MONEY
I do not think that I can better introduce the few pages which I propose
to write on the relations of money to happiness and to character than by
a pregnant passage from one of the essays[67] of Sir Henry Taylor. 'So
manifold are the bearings of money upon the lives and characters of
mankind, that 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 both 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 in getting, saving, spending, giving,
taking, lending, borrowing and bequeathing would almost argue a perfect
man.'
There are few subjects on which the contrast between the professed and
the real beliefs of men is greater than in the estimate of money. More
than any other single thing it is the object and usually the lifelong
object of human effort, and any accession of wealth is hailed by the
immense majority of mankind as an unquestionable blessing. Yet if we
were to take literally much of the teaching we have all heard we should
conclude that money, beyond what is required for the necessaries of
life, is far more a danger than a good; that it is the pre-eminent
source of evil and temptation; that one of the first duties of man is to
emancipate himself from the love of it, which can only mean from any
strong desire for its increase.
In this, as in so many other things, the question is largely one of
degree. No one who knows what is meant by the abject poverty to which a
great proportion of the human race is condemned will doubt that at least
such an amount of money as raises them from this condition is one of the
greatest of human blessings. Extreme poverty means a lifelong struggle
for the bare means of living; it means a life spent in wretched hovels,
with insufficient food, clothes and firing, in enforced and absolute
ignorance; an existence almost purely animal, with nearly all the higher
faculties of man undeveloped. There is a far greater real difference in
the material elements of happiness between the condition of such men and
that of a moderately prosperous artizan in a civilised country than
there is between the latter and the millionaire.
Money, again, at least to such an amount as enables men to be in some
considerable degree masters of their own course in life, is also on the
whole a great good. In this second degree it has less influence on
happiness than health, and probably than character and domestic
relations, but its influence is at least very great. Money is a good
thing because it can be transformed into many other things. It gives
the power of education which in itself does much to regulate the
character and opens out countless tastes and spheres of enjoyment. It
saves its possessor from the fear of a destitute old age and of the
destitution of those he may leave behind, which is the harrowing care of
multitudes who cannot be reckoned among the very poor. It enables him to
intermit labour in times of sickness and sorrow and old age, and in
those extremes of heat and cold during which active labour is little
less than physical pain. It gives him and it gives those he loves
increased chances of life and increased hope of recovery in sickness.
Few of the pains of penury are more acute than those of a poor man who
sees his wife or children withering away through disease, and who knows
or believes that better food or medical attendance, or a surgical
operation, or a change of climate, might have saved them. Money, too,
even when it does not dispense with work, at least gives a choice of
work and longer intervals of leisure. For the very poor this choice
hardly exists, or exists only within very narrow limits, and from want
of culture or want of leisure some of their most marked natural
aptitudes are never called into exercise. With the comparatively rich
this is not the case. Money enables them to select the course of life
which is congenial to their tastes and most suited to their natural
talents, or, if their strongest taste cannot become their work, money at
least gives them some leisure to cultivate it. The command of leisure,
when it is fruitful leisure spent in congenial work, is to many,
perhaps, the greatest boon it can bestow. 'Riches,' said Charles Lamb,
'are chiefly good because they give us Time.' 'All one's time to
oneself! for which alone I rankle with envy at the rich. Books are good
and pictures are good, and money to buy them is therefore good--but to
buy time--in other words, life!'
To some men money is chiefly valuable because it makes it possible for
them not to think of money. Except in the daily regulation of ordinary
life, it enables them to put aside cares which are to them both
harassing and distasteful, and to concentrate their thoughts and
energies on other objects. An assured competence also, however moderate,
gives men the priceless blessing of independence. There are walks of
life, there are fields of ambition, there are classes of employments in
which between inadequate remuneration and the pressure of want on the
one side, and the facilities and temptations to illicit gain on the
other, it is extremely difficult for a poor man to walk straight.
Illicit gain does not merely mean gain that brings a man within the
range of the criminal law. Many of its forms escape legal and perhaps
social censure, and may be even sanctioned by custom. A competence,
whether small or large, is no sure preservative against that appetite
for gain which becomes one of the most powerful and insatiable of
passions. But it at least diminishes temptation. It takes away the
pressure of want under which so many natures that were once
substantially honest have broken down.
In the expenditure of money there is usually a great deal of the
conventional, the factitious, the purely ostentatious, but we are here
dealing with the most serious realities of life. There are few or no
elements of happiness and character more important than those I have
indicated, and a small competence conduces powerfully to them. Let no
man therefore despise it, for if wisely used it is one of the most real
blessings of life. It is of course only within the reach of a small
minority, but the number might easily be much larger than it is. Often
when it is inherited in early youth it is scattered in one or two years
of gambling and dissipation, followed by a lifetime of regret. In other
cases it crumbles away in a generation, for it is made an excuse for a
life of idleness, and when children multiply or misfortunes arrive, what
was once a competence becomes nothing more than bare necessity. In a
still larger number of cases many of its advantages are lost because men
at once adopt a scale of living fully equal to their income. A man who
with one house would be a wealthy man, finds life with two houses a
constant struggle. A set of habits is acquired, a scale or standard of
luxury is adopted, which at once sweeps away the margin of superfluity.
