45. I press this matter with such earnestness, because a knowledge of grammar is the foundation of all literature; and because without this knowledge opportunities for writing and speaking are only occasions for men to display their unfitness to write and speak. How many false pretenders to erudition, have I exposed to shame merely by my knowledge of grammar! How many of the insolent and ignorant great and powerful have I pulled down and made little and despicable! And, with what ease have I conveyed upon numerous important subjects, information and instruction to millions now alive, and provided a store of both for millions yet unborn! As to the course to be pursued in this great undertaking, it is, first, to read the grammar from the first word to the last, very attentively, several times over; then, to copy the whole of it very correctly and neatly; and then to study the Chapters one by one. And what do this reading and writing require as to time? Both together not more than the tea-slops and their gossips for three months! There are about three hundred pages in my English Grammar. Four of those little pages in a day, which is a mere trifle of work, do the thing in three months. Two hours a day are quite sufficient for the purpose; and these may, in any town that I have ever known, or in any village, be taken from that part of the morning during which the main part of the people are in bed. I do not like the evening-candle-light work: it wears the eyes much more than the same sort of light in the morning, because then the faculties are in vigour and wholly unexhausted. But for this purpose there is sufficient of that day-light which is usually wasted; usually gossipped or lounged away; or spent in some other manner productive of no pleasure, and generally producing pain in the end. It is very becoming in all persons, and particularly in the young, to be civil, and even polite: but it becomes neither young nor old to have an everlasting simper on their faces, and their bodies sawing in an everlasting bow: and, how many youths have I seen who, if they had spent, in the learning of grammar, a tenth part of the time that they have consumed in earning merited contempt for their affected gentility, would have laid the foundation of sincere respect towards them for the whole of their lives!
46. Perseverance is a prime quality in every pursuit, and particularly in this. Yours is, too, the time of life to acquire this inestimable habit. Men fail much oftener from want of perseverance than from want of talent and of good disposition: as the race was not to the hare but to the tortoise, so the meed of success in study is to him who is not in haste, but to him who proceeds with a steady and even step. It is not to a want of taste or of desire or of disposition to learn that we have to ascribe the rareness of good scholars, so much as to the want of patient perseverance. Grammar is a branch of knowledge; like all other things of high value, it is of difficult acquirement: the study is dry; the subject is intricate; it engages not the passions; and, if the great end be not kept constantly in view; if you lose, for a moment, sight of the ample reward, indifference begins, that is followed by weariness, and disgust and despair close the book. To guard against this result be not in haste; keep steadily on; and, when you find weariness approaching, rouse yourself, and remember, that if you give up, all that you have done has been done in vain. This is a matter of great moment; for out of every ten, who undertake this task, there are, perhaps, nine who abandon it in despair; and this, too, merely for the want of resolution to overcome the first approaches of weariness. The most effectual means of security against this mortifying result is to lay down a rule to write or to read a certain fixed quantity every day, Sunday excepted. Our minds are not always in the same state; they have not, at all times, the same elasticity; to-day we are full of hope on the very same grounds which, to-morrow, afford us no hope at all: every human being is liable to those flows and ebbs of the mind; but, if reason interfere, and bid you overcome the fits of lassitude, and almost mechanically to go on without the stimulus of hope, the buoyant fit speedily returns; you congratulate yourself that you did not yield to the temptation to abandon your pursuit, and you proceed with more vigour than ever. Five or six triumphs over temptation to indolence or despair lay the foundation of certain success; and, what is of still more importance, fix in you the habit of perseverance.
47. If I have bestowed a large portion of my space on this topic, it has been because I know, from experience as well as from observation, that it is of more importance than all the other branches of book-learning put together. It gives you, when you possess it thoroughly, a real and practical superiority over the far greater part of men. How often did I experience this even long before I became what is called an author! The Adjutant, under whom it was my duty to act when I was a Serjeant Major, was, as almost all military officers are, or at least were, a very illiterate man, perceiving that every sentence of mine was in the same form and manner as sentences in print, became shy of letting me see pieces of his writing. The writing of orders, and other things, therefore, fell to me; and thus, though no nominal addition was made to my pay, and no nominal addition to my authority, I acquired the latter as effectually as if a law had been passed to confer it upon me. In short, I owe to the possession of this branch of knowledge everything that has enabled me to do so many things that very few other men have done, and that now gives me a degree of influence, such as is possessed by few others, in the most weighty concerns of the country. The possession of this branch of knowledge raises you in your own esteem, gives just confidence in yourself, and prevents you from being the willing slave of the rich and the titled part of the community. It enables you to discover that riches and titles do not confer merit; you think comparatively little of them; and, as far as relates to you, at any rate, their insolence is innoxious.
48. Hoping that I have said enough to induce you to set resolutely about the study of grammar, I might here leave the subject of learning; arithmetic and grammar, both well learned, being as much as I could wish in a mere youth. But these need not occupy the whole of your spare time; and, there are other branches of learning which ought immediately to follow. If your own calling or profession require book-study, books treating of that are to be preferred to all others; for, the first thing, the first object in life, is to secure the honest means of obtaining sustenance, raiment, and a state of being suitable to your rank, be that rank what it may: excellence in your own calling is, therefore, the first thing to be aimed at. After this may come general knowledge, and of this, the first is a thorough knowledge of your own country; for, how ridiculous is it to see an English youth engaged in reading about the customs of the Chinese or of the Hindoos, while he is content to be totally ignorant of those of Kent or of Cornwall! Well employed he must be in ascertaining how Greece was divided and how the Romans parcelled out their territory, while he knows not, and apparently does not want to know, how England came to be divided into counties, hundreds, parishes and tithings.
