Pine-Marten.
[9] The authorized version has old; the more correct translation is fierce.
[10] A sort of great-coat.
[11] Skins.
CHAPTER IV.
The Prodigal—Advantages of the poorest man in civilized life over the richest savage—Savings-banks, deposits, and interest—Progress of accumulation—Insecurity of capital, its causes and results—Property, its constituents—Accumulation of capital.
There is an account in Foster's Essays of a man who, having by a short career of boundless extravagance dissipated every shilling of a large estate which he inherited from his fathers, obtained possession again of the whole property by a course which the writer well describes as a singular illustration of decision of character. The unfortunate prodigal, driven forth from the home of his early years by his own imprudence, and reduced to absolute want, wandered about for some time in a state of almost unconscious despair, meditating self-destruction, till he at last sat down upon a hill which overlooked the fertile fields that he once called his own. "He remained," says the narrative, "fixed in thought a number of hours, at the end of which he sprang from the ground with a vehement exulting emotion. He had formed his resolution, which was, that all these estates should be his again; he had formed his plan, too, which he instantly began to execute." We shall show, by and by, how this plan worked in detail;—it will be sufficient, just now, to examine the principles upon which it was founded. He looked to no freak of fortune to throw into his lap by chance what he had cast from him by wilfulness. He neither trusted to inherit those lands from their present possessor by his favour, nor to wring them from him by a course of law. He was not rash and foolish enough to dream of obtaining again by force those possessions which he had exchanged for vain superfluities. But he resolved to become once more their master by the operation of the only principle which could give them to him in a civilized society. He resolved to obtain them again by the same agency through which he had lost them—by exchange. But what had he to exchange? His capital was gone, even to the uttermost farthing; he must labour to obtain new capital. With a courage worthy of imitation he resolved to accept the very first work that should be offered to him, and, however low the wages of that work, to spend only a part of those wages, leaving something for a store. The day that he made this resolution he carried it into execution. He found some service to be performed—irksome, doubtless, and in many eyes degrading. But he had a purpose which made every occupation appear honourable, as every occupation truly is that is productive of utility. Incessant labour and scrupulous parsimony soon accumulated for him a capital; and the store, gathered together with such energy, was a rapidly increasing one. In no very great number of years the once destitute labourer was again a rich proprietor. He had earned again all that he had lost. The lands of his fathers were again his. He had accomplished his plan.
A man so circumstanced—one who possesses no capital, and is only master of his own natural powers—if suddenly thrown down from a condition of ease, must look upon the world, at the first view, with deep apprehension. He sees everything around him appropriated. He is in the very opposite condition of Alexander Selkirk, when he is made to exclaim "I am monarch of all I survey." Instead of feeling that his "right there is none to dispute," he knows that every blade of corn that covers the fields, every animal that grazes in the pastures, is equally numbered as the property of some individual owner, and can only pass into his possession by exchange. In the towns it is the same as in the country. The dealer in bread and in clothes,—the victualler from whom he would ask a cup of beer and a night's lodging,—will give him nothing, although they will exchange everything. He cannot exist, except as a beggar, unless he puts himself in the condition to become an exchanger.