habit of using the technical terms of the Courts, in which
they take a pride, and are, therefore, companions peculiarly disgusting
to men of sense. To such men a law-suit is a luxury, instead of being as
it is, to men of ordinary minds, a source of anxiety and a real and
substantial scourge. Such men are always of a quarrelsome disposition,
and avail themselves of every opportunity to indulge in that which is
mischievous to their neighbours. In thousands of instances men go to law
for the indulgence of mere anger. The Germans are said to bring
_spite-actions_ against one another, and to harass their poorer
neighbours from motives of pure revenge. They have carried this their
disposition with them to America; for which reason no one likes to live
in a German neighbourhood.
71. Before you go to law consider well the _cost_; for if you win your
suit and are poorer than you were before, what do you accomplish? You
only imbibe a little additional anger against your opponent; you injure
him, but do harm to yourself. Better to put up with the loss of one
pound than of two, to which latter is to be added all the loss of time,
all the trouble, and all the mortification and anxiety attending a
law-suit. To set an attorney to work to worry and torment another man is
a very base act; to alarm his family as well as himself, while you are
sitting quietly at home. If a man owe you money which he cannot pay, why
add to his distress without the chance of benefit to yourself? Thousands
of men have injured themselves by resorting to the law; while very few
ever bettered themselves by it, except such resort were unavoidable.
72. Nothing is much more discreditable than what is called _hard
dealing_. They say of the Turks, that they know nothing of _two prices_
for the same article; and that to ask an abatement of the lowest
shopkeeper is to insult him. It would be well if Christians imitated
Mahometans in this respect. To ask one price and take another, or to
offer one price and give another, besides the loss of time that it
occasions, is highly dishonourable to the parties, and especially when
pushed to the extent of solemn protestations. It is, in fact, a species
of lying; and it answers no one advantageous purpose to either buyer or
seller. I hope that every young man who reads this, will start in life
with a resolution never to higgle and lie in dealings. There is this
circumstance in favour of the bookseller's business: every book has its
fixed price, and no one ever asks an abatement. If it were thus in all
other trades, how much time would be saved, and how much immorality
prevented!