49. GEOGRAPHY naturally follows Grammar; and you should begin with that of this kingdom, which you ought to understand well, perfectly well, before you venture to look abroad. A rather slight knowledge of the divisions and customs of other countries is, generally speaking, sufficient; but, not to know these full well, as far as relates to our own country, is, in one who pretends to be a gentleman or a scholar, somewhat disgraceful. Yet how many men are there, and those called gentlemen too, who seem to think that counties and parishes, and churches and parsons, and tithes and glebes, and manors and courts-leet, and paupers and poor-houses, all grew up in England, or dropped down upon it, immediately after Noah's flood! Surely, it is necessary for every man, having any pretensions to scholarship, to know how these things came; and, the sooner this knowledge is acquired the better; for, until it be acquired, you read the history of your country in vain. Indeed, to communicate this knowledge is one main part of the business of history; but it is a part which no historian, commonly so called, has, that I know of, ever yet performed, except, in part, myself, in the History of the PROTESTANT REFORMATION. I had read HUME'S History of England, and the Continuation by SMOLLETT; but, in 1802, when I wanted to write on the subject of the non-residence of the clergy, I found, to my great mortification, that I knew nothing of the foundation of the office and the claims of the parsons, and that I could not even guess at the origin of parishes. This gave a new turn to my inquiries; and I soon found the romancers, called historians, had given me no information that I could rely on, and, besides, had done, apparently, all they could to keep me in the dark.
50. When you come to HISTORY, begin also with that of your own country; and here it is my bounden duty to put you well on your guard; for in this respect we are peculiarly unfortunate, and for the following reasons, to which I beg you to attend. Three hundred years ago, the religion of England had been, during nine hundred years, the Catholic religion: the Catholic clergy possessed about a third part of all the lands and houses, which they held in trust for their own support, for the building and repairing of churches, and for the relief of the poor, the widow, the orphan, and the stranger; but, at the time just mentioned, the king and the aristocracy changed the religion to Protestant, took the estates of the church and the poor to themselves as their own property, and taxed the people at large for the building and repairing of churches and for the relief of the poor. This great and terrible change, effected partly by force against the people and partly by the most artful means of deception, gave rise to a series of efforts, which has been continued from that day to this, to cause us all to believe, that that change was for the better, that it was for our good; and that, before that time, our forefathers were a set of the most miserable slaves that the sun ever warmed with his beams. It happened, too, that the art of printing was not discovered, or, at least, it was very little understood, until about the time when this change took place; so that the books relating to former times were confined to manuscript; and, besides, even these manuscript libraries were destroyed with great care by those who had made the change and had grasped the property of the poor and the church. Our 'Historians,' as they are called, have written under fear of the powerful, or have been bribed by them; and, generally speaking, both at the same time; and, accordingly, their works are, as far as they relate to former times, masses of lies unmatched by any others that the world has ever seen.
51. The great object of these lies always has been to make the main body of the people believe, that the nation is now more happy, more populous, more powerful, than it was before it was Protestant, and thereby to induce us to conclude, that it was a good thing for us that the aristocracy should take to themselves the property of the poor and the church, and make the people at large pay taxes for the support of both. This has been, and still is, the great object of all those heaps of lies; and those lies are continually spread about amongst us in all forms of publication, from heavy folios down to halfpenny tracts. In refutation of those lies we have only very few and rare ancient books to refer to, and their information is incidental, seeing that their authors never dreamed of the possibility of the lying generations which were to come. We have the ancient acts of parliament, the common-law, the customs, the canons of the church, and the churches themselves; but these demand analyses and argument, and they demand also a really free press, and unprejudiced and patient readers. Never in this world, before, had truth to struggle with so many and such great disadvantages!
52. To refute lies is not, at present, my business; but it is my business to give you, in as small a compass as possible, one striking proof that they are lies; and thereby to put you well upon your guard for the whole of the rest of your life. The opinion sedulously inculcated by these 'historians' is this; that, before the Protestant times came, England was, comparatively, an insignificant country, having few people in it, and those few wretchedly poor and miserable. Now, take the following undeniable facts. All the parishes in England are now (except where they have been united, and two, three, or four, have been made into one) in point of size, what they were a thousand years ago. The county of Norfolk is the best cultivated of any one in England. This county has now 731 parishes; and the number was formerly greater. Of these parishes 22 have now no churches at all; 74 contain less than 100 souls each: and 268 have no parsonage-houses. Now, observe, every parish had, in old times, a church and a parsonage-house. The county contains 2,092 square miles; that is to say, something less than 3 square miles to each parish, and that is 1,920 statute acres of land; and the size of each parish is, on an average, that of a piece of ground about one mile and a half each way; so that the churches are, even now, on an average, only about a mile and a half from each other. Now, the questions for you to put to yourself are these: Were churches formerly built and kept up without being wanted, and especially by a poor and miserable people? Did these miserable people build 74 churches out of 731, each of which 74 had not a hundred souls belonging to it? Is it a sign of an augmented population, that 22 churches out of 731 have tumbled down and been effaced? Was it a country thinly inhabited by miserable people that could build and keep a church in every piece of ground a mile and a half each way, besides having, in this same county, 77 monastic establishments and 142 free chapels? Is it a sign of augmented population, ease and plenty, that, out of 731 parishes, 268 have suffered the parsonage houses to fall into ruins, and their sites to become patches of nettles and of brambles? Put these questions calmly to yourself: common sense will dictate the answers; and truth will call for an expression of your indignation against the lying historians and the still more lying population-mongers.