Riches or poverty depend not merely on the amount of our possessions,
but quite as much on the regulation of our desires, and the full
advantages of competence are only felt when men begin by settling their
scheme of life on a scale materially within their income. When the great
lines of expenditure are thus wisely and frugally established, they can
command a wide latitude and much ease in dealing with the smaller ones.
It is of course true that the power of a man thus to regulate his
expenditure is by no means absolute. The position in society in which a
man is born brings with it certain conventionalities and obligations
that cannot be discarded. A great nobleman who has inherited a vast
estate and a conspicuous social position will, through no fault of his
own, find himself involved in constant difficulties and struggles on an
income a tenth part of which would suffice to give a simple private
gentleman every reasonable enjoyment in life. A poor clergyman who is
obliged to keep up the position of a gentleman is in reality a much
poorer man than a prosperous artizan, even though his actual income may
be somewhat larger. But within the bounds which the conventionalities of
society imperatively prescribe many scales of expenditure are possible,
and the wise regulation of these is one of the chief forms of practical
wisdom.
It may be observed, however, that not only men but nations differ widely
in this respect, and the difference is not merely that between prudence
and folly, between forethought and passion, but is also in a large
degree a difference of tastes and ideals. In general it will be found
that in Continental nations a man of independent fortune will place his
expenditure more below his means than in England, and a man who has
pursued some lucrative employment will sooner be satisfied with the
competence he has acquired and will gladly exchange his work for a life
of leisure. The English character prefers a higher rate of expenditure
and work continued to the end.
It is probable that, so far as happiness depends on money, the happiest
lot--though it is certainly not that which is most envied--is that of a
man who possesses a realised fortune sufficient to save him from serious
money cares about the present and the future, but who at the same time
can only keep up the position in society he has chosen for himself, and
provide as he desires for his children, by adding to it a professional
income. Work is necessary both to happiness and to character, and
experience shows that it most frequently attains its full concentration
and continuity when it is professional, or, in other words,
money-making. Men work in traces as they will seldom work at liberty.
The compulsory character, the steady habits, the constant emulation of
professional life mould and strengthen the will, and probably the
happiest lot is when this kind of work exists, but without the anxiety
of those who depend solely on it.
It is also a good thing when wealth tends to increase with age. 'Old
age,' it has been said, 'is a very expensive thing.' If the taste for
pleasure diminishes, the necessity for comfort increases. Men become
more dependent and more fastidious, and hardships that are indifferent
to youth become acutely painful. Beside this, money cares are apt to
weigh with an especial heaviness upon the old. Avarice, as has been
often observed, is eminently an old-age vice, and in natures that are in
no degree avaricious it will be found that real money anxieties are more
felt and have a greater haunting power in age than in youth. There is
then the sense of impotence which makes men feel that their earning
power has gone. On the other hand youth, and especially early married
life spent under the pressure of narrow circumstances, will often be
looked back upon as both the happiest and the most fruitful period of
life. It is the best discipline of character. It is under such
circumstances that men acquire habits of hard and steady work,
frugality, order, forethought, punctuality, and simplicity of tastes.
They acquire sympathies and realisations they would never have known in
more prosperous circumstances. They learn to take keen pleasure in
little things, and to value rightly both money and time. If wealth and
luxury afterwards come in overflowing measure, these lessons will not be
wholly lost.
The value of money as an element of happiness diminishes rapidly in
proportion to its amount. In the case of the humbler fortunes, each
accession brings with it a large increase of pleasure and comfort, and
probably a very considerable addition to real happiness. In the case of
rich men this is not the case, and of colossal fortunes only a very
small fraction can be truly said to minister to the personal enjoyment
of the owner. The disproportion in the world between pleasure and cost
is indeed almost ludicrous. The two or three shillings that gave us our
first Shakespeare would go but a small way towards providing one of the
perhaps untasted dishes on the dessert table. The choicest masterpieces
of the human mind--the works of human genius that through the long
course of centuries have done most to ennoble, console, brighten, and
direct the lives of men, might all be purchased--I do not say by the
cost of a lady's necklace, but by that of one or two of the little
stones of which it is composed. Compare the relish with which the tired
pedestrian eats his bread and cheese with the appetites with which men
sit down to some stately banquet; compare the level of spirits at the
village dance with that of the great city ball whose lavish splendour
fills the society papers with admiration; compare the charm of
conversation in the college common room with the weary faces that may be
often seen around the millionaire's dinner table,--and we may gain a
good lesson of the vanity of riches. The transition from want to comfort
brings with it keen enjoyment and much lasting happiness. The transition
from mere comfort to luxury brings incomparably less and costs
incomparably more. Let a man of enormous wealth analyse his life from
day to day and try to estimate what are the things or hours that have
afforded him real and vivid pleasure. In many cases he will probably say
that he has found it in his work--in others in the hour spent with his
cigar, his newspaper, or his book, or in his game of cricket, or in the
excitement of the hunting-field, or in his conversation with an old
friend, or in hearing his daughters sing, or in welcoming his son on his
return from school. Let him look round the splendid adornments of his
home and ask how many of these things have ever given him a pleasure at
all proportionate to their cost. Probably in many cases, if he deals
honestly with himself, he would confess that his armchair and his
bookshelves are almost the only exceptions.
