Among the many advantages of wealth, that of being able to relieve the
necessaries and indigencies of others is of the greatest value, and most
to be prized. In what class of men shall we place the hard-hearted,
ungenerous rich man? Upon examination of human nature, avarice is no
part of it; and so we shall be forced to list the covetous man among the
monsters of this world.
Let the rich man indulge his appetites, and pursue his expences and
superfluities, if he will; and let him enable his family to indulge
themselves in the same way, if they are so inclined. But surely, then,
he ought to make as many other people easy and comfortable as he can.
I am not, it is certain, obliged to pinch myself to remove other peoples
pinchings; but if a ring on my little finger has charms enough in and
about it to keep half a hundred families from starving, can I hesitate a
single moment, whether or no I shall part with this useless bauble for
that end? If a hundred or five hundred pounds will not make me retrench
in any thing, nor interfere with the figure and circumstances of life
that are proper for my family now, or when I am dead and gone, what can
I do better than give it to some other person or family, who are obliged
to live entirely below those circumstances they are born or bred to? How
can I better employ it, than in raising the spirits, and rejoicing the
heart of some melancholy, depressed poor man? I am mistaken, if the
application of a few hundred pounds this way, would not give a truer
sensation of joy and pleasure than fifty other things, which are often
purchased at a very dear rate.
Be persuaded, then, ye rich and powerful, ye honourable and great, to do
honourable things with the superfluity of your wealth.
Search after ingenious persons, root them out of obscurity, and
obscurity out of them, and call the long-banished muses back to their
antient habitation.
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