53. In the foregoing Letter, I have given my advice to a Youth. In addressing myself to you, I am to presume that you have entered upon your present stage of life, having acted upon the precepts contained in that letter; and that, of course, you are a sober, abstinent, industrious and well-informed young man. In the succeeding letters, which will be addressed to the Lover, the Husband, the Father and the Citizen, I shall, of course, have to include my notion of your duties as a master, and as a person employed by another. In the present letter, therefore, I shall confine myself principally to the conduct of a young man with regard to the management of his means, or money.
54. Be you in what line of life you may, it will be amongst your misfortunes if you have not time properly to attend to this matter; for it very frequently happens, it has happened to thousands upon thousands, not only to be ruined, according to the common acceptation of the word; not only to be made poor, and to suffer from poverty, in consequence of want of attention to pecuniary matters; but it has frequently, and even generally, happened, that a want of attention to these matters has impeded the progress of science, and of genius itself. A man, oppressed with pecuniary cares and dangers, must be next to a miracle, if he have his mind in a state fit for intellectual labours; to say nothing of the temptations, arising from such distress, to abandon good principles, to suppress useful opinions and useful facts; and, in short, to become a disgrace to his kindred, and an evil to his country, instead of being an honour to the former and a blessing to the latter. To be poor and independent, is very nearly an impossibility.
55. But, then, poverty is not a positive, but a relative term. BURKE observed, and very truly, that a labourer who earned a sufficiency to maintain him as a labourer, and to maintain him in a suitable manner; to give him a sufficiency of good food, of clothing, of lodging, and of fuel, ought not to be called a poor man; for that, though he had little riches, though his, compared with that of a lord, was a state of poverty, it was not a state of poverty in itself. When, therefore, I say that poverty is the cause of a depression of spirit, of inactivity and of servility in men of literary talent, I must say, at the same time, that the evil arises from their own fault; from their having created for themselves imaginary wants; from their having indulged in unnecessary enjoyments, and from their having caused that to be poverty, which would not have been poverty, if they had been moderate in their enjoyments.
56. As it may be your lot (such has been mine) to live by your literary talent, I will here, before I proceed to matter more applicable to persons in other states of life, observe, that I cannot form an idea of a mortal more wretched than a man of real talent, compelled to curb his genius, and to submit himself in the exercise of that genius, to those whom he knows to be far inferior to himself, and whom he must despise from the bottom of his soul. The late Mr. WILLIAM GIFFORD, who was the son of a shoemaker at ASHBURTON in Devonshire; who was put to school and sent to the university at the expense of a generous and good clergyman of the name of COOKSON, and who died, the other day, a sort of whipper-in of MURRAY'S QUARTERLY REVIEW; this was a man of real genius; and, to my certain personal knowledge, he detested, from the bottom of his soul, the whole of the paper-money and Boroughmongering system, and despised those by whom the system was carried on. But, he had imaginary wants; he had been bred up in company with the rich and the extravagant; expensive indulgences had been made necessary to him by habit; and, when in the year 1798, or thereabouts, he had to choose between a bit of bacon, a scrag of mutton, and a lodging at ten shillings a week, on the one side, and made-dishes, wine, a fine house and a footman on the other side, he chose the latter. He became the servile Editor of CANNING'S Anti-jacobin newspaper; and he, who had more wit and learning than all the rest of the writers put together, became the miserable tool in circulating their attacks upon everything that was hostile to a system which he deplored and detested. But he secured the made-dishes, the wine, the footman and the coachman. A sinecure as 'clerk of the Foreign Estreats,' gave him 329l. a year, a double commissionership of the lottery gave him 600l. or 700l. more; and, at a later period, his Editorship of the Quarterly Review gave him perhaps as much more. He rolled in his carriage for several years; he fared sumptuously; he was buried at Westminster Abbey, of which his friend and formerly his brother pamphleteer in defence of PITT was the Dean; and never is he to be heard of more! Mr. GIFFORD would have been full as happy; his health would have been better, his life longer, and his name would have lived for ages, if he could have turned to the bit of bacon and scrag of mutton in 1798; for his learning and talents were such, his reasonings so clear and conclusive, and his wit so pointed and keen, that his writings must have been generally read, must have been of long duration! and, indeed, must have enabled him (he being always a single man) to live in his latter days in as good style as that which he procured by becoming a sinecurist, a pensioner and a hack, all which he was from the moment he lent himself to the Quarterly Review. Think of the mortification of such a man, when he was called upon to justify the power-of-imprisonment bill in 1817! But to go into particulars would be tedious: his life was a life of luxurious misery, than which a worse is not to be imagined.
57. So that poverty is, except where there is an actual want of food and 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 500l., 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!
