There are two sorts of avarice. One consists in a solicitude to acquire
wealth for the sake of those advantages which wealth bestows, and the
dread of poverty and its attendant evils; the other, in an anxiety for
wealth on its own account only, and which sacrifices to the attainment
of it every advantage that wealth can give. The first is the
exaggeration of a quality, which when not carried to excess is
praiseworthy, and is called economy. The other, when indulged in the
extreme, produces the effect of a species of prodigality. Where is the
great difference between the man who reduces himself to the want of the
common necessaries of life, by completing a collection of books,
pictures, or medals, and the man who brings himself in effect to the
same situation, for the sole end of leaving a precise sum of money to
his executors? What signifies whether I starve myself and my family,
because I will possess a copper farthing of Otho, or will not part with
a golden guinea of king George?
But if there is more folly in one, the other is more likely to be
productive of vice. A man who considers wealth as the object of his
passion, will hardly refrain from acts of dishonesty when strongly
tempted; and yet some of these jackdaw hoarders are men of inviolable
integrity.
There are remarkable instances of improvident expenditure by misers on
particular occasions. The money-loving Elwes, at his first election for
Berkshire, besides opening houses, giving ribbons, and incurring every
expense common on those occasions, dispersed guineas and half-guineas
among the populace, with a profusion as useless as unprecedented.
Perhaps there is no character so seldom to be met with, as that of a man
who is strictly reasonable in the value he sets on property--who can be
liberal without profusion, and economical without avarice.
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