Steam, the printing press, the spread of education, and the great
multiplication of public libraries, museums, picture galleries and
exhibitions have brought the chief pleasures of life in a much larger
degree than in any previous age within the reach of what are called the
working classes, while in the conditions of modern life nearly all the
great sources of real enjoyment that money can give are open to a man
who possesses a competent but not extraordinary fortune and some
leisure. Intellectual tastes he may gratify to the full. Books, at all
events in the great centres of civilisation, are accessible far in
excess of his powers of reading. The pleasures of the theatre, the
pleasures of society, the pleasures of music in most of its forms, the
pleasures of travel with all its variety of interests, and many of the
pleasures of sport, are abundantly at his disposal. The possession of
the highest works of art has no doubt become more and more a monopoly of
the very rich, but picture galleries and exhibitions and the facilities
of travel have diffused the knowledge and enjoyment of art over a vastly
wider area than in the past. The power of reproducing works of art has
been immensely increased and cheapened, and in one form at least the
highest art has been brought within the reach of a man of very moderate
means. Photography can reproduce a drawing with such absolute perfection
that he may cover his walls with works of Michael Angelo and Leonardo da
Vinci that are indistinguishable from the originals. The standard of
comfort in mere material things is now so high in well-to-do households
that to a healthy nature the millionaire can add little to it. Perhaps
among the pleasures of wealth that which has the strongest influence is
a country place, especially when it brings with it old remembrances, and
associations that appeal powerfully to the affections and the
imagination. More than any other inanimate thing it throws its tendrils
round the human heart and becomes the object of a deep and lasting
affection. But even here it will be probably found that this pleasure is
more felt by the owner of one country place than by the great
proprietor whose life is spent alternately in several--by the owner of a
place of moderate dimensions than by the owner of those vast parks which
can only be managed at great expense and trouble and by much delegated
supervision, and which are usually thrown open with such liberality to
the public that they probably give more real pleasure to others than to
their owners.
Among the special pleasures of the enormously rich the collecting
passion is conspicuous, and of course a very rich man can carry it into
departments which men of moderate fortune can hardly touch. In the rare
case when the collector is a man of strong and genuine artistic taste
the possession of works of beauty is a thing of enduring pleasure, but
in general the mere love of collecting, though it often becomes a
passion almost amounting to a mania, bears very little proportion to
pecuniary value. The intelligent collector of fossils has as much
pleasure as the collector of gems--probably indeed more, as the former
pursuit brings with it a much greater variety of interest, and usually
depends much more on the personal exertions of the collector. It is
pleasant, in looking over a geological collection, to think that every
stone we see has given a pleasure. A collector of Caxtons, a collector
of large printed or illustrated editions, a collector of first editions
of famous books, a collector of those editions that are so much prized
because an author has made in them some blunder which he afterwards
corrected; a collector of those unique books which have survived as
rarities because no one thought it worth while to reprint them or
because they are distinguished by some obsolete absurdity, will
probably not derive more pleasure, though he will spend vastly more
money, than the mere literary man who, being interested in some
particular period or topic, loves to hunt up in old bookshops the
obscure and forgotten literature relating to it. Much the same thing may
be said of other tastes. The gratification of a strong taste or hobby
will always give pleasure, and it makes little difference whether it is
an expensive or an inexpensive one.
The pleasures of acquisition, the pleasures of possession, and the
pleasures of ostentation, are no doubt real things, though they act in
very different degrees on different natures, and some of them much more
on one sex than on the other. In general, however, they tend to grow
passive and inert. A state of luxury and splendour is little appreciated
by those who are born to it, though much if it follows a period of
struggle and penury. Yet even then the circumstances and surroundings of
life soon become a second nature. Men become so habituated to them that
they are accepted almost mechanically and cease to give positive
pleasure, though a deprivation of them gives positive pain. The love of
power, the love of society, and--what is not quite the same thing--the
love of social influence, are, however, much stronger and more enduring,
and great wealth is largely valued because it helps to give them, though
it does not give them invariably, and though there are other things that
give them in an equal or greater degree. To many very rich men some form
of field sports is probably the greatest pleasure that money affords. It
at least gives a genuine thrill of unmistakable enjoyment.