73. As to the spending of your time, your business or your profession is to claim the priority of everything else. Unless that be duly attended to, there can be no real pleasure in any other employment of a portion of your time. Men, however, must have some leisure, some relaxation from business; and in the choice of this relaxation much of your happiness will depend. Where fields and gardens are at hand, they present the most rational scenes for leisure. As to company, I have said enough in the former letter to deter any young man from that of drunkards and rioting companions; but there is such a thing as your quiet 'pipe-and-pot-companions,' which are, perhaps, the most fatal of all. Nothing can be conceived more dull, more stupid, more the contrary of edification and rational amusement, than sitting, sotting, over a pot and a glass, sending out smoke from the head, and articulating, at intervals, nonsense about all sorts of things. Seven years service as a galley-slave would be more bearable to a man of sense, than seven months confinement to society like this. Yet, such is the effect of habit, that, if a young man become a frequenter of such scenes, the idle propensity sticks to him for life. Some companions, however, every man must have; but these every well-behaved man will find in private houses, where families are found residing and where the suitable intercourse takes place between women and men. A man that cannot pass an evening without drink merits the name of a sot. Why should there be drink for the purpose of carrying on conversation? Women stand in need of no drink to stimulate them to converse; and I have a thousand times admired their patience in sitting quietly at their work, while their husbands are engaged, in the same room, with bottles and glasses before them, thinking nothing of the expense and still less of the shame which the distinction reflects upon them. We have to thank the women for many things, and particularly for their sobriety, for fear of following their example in which men drive them from the table, as if they said to them: 'You have had enough; food is sufficient for you; but we must remain to fill ourselves with drink, and to talk in language which your ears ought not to endure.' When women are getting up to retire from the table, men rise in honour of them; but they take special care not to follow their excellent example. That which is not fit to be uttered before women is not fit to be uttered at all; and it is next to a proclamation, tolerating drunkenness and indecency, to send women from the table the moment they have swallowed their food. The practice has been ascribed to a desire to leave them to themselves; but why should they be left to themselves? Their conversation is always the most lively, while their persons are generally the most agreeable objects. No: the plain truth is, that it is the love of the drink and of the indecent talk that send women from the table; and it is a practice which I have always abhorred. I like to see young men, especially, follow them out of the room, and prefer their company to that of the sots who are left behind.
74. Another mode of spending the leisure time is that of books. Rational and well-informed companions may be still more instructive; but books never annoy; they cost little; and they are always at hand, and ready at your call. The sort of books must, in some degree, depend upon your pursuit in life; but there are some books necessary to every one who aims at the character of a well-informed man. I have slightly mentioned HISTORY and Geography in the preceding letter; but I must here observe, that, as to both these, you should begin with your own country, and make yourself well acquainted, not only with its ancient state, but with the origin of all its principal institutions. To read of the battles which it has fought, and of the intrigues by which one king or one minister has succeeded another, is very little more profitable than the reading of a romance. To understand well the history of the country, you should first understand how it came to be divided into counties, hundreds, and into parishes; how judges, sheriffs, and juries, first arose; to what end they were all invented, and how the changes with respect to any of them have been produced. But it is of particular consequence that you ascertain the state of the people in former times, which is to be ascertained by comparing the then price of labour with the then price of food. You hear enough, and you read enough, about the glorious wars in the reign of KING EDWARD the THIRD; and it is very proper that those glories should be recorded and remembered; but you never read, in the works of the historians, that, in that reign, a common labourer earned threepence-halfpenny a day; and that a fat sheep was sold, at the same time, for one shilling and twopence, and a fat hog, two years old, for three shillings and fourpence, and a fat goose for twopence-halfpenny. You never read that women received a penny a day for hay-making or weeding in the corn, and that a gallon of red wine was sold for fourpence. These are matters which historians have deemed to be beneath their notice; but they are matters of real importance: they are matters which ought to have practical effect at this time; for these furnish the criterion whereby we are to judge of our condition compared with that of our forefathers. The poor-rates form a great feature in the laws and customs of this country. Put to a thousand persons who have read what is called the history of England; put to them the question, how the poor-rates came? and nine hundred and ninety-nine of the thousand will tell you, that they know nothing at all of the matter. This is not history; a list of battles and a string of intrigues are not history, they communicate no knowledge applicable to our present state; and it really is better to amuse oneself with an avowed romance, which latter is a great deal worse than passing one's time in counting the trees.
75. History has been described as affording arguments of experience; as a record of what has been, in order to guide us as to what is likely to be, or what ought to be; but, from this romancing history, no such experience is to be derived: for it furnishes no facts on which to found arguments relative to the existing or future state of things. To come at the true history of a country you must read its laws: you must read books treating of its usages and customs in former times; and you must particularly inform yourself as to prices of labour and of food. By reading the single Act of the 23rd year of EDWARD the THIRD, specifying the price of labour at that time; by reading an Act of Parliament passed in the 24th year of HENRY the EIGHTH; by reading these two Acts, and then reading the CHRONICON PRECIOSUM of BISHOP FLEETWOOD, which shows the price of food in the former reign, you come into full possession of the knowledge of what England was in former times. Divers books teach how the divisions of the country arose, and how its great institutions were established; and the result of this reading is a store of knowledge, which will afford you pleasure for the whole of your life.
