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
people’s pinchings; but if a ring on my little finger has charms enough
in and about it to keep half a score or 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.