Few of the special pleasures of the millionaire can be said to be
purely selfish, for few are concentrated altogether on himself. His
great park is usually open to the public. His pictures are lent for
exhibition or exhibited in his house. If he keeps a pack of hounds
others hunt with it. If he preserves game to an enormous extent he
invites many to shoot it, and at his great entertainments it will often
be found that no one derives less pleasure than the weary host.
At the same time no thinking man can fail to be struck with the great
waste of the means of enjoyment in a society in which such gigantic sums
are spent in mere conventional ostentation which gives little or no
pleasure; in which the best London houses are those which are the
longest untenanted; in which some of the most enchanting gardens and
parks are only seen by their owners for a few weeks in the year.
Hamerton, in his Essay on Bohemianism, has very truly shown that the
rationale of a great deal of this is simply the attempt of men to obtain
from social intercourse the largest amount of positive pleasure or
amusement it can give by discarding the forms, the costly
conventionalities, the social restrictions that encumber and limit it.
One of the worst tendencies of a very wealthy society is that by the
mere competition of ostentation the standard of conventional expense is
raised, and the intercourse of men limited by the introduction of a
number of new and costly luxuries which either give no pleasure or give
pleasure that bears no kind of proportion to their cost. Examples may
sometimes be seen of a very rich man who imagines that he can obtain
from life real enjoyment in proportion to his wealth and who uses it
for purely selfish purposes. We may find this in the almost insane
extravagance of vulgar ostentation by which the parvenu millionaire
tries to gratify his vanity and dazzle his neighbours; in the wild round
of prodigal dissipation and vice by which so many young men who have
inherited enormous fortunes have wrecked their constitutions and found a
speedy path to an unhonoured grave. They sought from money what money
cannot give, and learned too late that in pursuing shadows they missed
the substance that was within their reach.
To the intelligent millionaire, however, and especially to those who are
brought up to great possessions, wealth is looked on in a wholly
different light. It is a possession and a trust carrying with it many
duties as well as many interests and accompanied by a great burden of
responsibility. Mere pleasure-hunting plays but a small and wholly
subsidiary part in such lives, and they are usually filled with much
useful work. This man, for example, is a banker on a colossal scale.
Follow his life, and you will find that for four days in the week he is
engaged in his office as steadily, as unremittingly as any clerk in his
establishment. He has made himself master not only of the details of his
own gigantic business but of the whole great subject of finance in all
its international relations. He is a power in many lands. He is
consulted in every crisis of finance. He is an important influence in a
crowd of enterprises, most of them useful as well as lucrative, some of
them distinctively philanthropic. Saturday and Sunday he spends at his
country place, usually entertaining a number of guests. One other day
during the hunting season he regularly devotes to his favourite sport.
His holiday is the usual holiday of a professional man, with rather a
tendency to abridge than to lengthen it, as the natural bent of his
thoughts is so strongly to his work that time soon begins to hang
heavily when he is away from it.
Another man is an ardent philanthropist, and his philanthropy probably
blends with much religious fervour, and he becomes in consequence a
leader in the religious world. Such a life cannot fail to be abundantly
filled. Religious meetings, committees, the various interests of the
many institutions with which he is connected, the conflicting and
competing claims of different religious societies, fully occupy his time
and thoughts, sometimes to the great neglect of his private affairs.
Another man is of a different type. Shy, retiring, hating publicity, and
not much interested in politics, he is a gigantic landowner, and the
work of his life is concentrated on the development of his own estate.
He knows the circumstances of every village, almost of every farm. It is
his pride that no labourer on his estate is badly housed, that no part
of it is slovenly or mismanaged or poverty-stricken. He endows churches
and hospitals, he erects public buildings, encourages every local
industry, makes in times of distress much larger remissions of rent than
would be possible for a poorer man, superintends personally the many
interests on his property, knows accurately the balance of receipts and
expenditure, takes a great interest in sanitation, in new improvements
and experiments in agriculture, in all the multifarious matters that
affect the prosperity of his numerous tenantry. He subscribes liberally
to great national undertakings, as he considers it one of the duties of
his position, but his heart is not in such things, and the well-being of
his own vast estate and of those who live upon it is the aim and the
work of his life. For a few weeks of the year he exercises the splendid
and lavish hospitality which is expected from a man in his position, and
he is always very glad when those weeks are over. He has, however, his
own expensive hobby, which gives him real pleasure--his yacht, his
picture gallery, his museum, his collection of wild animals, his
hothouses or his racing establishment. One or more of these form the
real amusement of his active and useful life.
A more common type in England is that of the active politician. Great
wealth and especially great landed property bring men easily into
Parliament, and, if united with industry and some measure of ability,
into official life, and public life thus becomes a profession and in
many cases a very laborious one. There are few better examples of a
well-filled life and of the skilful management and economy of time than
are to be found in the lives of some great noblemen who take a leading
part in politics and preside over important Government departments
without suffering their gigantic estates to fall into mismanagement, or
neglecting the many social duties and local interests connected with
them. Most of their success is indeed due to the wise use of money in
economising time by trustworthy and efficient delegation. Yet the
superintending brain, the skilful choice, the personal control cannot
be dispensed with. In a life so fully occupied the few weeks of pleasure
which may be spent on a Scotch moor or in a Continental watering-place
will surely not be condemned.