76. History, however, is by no means the only thing about which every man's leisure furnishes him with the means of reading; besides which, every man has not the same taste. Poetry, geography, moral essays, the divers subjects of philosophy, travels, natural history, books on sciences; and, in short, the whole range of book-knowledge is before you; but there is one thing always to be guarded against; and that is, not to admire and applaud anything you read, merely because it is the fashion to admire and applaud it. Read, consider well what you read, form your own judgment, and stand by that judgment in despite of the sayings of what are called learned men, until fact or argument be offered to convince you of your error. One writer praises another; and it is very possible for writers so to combine as to cry down and, in some sort, to destroy the reputation of any one who meddles with the combination, unless the person thus assailed be blessed with uncommon talent and uncommon perseverance. When I read the works of POPE and of SWIFT, I was greatly delighted with their lashing of DENNIS; but wondered, at the same time, why they should have taken so much pains in running down such a fool. By the merest accident in the world, being at a tavern in the woods of America, I took up an old book, in order to pass away the time while my travelling companions were drinking in the next room; but seeing the book contained the criticisms of DENNIS, I was about to lay it down, when the play of 'CATO' caught my eye; and having been accustomed to read books in which this play was lauded to the skies, and knowing it to have been written by ADDISON, every line of whose works I had been taught to believe teemed with wisdom and genius, I condescended to begin to read, though the work was from the pen of that fool DENNIS. I read on, and soon began to laugh, not at Dennis, but at Addison. I laughed so much and so loud, that the landlord, who was in the passage, came in to see what I was laughing at. In short, I found it a most masterly production, one of the most witty things that I had ever read in my life. I was delighted with DENNIS, and was heartily ashamed of my former admiration of CATO, and felt no little resentment against POPE and SWIFT for their endless reviling of this most able and witty critic. This, as far as I recollect, was the first emancipation that had assisted me in my reading. I have, since that time, never taken any thing upon trust: I have judged for myself, trusting neither to the opinions of writers nor in the fashions of the day. Having been told by DR. BLAIR, in his lectures on Rhetoric, that, if I meant to write correctly, I must 'give my days and nights to ADDISON,' I read a few numbers of the Spectator at the time I was writing my English Grammar: I gave neither my nights nor my days to him; but I found an abundance of matter to afford examples of false grammar; and, upon a reperusal, I found that the criticisms of DENNIS might have been extended to this book too.
77. But that which never ought to have been forgotten by those who were men at the time, and that which ought to be made known to every young man of the present day, in order that he may be induced to exercise his own judgment with regard to books, is, the transactions relative to the writings of SHAKSPEARE, which transactions took place about thirty years ago. It is still, and it was then much more, the practice to extol every line of SHAKSPEARE to the skies: not to admire SHAKSPEARE has been deemed to be a proof of want of understanding and taste. MR. GARRICK, and some others after him, had their own good and profitable reasons for crying up the works of this poet. When I was a very little boy, there was a jubilee in honour of SHAKSPEARE, and as he was said to have planted a Mulberry tree, boxes, and other little ornamental things in wood, were sold all over the country, as having been made out of the trunk or limbs of this ancient and sacred tree. We Protestants laugh at the relics so highly prized by Catholics; but never was a Catholic people half so much duped by the relics of saints, as this nation was by the mulberry tree, of which, probably, more wood was sold than would have been sufficient in quantity to build a ship of war, or a large house. This madness abated for some years; but, towards the end of the last century it broke out again with more fury than ever. SHAKSPEARE'S works were published by BOYDELL, an Alderman of London, at a subscription of five hundred pounds for each copy, accompanied by plates, each forming a large picture. Amongst the mad men of the day was a MR. IRELAND, who seemed to be more mad than any of the rest. His adoration of the poet led him to perform a pilgrimage to an old farm-house, near Stratford-upon-Avon, said to have been the birth-place of the poet. Arrived at the spot, he requested the farmer and his wife to let him search the house for papers, first going upon his knees, and praying, in the poetic style, the gods to aid him in his quest. He found no papers; but he found that the farmer's wife, in clearing out a garret some years before, had found some rubbishy old papers which she had burnt, and which had probably been papers used in the wrapping up of pigs' cheeks to keep them from the bats. 'O, wretched woman!' exclaimed he; 'do you know what you have done?' 'O dear, no!' said the woman, half frightened out of her wits: 'no harm, I hope; for the papers were very old; I dare say as old as the house itself.' This threw him into an additional degree of excitement, as it is now fashionably called: he raved, he stamped, he foamed, and at last quitted the house, covering the poor woman with very term of reproach; and hastening back to Stratford, took post-chaise for London, to relate to his brother madmen the horrible sacrilege of this heathenish woman. Unfortunately for MR. IRELAND, unfortunately for his learned brothers in the metropolis, and unfortunately for the reputation of SHAKSPEARE, MR. IRELAND took with him to the scene of his adoration a son, about sixteen years of age, who was articled to an attorney in London. The son was by no means so sharply bitten as the father; and, upon returning to town, he conceived the idea of supplying the place of the invaluable papers which the farm-house heathen had destroyed. He thought, and he thought rightly, that he should have little difficulty in writing plays just like those of Shakspeare! To get paper that should seem to have been made in the reign of QUEEN ELIZABETH, and ink that should give to writing the appearance of having the same age, was somewhat difficult; but both were overcome. Young IRELAND was acquainted with a son of a bookseller, who dealt in old books: the blank leaves of these books supplied the young author with paper; and he found out the way of making proper ink for his purpose. To work he went, wrote several plays, some love-letters, and other things; and having got a Bible, extant in the time of SHAKSPEARE, he wrote notes in the margin. All these, together with sonnets in abundance, and other little detached pieces, he produced to his father, telling him he got them from a gentleman, who had made him swear that he would not divulge his name. The father announced the invaluable discovery to the literary world: the literary world rushed to him; the manuscripts were regarded as genuine by the most grave and learned Doctors, some of whom (and amongst these were DOCTORS PARR and WARTON) gave, under their hands, an opinion, that the manuscripts must have been written by SHAKSPEARE; for that no other man in the world could have been capable of writing them!