The economy of time and the elasticity of brain and character such lives
develop are, however, probably exceeded by another class. Nothing is
more remarkable in the social life of the present generation than the
high pressure under which a large number of ladies in great positions
habitually live. It strikes every Continental observer, for there is
nothing approaching it in any other European country, and it certainly
far exceeds anything that existed in England in former generations.
Pleasure-seeking, combined, however, on a large scale with
pleasure-giving, holds a much more prominent place in these lives than
in those I have just described. With not a few women, indeed, of wealth
and position, it is the all-in-all of life, and in general it is
probable that women obtain more pleasure from most forms of society than
men, though it is also true that they bear a much larger share of its
burdens. There are, however, in this class, many who combine with
society a truly surprising number and variety of serious interests. Not
only the management of a great house, not only the superintendence of
schools and charities and local enterprises connected with a great
estate, but also a crowd of philanthropic, artistic, political, and
sometimes literary interests fill their lives. Few lives, indeed, in any
station are more full, more intense, more constantly and variously
occupied. Public life, which in most foreign countries is wholly outside
the sphere of women, is eagerly followed. Public speaking, which in the
memory of many now living was almost unknown among women of any station
in English society, has become the most ordinary accomplishment. Their
object is to put into life from youth to old age as much as life can
give, and they go far to attain their end. A wonderful nimbleness and
flexibility of intellect capable of turning swiftly from subject to
subject has been developed, and keeps them in touch with a very wide
range both of interests and pleasures.
There are no doubt grave drawbacks to all this. Many will say that this
external activity must be at the sacrifice of the duties of domestic
life, but on this subject there is, I think, at least much exaggeration.
Education has now assumed such forms and attained such a standard that
usually for many hours in the day the education of the young in a
wealthy family is in the hands of accomplished specialists, and I do not
think that the most occupied lives are those in which the cares of a
home are most neglected. How far, however, this intense and constant
strain is compatible with physical well-being is a graver question, and
many have feared that it must bequeath weakened constitutions to the
coming generation. Nor is a life of incessant excitement in other
respects beneficial. In both intellectual and moral hygiene the best
life is that which follows nature and alternates periods of great
activity with periods of rest. Retirement, quiet, steady reading, and
the silent thought which matures character and deepens impressions are
things that seem almost disappearing from many English lives. But lives
such as I have described are certainly not useless, undeveloped, or
wholly selfish, and they in a large degree fulfil that great law of
happiness, that it should be sought for rather in interests than in
pleasures.
I have already referred to the class who value money chiefly because it
enables them to dismiss money thoughts and cares from their minds. On
the whole, this end is probably more frequently attained by men of
moderate but competent fortunes than by the very rich. This is at least
the case when they are sufficiently rich to invest their money in
securities which are liable to no serious risk or fluctuation. A
gigantic fortune is seldom of such a nature that it does not bring with
it great cares of administration and require much thought and many
decisions. There is, however, one important exception. When there are
many children the task of providing for their future falls much more
lightly on the very rich than on those of medium fortune.
There is a class, however, who are the exact opposite of these and who
make the simple acquisition of money the chief interest and pleasure of
their lives. Money-making in some form is the main occupation of the
great majority of men, but it is usually as a means to an end. It is to
acquire the means of livelihood, or the means of maintaining or
improving a social position, or the means of providing as they think fit
for the children who are to succeed them. Sometimes, however, with the
very rich and without any ulterior object, money-making for its own sake
becomes the absorbing interest. They can pursue it with great advantage;
for, as has been often said, nothing makes money like money, and the
possession of an immense capital gives innumerable facilities for
increasing it. The collecting passion takes this form. They come to care
more for money than for anything money can purchase, though less for
money than for the interest and the excitement of getting it.
Speculative enterprise, with its fluctuations, uncertainties and
surprises, becomes their strongest interest and their greatest
amusement.
When it is honestly conducted there is no real reason why it should be
condemned. On these conditions a life so spent is, I think, usually
useful to the world, for it generally encourages works that are of real
value. All that can be truly said is that it brings with it grave
temptations and is very apt to lower a man's moral being. Speculation
easily becomes a form of gambling so fierce in its excitement that, when
carried on incessantly and on a great scale, it kills all capacity for
higher and tranquil pleasures, strengthens incalculably the temptations
to unscrupulous gain, disturbs the whole balance of character, and often
even shortens life. With others the love of accumulation has a strange
power of materialising, narrowing and hardening. Habits of
meanness--sometimes taking curious and inconsistent forms, and applying
only to particular things or departments of life--steal insensibly over
them, and the love of money assumes something of the character of mania.
Temptations connected with money are indeed among the most insidious and
among the most powerful to which we are exposed. They have probably a
wider empire than drink, and, unlike the temptations that spring from
animal passion, they strengthen rather than diminish with age. In no
respect is it more necessary for a man to keep watch over his own
character, taking care that the unselfish element does not diminish, and
correcting the love of acquisition by generosity of expenditure.
It is probable that the highest form of charity, involving real and
serious self-denial, is much more common among the poor, and even the
very poor, than among the rich. I think most persons who have had much
practical acquaintance with the dealings of the poor with one another
will confirm this. It is certainly far less common among those who are
at the opposite pole of fortune. They have not had the same discipline,
or indeed the same possibility of self-sacrifice, or the same means of
realising the pains of poverty, and there is another reason which tends
not unnaturally to check their benevolence. A man with the reputation of
great wealth soon finds himself beleaguered by countless forms of
mendicancy and imposture. He comes to feel that there is a general
conspiracy to plunder him, and he is naturally thrown into an attitude
of suspicion and self-defence. Often, though he may give largely and
generously, he will do so under the veil of strict anonymity, in order
to avoid a reputation for generosity which will bring down upon him
perpetual solicitations. If he is an intellectual man he will probably
generalise from his own experience. He will be deeply impressed with the
enormous evils that have sprung from ill-judged charity, and with the
superiority even from a philanthropic point of view of a productive
expenditure of money.
And in truth it is difficult to overrate the evil effects of injudicious
charities in discouraging thrift, industry, foresight and self-respect.
They take many forms; some of them extremely obvious, while others can
only be rightly judged by a careful consideration of remote
consequences. There are the idle tourists who break down, in a once
unsophisticated district, that sense of self-respect which is one of the
most valuable lessons that early education can give, by flinging pence
to be scrambled for among the children, or who teach the poor the fatal
lesson that mendicancy or something hardly distinguishable from
mendicancy will bring greater gain than honest and continuous work.
There is the impulsive, uninquiring charity that makes the trade of the
skilful begging-letter writer a lucrative profession, and makes men and
women who are rich, benevolent and weak, the habitual prey of greedy
impostors. There is the old-established charity for ministering to
simple poverty which draws to its centre all the pauperism of the
neighbouring districts, depresses wages, and impoverishes the very
district or class it was intended to benefit. There are charities which
not only largely diminish the sufferings that are the natural
consequence and punishment of vice; but even make the lot of the
criminal and the vicious a better one than that of the hard-working
poor. There are overlapping charities dealing with the same department,
but kept up with lavish waste through the rivalry of different religious
denominations, or in the interests of the officials connected with them;
belated or superannuated charities formed to deal with circumstances or
sufferings that have in a large degree passed away--useless, or almost
useless, charities established to carry out some silly fad or to gratify
some silly vanity; sectarian charities intended to further ends which,
in the eyes of all but the members of one sect, are not only useless but
mischievous; charities that encourage thriftless marriages, or make it
easy for men to neglect obvious duties, or keep a semi-pauper population
stationary in employments and on a soil where they can never prosper, or
in other ways handicap, impede or divert the natural and healthy course
of industry. Illustrations of all these evils will occur to every
careful student of the subject. Unintelligent, thoughtless, purely
impulsive charity, and charity which is inspired by some other motive
than a real desire to relieve suffering, will constantly go wrong, but
every intelligent man can find without difficulty vast fields on which
the largest generosity may be expended with abundant fruit.
Hospitals and kindred institutions for alleviating great unavoidable
calamities, and giving the sick poor something of the same chances of
recovery as the rich, for the most part fall under this head. Money will
seldom be wasted which is spent in promoting kinds of knowledge,
enterprise or research that bring no certain remuneration proportioned
to their value; in assisting poor young men of ability and industry to
develop their special talents; in encouraging in their many different
forms thrift, self-help and co-operation; in alleviating the inevitable
suffering that follows some great catastrophe on land or sea, or great
transitions of industry, or great fluctuations and depressions in class
prosperity; in giving the means of healthy recreation or ennobling
pleasures to the denizens of a crowded town. The vast sphere of
education opens endless fields for generous expenditure, and every
religious man will find objects which, in the opinion not only of men of
his own persuasion, but also of many others, are transcendently
important. Nor is it a right principle that charity should be denied to
all calamities which are in some degree due to the fault of the
sufferer, or which might have been averted by exceptional forethought or
self-denial. Some economists write as if a far higher standard of will
and morals should be expected among the poor and the uneducated than can
be found among the rich. Good sense and right feeling will here easily
draw the line, abstaining from charities that have a real influence in
encouraging improvidence or vice, yet making due allowance for the
normal weaknesses of our nature.