78. MR. IRELAND opened a subscription, published these new and invaluable manuscripts at an enormous price; and preparations were instantly made for performing one of the plays, called VORTIGERN. Soon after the acting of the play, the indiscretion of the lad caused the secret to explode; and, instantly, those who had declared that he had written as well as SHAKSPEARE, did every thing in their power to destroy him! The attorney drove him from his office; the father drove him from his house; and, in short, he was hunted down as if he had been a malefactor of the worst description. The truth of this relation is undeniable; it is recorded in numberless books. The young man is, I believe, yet alive; and, in short, no man will question any one of the facts.
79. After this, where is the person of sense who will be guided in these matters by fashion? where is the man, who wishes not to be deluded, who will not, when he has read a book, judge for himself? After all these jubilees and pilgrimages; after BOYDELL'S subscription of 500l. for one single copy; after it had been deemed almost impiety to doubt of the genius of SHAKSPEARE surpassing that of all the rest of mankind; after he had been called the 'Immortal Bard,' as a matter of course, as we speak of MOSES and AARON, there having been but one of each in the world; after all this, comes a lad of sixteen years of age, writes that which learned Doctors declare could have been written by no man but SHAKSPEARE, and, when it is discovered that this laughing boy is the real author, the DOCTORS turn round upon him, with all the newspapers, magazines, and reviews, and, of course, the public at their back, revile him as an impostor; and, under that odious name, hunt him out of society, and doom him to starve! This lesson, at any rate, he has given us: not to rely on the judgment of Doctors and other pretenders to literary superiority. Every young man, when he takes up a book for the first time, ought to remember this story; and if he do remember it, he will disregard fashion with regard to the book, and will pay little attention to the decision of those who call themselves critics.
80. I hope that your taste would keep you aloof from the writings of those detestable villains, who employ the powers of their mind in debauching the minds of others, or in endeavours to do it. They present their poison in such captivating forms, that it requires great virtue and resolution to withstand their temptations; and, they have, perhaps, done a thousand times as much mischief in the world as all the infidels and atheists put together. These men ought to be called literary pimps: they ought to be held in universal abhorrence, and never spoken of but with execration. Any appeal to bad passions is to be despised; any appeal to ignorance and prejudice; but here is an appeal to the frailties of human nature, and an endeavour to make the mind corrupt, just as it is beginning to possess its powers. I never have known any but bad men, worthless men, men unworthy of any portion of respect, who took delight in, or even kept in their possession, writings of the description to which I here allude. The writings of SWIFT have this blemish; and, though he is not a teacher of lewdness, but rather the contrary, there are certain parts of his poems which are much too filthy for any decent person to read. It was beneath him to stoop to such means of setting forth that wit which would have been far more brilliant without them. I have heard, that, in the library of what is called an 'illustrious person,' sold some time ago, there was an immense collection of books of this infamous description; and from this circumstance, if from no other, I should have formed my judgment of the character of that person.
81. Besides reading, a young man ought to write, if he have the capacity and the leisure. If you wish to remember a thing well, put it into writing, even if you burn the paper immediately after you have done; for the eye greatly assists the mind. Memory consists of a concatenation of ideas, the place, the time, and other circumstances, lead to the recollection of facts; and no circumstance more effectually than stating the facts upon paper. A JOURNAL should be kept by every young man. Put down something against every day in the year, if it be merely a description of the weather. You will not have done this for one year without finding the benefit of it. It disburthens the mind of many things to be recollected; it is amusing and useful, and ought by no means to be neglected. How often does it happen that we cannot make a statement of facts, sometimes very interesting to ourselves and our friends, for the want of a record of the places where we were, and of things that occurred on such and such a day! How often does it happen that we get into disagreeable disputes about things that have passed, and about the time and other circumstances attending them! As a thing of mere curiosity, it is of some value, and may frequently prove of very great utility. It demands not more than a minute in the twenty-four hours; and that minute is most agreeably and advantageously employed. It tends greatly to produce regularity in the conducting of affairs: it is a thing demanding a small portion of attention once in every day; I myself have found it to be attended with great and numerous benefits, and I therefore strongly recommend it to the practice of every reader.
82. There are two descriptions of Lovers on whom all advice would be wasted; namely, those in whose minds passion so wholly overpowers reason as to deprive the party of his sober senses. Few people are entitled to more compassion than young men thus affected: it is a species of insanity that assails them; and, when it produces self-destruction, which it does in England more frequently than in all the other countries in the world put together, the mortal remains of the sufferer ought to be dealt with in as tender a manner as that of which the most merciful construction of the law will allow. If SIR SAMUEL ROMILLY'S remains were, as they were, in fact, treated as those of a person labouring under 'temporary mental derangement,' surely the youth who destroys his life on account of unrequited love, ought to be considered in as mild a light! SIR SAMUEL was represented, in the evidence taken before the Coroner's Jury, to have been inconsolable for the loss of his wife; that this loss had so dreadful an effect upon his mind, that it bereft him of his reason, made life insupportable, and led him to commit the act of suicide: and, on this ground alone, his remains and his estate were rescued from the awful, though just and wise, sentence of the law. But, unfortunately for the reputation of the administration of that just and wise law, there had been, only about two years before, a poor man, at Manchester, buried in crossroads, and under circumstances which entitled his remains to mercy much more clearly than in the case of SIR SAMUEL ROMILLY.