In all these ways the very rich can find ample opportunities for useful
benevolence. It is the prerogative of great wealth that it can often
cure what others can only palliate, and can establish permanent sources
of good which will continue long after the donors have passed away. In
dealing with individual cases of distress, rich men who have neither the
time nor the inclination to investigate the special circumstances will
do well to rely largely on the recommendation of others. If they choose
trustworthy, competent and sensible advisers with as much judgment as
they commonly show in the management of their private affairs, they are
not likely to go astray. There never was a period when a larger amount
of intelligent and disinterested labour was employed in careful and
detailed examination of the circumstances and needs of the poor. The
parish clergyman, the district visitor, the agents of the Charity
Organization Society which annually selects its special cases of
well-ascertained need, will abundantly furnish them with the knowledge
they require.
The advantage or disadvantage of the presence in a country of a large
class of men possessing fortunes far exceeding anything that can really
administer to their enjoyment is a question which has greatly divided
both political economists and moralists. The former were long accustomed
to maintain somewhat exclusively that laws and institutions should be
established with the object of furthering the greatest possible
accumulation of wealth, and that a system of unrestricted competition,
coupled with equal laws, giving each man the most complete security in
the possession and disposal of his property, was the best means of
attaining this end. They urged with great truth that, although under
such a system the inequalities of fortune will be enormous, most of the
wealth of the very rich will inevitably be distributed in the form of
wages, purchases, and industrial enterprises through the community at
large, and that, other things being equal, the richest country will on
the whole be the happiest. They clearly saw the complete delusion of the
common assertions that the more millionaires there are in a country the
more paupers will multiply, and that society is dividing between the
enormously rich and the abjectly poor. The great industrial communities,
in which there are the largest number of very wealthy men, are also the
centres in which we find the most prosperous middle class, and the
highest and most progressive rates of wages and standards of comfort
among the poor. Great corruption in many forms no doubt exists in them,
but it can scarcely be maintained with confidence that the standard of
integrity is on the whole lower in these than in other countries, and
they at least escape what in many poor countries is one of the most
fruitful causes of corruption in all branches of administration--the
inadequate pay of the servants of the Crown. The path of liberty in the
eyes of economists of this school is the path of wisdom, and they were
profoundly distrustful of all legislative attempts to restrict or
interfere with the course of industrial progress.
In our own generation a somewhat different tendency has manifestly
strengthened. It has been said that past political economists paid too
much attention to the accumulation and too little to the distribution of
wealth. Men have become more sensible to the high level of happiness and
moral well-being that has been attained in some of the smaller and
somewhat stagnant countries of Europe, where wealth is more generally
attained by thrift and steady industry than by great industrial or
commercial enterprise, in which there are few large fortunes but little
acute poverty, a low standard of luxury, but a high standard of real
comfort. The enormous evils that have grown up in wealthy countries, in
the form of company-mongering, excessive competition, extravagant and
often vicious luxury, and dishonest administration of public funds, are
more and more felt, and it is only too true that in these countries
there are large and influential circles of society in which all
considerations of character, intellect, or manners seem lost in an
intense thirst for wealth and for the things that it can give.
Sometimes we find vast fortunes in countries where there is but little
enterprise and a very low standard of comfort among the people, and
where this is the case it is usually due to unequal laws or corrupt
administration. In the free, democratic, and industrial communities
great fluctuations and disparities of wealth are inevitable, and some of
the most colossal fortunes have, no doubt, been made by the evil methods
I have described. They are, however, only a minority, and not a very
large one. Like all the great successes of life, abnormal accumulation
of wealth is usually due to the combination in different proportions of
ability, character, and chance, and is not tainted with dishonesty. On
the whole, the question that should be asked is not what a man has, but
how he obtained it and how he uses it. When wealth is honestly acquired
and wisely and generously used, the more rich men there are in a country
the better.
There has probably never been a period in the history of the world when
the conditions of industry, assisted by the great gold discoveries in
several parts of the globe, were so favourable to the formation of
enormous fortunes as at present, and when the race of millionaires was
so large. The majority belong to the English-speaking race; probably
most of their gigantic fortunes have been rapidly accumulated, and bring
with them none of the necessary, hereditary, and clearly defined
obligations of a great landowner, while a considerable proportion of
them have fallen to the lot of men who, through their education or early
habits, have not many cultivated or naturally expensive tastes. In
England many of the new millionaires become great landowners and set up
great establishments. In America, where country tastes are less marked
and where the difficulties of domestic service are very great, this is
less common. In both countries the number of men with immense fortunes,
absolutely at their own disposal, has enormously increased, and the
character of their expenditure has become a matter of real national
importance.
Much of it, no doubt, goes in simple luxury and ostentation, or in mere
speculation, or in restoring old and dilapidated fortunes through the
marriages of rank with money which are so characteristic of our time;
but much also is devoted to charitable or philanthropic purposes. In
this, as in most things, motives are often very blended. To men of such
fortunes, such expenditure, even on a large scale, means no real
self-sacrifice, and the inducements to it are not always of the highest
kind. To some men it is a matter of ambition--a legitimate and useful
ambition--to obtain the enduring and honourable fame which attaches to
the founder of a great philanthropic or educational establishment.
Others find that, in England at least, large philanthropic expenditure
is one of the easiest and shortest paths to social success, bringing men
and women of low extraction and bad manners into close and frequent
connection with the recognised leaders of society; while others again
have discovered that it is the quickest way of effacing the stigma which
still in some degree attaches to wealth which has been acquired by
dishonourable or dubious means. Fashion, social ambition, and social
rivalries are by no means unknown in the fields of charity. There are
many, however, in whose philanthropy the element of self has no place,
and whose sole desire is to expend their money in forms that can be of
most real and permanent benefit to others.
Such men have great power, and, if their philanthropic expenditure is
wisely guided, it may be of incalculable benefit. I have already
indicated many of the channels in which it may safely flow, but one or
two additional hints on the subject may not be useless. Perhaps as a
general rule these men will find that they can act most wisely by
strengthening and enlarging old charities which are really good, rather
than by founding new ones. Competition is the soul of industry, but
certainly not of charity, and there is in England a deplorable waste of
money and machinery through the excessive multiplication of institutions
intended for the same objects. The kind of ambition to which I have just
referred tends to make men prefer new charities which can be identified
with their names; the paid officials connected with charities have
become a large and powerful profession, and their influence is naturally
used in the same direction; the many different religious bodies in the
country often refuse to combine, and each desires to have its own
institutions; and there are fashions in charity which, while they
greatly stimulate generosity, have too often the effect of diverting it
from the older and more unobtrusive forms. On the other hand, one of the
most important facts in our present economical condition is that an
extraordinary and almost unparalleled development of industrial
prosperity has been accompanied by extreme and long-continued
agricultural depression and by a great fall in the rate of interest.
Wealth in many forms is accumulating with wonderful rapidity, and the
increased rate of wages is diffusing prosperity among the working
classes; but those who depend directly or indirectly on agricultural
rents or on interest of money invested in trust securities have been
suffering severely, and they comprise some of the most useful,
blameless, and meritorious classes in the community. The same causes
that have injured them have fallen with crushing severity on
old-established institutions which usually derive their income largely
or entirely from the rent of land or from money invested in the public
funds. The bitter cry of distress that is rising from the hospitals and
many other ancient charities, from the universities, from the clergy of
the Established Church, abundantly proves it.
The preference, however, to be given to old charities rather than to new
ones is subject to very many exceptions. It does not apply to new
countries or to the many cases in which changes and developments of
industry have planted vast agglomerations of population in districts
which were once but thinly populated, and therefore but little provided
with charitable or educational institutions. Nor does it apply to the
many cases in which the circumstances of modern life have called into
existence new forms of charity, new wants, new dangers and evils to be
combated, new departments of knowledge to be cultivated. One of the
greatest difficulties of the older universities is that of providing,
out of their shrinking endowments, for the teaching of branches of
science and knowledge which have only come into existence, or at least
into prominence, long after these universities were established, and
some of which require not only trained teachers but costly apparatus
and laboratories. Increasing international competition and enlarged
scientific knowledge have rendered necessary an amount of technical and
agricultural education never dreamed of by our ancestors; and the rise
of the great provincial towns and the greater intensity of provincial
life and provincial patriotism, as well as the changes that have passed
over the position both of the working and middle classes, have created a
genuine demand for educational establishments of a different type from
the older universities. The higher education of women is essentially a
nineteenth-century work, and it has been carried on without the
assistance of old endowments and with very little help from modern
Parliaments. In the distribution of public funds a class which is wholly
unrepresented in Parliament seldom gets its fair share; and higher
education, like most forms of science, like most of the higher forms of
literature, and like many valuable forms of research, never can be
self-supporting. There are great branches of knowledge which without
established endowments must remain uncultivated, or be cultivated only
by men of considerable private means. Some invaluable curative agencies,
such as convalescent homes in different countries and climates and for
different diseases, have grown up in our own generation, as well as some
of the most fruitful forms of medical research and some of the most
efficacious methods of giving healthy change and brightness to the lives
that are most monotonous and overstrained. Every great revolution in
industry, in population, and even in knowledge, brings with it new and
special wants, and there are cases in which assisted emigration is one
of the best forms of charity.
These are but a few illustrations of the directions in which the large
surplus funds which many of the very rich are prepared to expend on
philanthropic purposes may profitably go. There is a marked and
increasing tendency in our age to meet all the various exigencies of
Society, as they arise, by State aid resting on compulsory taxation. In
countries where the levels of fortune are such that few men have incomes
greatly in excess of their real or factitious wants, this method will
probably be necessary; but many of the wants I have described can be
better met by the old English method of intelligent private generosity,
and in a country in which the number of the very rich is so great and so
increasing, this generosity should not be wanting.
FOOTNOTE:
[67] _Notes on Life._