83. This unfortunate youth, whose name was SMITH, and who was a shoemaker, was in love with a young woman, who, in spite of all his importunities and his proofs of ardent passion, refused to marry him, and even discovered her liking for another; and he, unable to support life, accompanied by the thought of her being in possession of any body but himself, put an end to his life by the means of a rope. If, in any case, we are to presume the existence of insanity; if, in any case, we are led to believe the thing without positive proof; if, in any case, there can be an apology in human nature itself, for such an act; this was that case. We all know (as I observed at the time); that is to say, all of us who cannot wait to calculate upon the gains and losses of the affair; all of us, except those who are endowed with this provident frigidity, know well what youthful love is; and what its torments are, when accompanied by even the smallest portion of jealousy. Every man, and especially every Englishman (for here we seldom love or hate by halves), will recollect how many mad pranks he has played; how many wild and ridiculous things he has said and done between the age of sixteen and that of twenty-two; how many times a kind glance has scattered all his reasoning and resolutions to the winds; how many times a cool look has plunged him into the deepest misery! Poor SMITH, who was at this age of love and madness, might, surely, be presumed to have done the deed in a moment of 'temporary mental derangement.' He was an object of compassion in every humane breast: he had parents and brethren and kindred and friends to lament his death, and to feel shame at the disgrace inflicted on his lifeless body: yet, HE was pronounced to be a felo de se, or self-murderer, and his body was put into a hole by the way-side, with a stake driven down through it; while that of ROMILLY had mercy extended to it, on the ground that the act had been occasioned by 'temporary mental derangement' caused by his grief for the death of his wife!
84. To reason with passion like that of the unfortunate SMITH, is perfectly useless; you may, with as much chance of success, reason and remonstrate with the winds or the waves: if you make impression, it lasts but for a moment: your effort, like an inadequate stoppage of waters, only adds, in the end, to the violence of the torrent: the current must have and will have its course, be the consequences what they may. In cases not quite so decided, absence, the sight of new faces, the sound of new voices, generally serve, if not as a radical cure, as a mitigation, at least, of the disease. But, the worst of it is, that, on this point, we have the girls (and women too) against us! For they look upon it as right that every lover should be a little maddish; and, every attempt to rescue him from the thraldom imposed by their charms, they look upon as an overt act of treason against their natural sovereignty. No girl ever liked a young man less for his having done things foolish and wild and ridiculous, provided she was sure that love of her had been the cause: let her but be satisfied upon this score, and there are very few things which she will not forgive. And, though wholly unconscious of the fact, she is a great and sound philosopher after all. For, from the nature of things, the rearing of a family always has been, is, and must ever be, attended with cares and troubles, which must infallibly produce, at times, feelings to be combated and overcome by nothing short of that ardent affection which first brought the parties together. So that, talk as long as Parson MALTHUS likes about 'moral restraint;' and report as long as the Committees of Parliament please about preventing 'premature and improvident marriages' amongst the labouring classes, the passion that they would restrain, while it is necessary to the existence of mankind, is the greatest of all the compensations for the inevitable cares, troubles, hardships, and sorrows of life; and, as to the marriages, if they could once be rendered universally provident, every generous sentiment would quickly be banished from the world.
85. The other description of lovers, with whom it is useless to reason, are those who love according to the rules of arithmetic, or who measure their matrimonial expectations by the chain of the land-surveyor. These are not love and marriage; they are bargain and sale. Young men will naturally, and almost necessarily, fix their choice on young women in their own rank in life; because from habit and intercourse they will know them best. But, if the length of the girl's purse, present or contingent, be a consideration with the man, or the length of his purse, present or contingent, be a consideration with her, it is an affair of bargain and sale. I know that kings, princes, and princesses are, in respect of marriage, restrained by the law: I know that nobles, if not thus restrained by positive law, are restrained, in fact, by the very nature of their order. And here is a disadvantage which, as far as real enjoyment of life is concerned, more than counterbalances all the advantages that they possess over the rest of the community. This disadvantage, generally speaking, pursues rank and riches downwards, till you approach very nearly to that numerous class who live by manual labour, becoming, however, less and less as you descend. You generally find even very vulgar rich men making a sacrifice of their natural and rational taste to their mean and ridiculous pride, and thereby providing for themselves an ample supply of misery for life. By preferring 'provident marriages' to marriages of love, they think to secure themselves against all the evils of poverty; but, if poverty come, and come it may, and frequently does, in spite of the best laid plans, and best modes of conduct; if poverty come, then where is the counterbalance for that ardent mutual affection, which troubles, and losses, and crosses always increase rather than diminish, and which, amidst all the calamities that can befall a man, whispers to his heart, that his best possession is still left him unimpaired? The WORCESTERSHIRE BARONET, who has had to endure the sneers of fools on account of his marriage with a beautiful and virtuous servant maid, would, were the present ruinous measures of the Government to drive him from his mansion to a cottage, still have a source of happiness; while many of those, who might fall in company with him, would, in addition to all their other troubles, have, perhaps, to endure the reproaches of wives to whom poverty, or even humble life, would be insupportable.
86. If marrying for the sake of money be, under any circumstances, despicable, if not disgraceful; if it be, generally speaking, a species of legal prostitution, only a little less shameful than that which, under some governments, is openly licensed for the sake of a tax; if this be the case generally, what ought to be said of a young man, who, in the heyday of youth, should couple himself on to a libidinous woman, old enough, perhaps, to be his grandmother, ugly as the nightmare, offensive alike to the sight and the smell, and who should pretend to love her too: and all this merely for the sake of her money? Why, it ought, and it, doubtless, would be said of him, that his conduct was a libel on both man and womankind; that his name ought, for ever, to be synonymous with baseness and nastiness, and that in no age and in no nation, not marked by a general depravity of manners, and total absence of all sense of shame, every associate, male or female, of such a man, or of his filthy mate, would be held in abhorrence. Public morality would drive such a hateful pair from society, and strict justice would hunt them from the face of the earth.
87. BUONAPARTE could not be said to marry for money, but his motive was little better. It was for dominion, for power, for ambition, and that, too, of the most contemptible kind. I knew an American Gentleman, with whom BUONAPARTE had always been a great favourite; but the moment the news arrived of his divorce and second marriage, he gave him up. This piece of grand prostitution was too much to be defended. And the truth is, that BUONAPARTE might have dated his decline from the day of that marriage. My American friend said, 'If I had been he, I would, in the first place, have married the poorest and prettiest girl in all France.' If he had done this, he would, in all probability, have now been on an imperial throne, instead of being eaten by worms at the bottom of a very deep hole in Saint Helena; whence, however, his bones convey to the world the moral, that to marry for money, for ambition, or from any motive other than the one pointed out by affection, is not the road to glory, to happiness, or to peace.
88. Let me now turn from these two descriptions of lovers, with whom it is useless to reason, and address myself to you, my reader, whom I suppose to be a real lover, but not so smitten as to be bereft of your reason. You should never forget, that marriage, which is a state that every young person ought to have in view, is a thing to last for life; and that, generally speaking, it is to make life happy, or miserable; for, though a man may bring his mind to something nearly a state of indifference, even that is misery, except with those who can hardly be reckoned amongst sensitive beings. Marriage brings numerous cares, which are amply compensated by the more numerous delights which are their companions. But to have the delights, as well as the cares, the choice of the partner must be fortunate. I say fortunate; for, after all, love, real love, impassioned affection, is an ingredient so absolutely necessary, that no perfect reliance can be placed on the judgment. Yet, the judgment may do something; reason may have some influence; and, therefore, I here offer you my advice with regard to the exercise of that reason.
89. The things which you ought to desire in a wife are, 1. Chastity; 2. sobriety; 3. industry; 4. frugality; 5. cleanliness; 6. knowledge of domestic affairs; 7. good temper; 8. beauty.
90. I. CHASTITY, perfect modesty, in word, deed, and even thought, is so essential, that, without it, no female is fit to be a wife. It is not enough that a young woman abstain from everything approaching towards indecorum in her behaviour towards men; it is, with me, not enough that she cast down her eyes, or turn aside her head with a smile, when she hears an indelicate allusion: she ought to appear not to understand it, and to receive from it no more impression than if she were a post. A loose woman is a disagreeable acquaintance: what must she be, then, as a wife? Love is so blind, and vanity is so busy in persuading us that our own qualities will be sufficient to ensure fidelity, that we are very apt to think nothing, or, at any rate, very little, of trifling symptoms of levity; but if such symptoms show themselves now, we may be well assured, that we shall never possess the power of effecting a cure. If prudery mean false modesty, it is to be despised; but if it mean modesty pushed to the utmost extent, I confess that I like it. Your 'free and hearty' girls I have liked very well to talk and laugh with; but never, for one moment, did it enter into my mind that I could have endured a 'free and hearty' girl for a wife. The thing is, I repeat, to last for life; it is to be a counterbalance for troubles and misfortunes; and it must, therefore, be perfect, or it had better not be at all. To say that one despises jealousy is foolish; it is a thing to be lamented; but the very elements of it ought to be avoided. Gross indeed is the beast, for he is unworthy of the name of man; nasty indeed is the wretch, who can even entertain the thought of putting himself between a pair of sheets with a wife of whose infidelity he possesses the proof; but, in such cases, a man ought to be very slow to believe appearances; and he ought not to decide against his wife but upon the clearest proof. The last, and, indeed, the only effectual safeguard is, to begin well; to make a good choice; to let the beginning be such as to render infidelity and jealousy next to impossible. If you begin in grossness; if you couple yourself on to one with whom you have taken liberties, infidelity is the natural and just consequence. When a Peer of the realm, who had not been over-fortunate in his matrimonial affairs, was urging MAJOR CARTWRIGHT to seek for nothing more than 'moderate reform,' the Major (forgetting the domestic circumstances of his Lordship) asked him how he should relish 'moderate chastity' in a wife! The bare use of the two words, thus coupled together, is sufficient to excite disgust. Yet with this 'moderate chastity' you must be, and ought to be, content, if you have entered into marriage with one, in whom you have ever discovered the slightest approach towards lewdness, either in deeds, words, or looks. To marry has been your own act; you have made the contract for your own gratification; you knew the character of the other party; and the children, if any, or the community, are not to be the sufferers for your gross and corrupt passion. 'Moderate chastity' is all that you have, in fact, contracted for: you have it, and you have no reason to complain. When I come to address myself to the husband, I shall have to say more upon this subject, which I dismiss for the present with observing, that my observation has convinced me, that, when families are rendered unhappy from the existence of 'moderate chastity,' the fault, first or last, has been in the man, ninety-nine times out of every hundred.