Many people envy the possessions of the rich, but will not pass through the risks, the fatigues, or the dangers of acquiring them. It is related of the Duke of Dantzic that an old comrade, whom he had not seen for many years, called upon him at his hotel in Paris, and seemed amazed at the luxury of his apartments, the richness of his furniture, and the magnificence of his gardens. The Duke, supposing that he saw in his old comrade's face a feeling of jealousy, said to him bluntly, "You may have all that you see before you, on one condition." "What is that?" said his friend. "It is that you will place yourself twenty paces off, and let me fire at you with a musket a hundred times." "I will certainly not accept your offer at that price." "Well," replied the Marshal, "to gain all that you see before you, I have faced more than a thousand gunshots, fired at not move than ten paces off."
The Duke of Marlborough often faced death. He became rich, and left a million and a half to his descendants to squander. The Duke was a penurious man. He is said to have scolded his servant for lighting four candles in his tent, when Prince Eugene called upon him to hold a conference before the battle of Blenheim. Swift said of the Duke, "I dare hold a wager that in all his compaigns he was never known to lose his baggage." But this merely showed his consummate generalship. When ill and feeble at Bath, he is said to have walked home from the rooms to his lodgings, to save sixpence. And yet this may be excused, for he may have walked home for exercise. He is certainly known to have given a thousand pounds to a young and deserving soldier who wished to purchase a commission. When Bolingbroke was reminded of one of the weaknesses of Marlborough, he observed, "He was so great a man, that I forgot that he had that defect."
It is no disgrace to be poor. The praise of honest poverty has often been sung. When a man will not stoop to do wrong, when he will not sell himself for money, when he will not do a dishonest act, then his poverty is most honourable. But the man is not poor who can pay his way, and save something besides. He who pays cash for all that he purchases, is not poor but well off. He is in a happier condition than the idle gentleman who runs into debt, and is clothed, shod, and fed at the expense of his tailor, shoemaker, and butcher. Montesquieu says, that a man is not poor because he has nothing, but he is poor when he will not or cannot work. The man who is able and willing to work, is better off than the man who possesses a thousand crowns without the necessity for working.
Nothing sharpens a man's wits like poverty. Hence many of the greatest men have originally been poor men. Poverty often purifies and braces a man's morals. To spirited people, difficult tasks are usually the most delightful ones. If we may rely upon the testimony of history, men are brave, truthful, and magnanimous, not in proportion to their wealth, but in proportion to their smallness of means. And the best are often the poorest,—always supposing that they have sufficient to meet their temporal wants. A divine has said that God has created poverty, but He has not created misery. And there is certainly a great difference between the two. While honest poverty is honourable, misery is humiliating; inasmuch as the latter is for the most part the result of misconduct, and often of idleness and drunkenness. Poverty is no disgrace to him who can put up with it; but he who finds the beggar's staff once get warm in his hand, never does any good, but a great amount of evil.
The poor are often the happiest of people—far more so than the rich; but though they may be envied, no one will be found willing to take their place. Moore has told the story of the over-fed, over-satisfied eastern despot, who sent a messenger to travel through the world, in order to find out the happiest man. When discovered, the messenger was immediately to seize him, take his shirt off his back, and bring it to the Caliph. The messenger found the happiest man in an Irishman,—happy, dancing, and flourishing his shillelagh. But when the ambassador proceeded to seize him, and undress him, he found that the Irishman had got no shirt to his back!
The portion of Agur is unquestionably the best: "Remove far from me vanity and lies; give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me." The unequal distribution of the disposition to be happy, is of far greater importance than the unequal distribution of wealth. The disposition to be content and satisfied, said David Hume, is at least equal to an income of a thousand a year. Montaigne has observed that Fortune confers but little. Human good or ill does not depend upon it. It is but the seed of good, which the soul, infinitely stronger than wealth, changes and applies as it pleases, and is thus the only cause of a happy or unhappy disposition.
England is celebrated for its charities. M. Guizot declares that there is nothing in this land that so fills the mind of the stranger with amazement at our resources, and admiration at our use of them, as the noble free-gift monuments raised on every side for the relief of multiform suffering. The home philanthropist, who looks a little deeper than the foreign visitor, may be disposed to take another view of the effects of money-giving. That charity produces unmixed good, is very much questioned. Charity, like man, is sometimes blind, and frequently misguided. Unless money is wisely distributed, it will frequently do more harm than good. If charity could help or elevate the poor, London would now be the happiest city in the world; for about three millions of money are spent on charity, and about one in every three of the London population are relieved by charitable institutions.
It is very easy to raise money for charity. Subscription lists constantly attest the fact. A rich man is asked by some influential person for money. It is very easy to give it. It saves time to give it. It is considered a religious duty to give it. Yet to give money unthinkingly, to give it without considering how it is to be used,—instead of being for the good of our fellow-creatures,—may often prove the greatest injury we could inflict upon them. True benevolence does not consist in giving money. Nor can charitable donations, given indiscriminately to the poor, have any other effect than to sap the foundations of self-respect, and break down the very outworks of virtue itself. There are many forms of benevolence which create the very evils they are intended to cure, and encourage the poorer classes in the habit of dependence upon the charity of others,—to the neglect of those far healthier means of social well-being which lie within their own reach.
One would think that three million a year were sufficient to relieve all the actual distress that exists in London. Yet the distress, notwithstanding all the money spent upon it, goes on increasing. May not the money spent in charity, create the distress it relieves,—besides creating other distress which it fails to relieve? Uneducated and idle people will not exert themselves for a living, when they have the hope of obtaining the living without exertion. Who will be frugal and provident, when charity offers all that frugality and providence can confer? Does not the gift of the advantages, comforts, and rewards of industry, without the necessity of labouring for them, tend to sap the very foundations of energy and self-reliance? Is not the circumstance that poverty is the only requisite qualification on the part of the applicant for charity, calculated to tempt the people to self-indulgence, to dissipation, and to those courses of life which keep them poor?
Men who will not struggle and exert themselves, are those who are helped first. The worst sort of persons are made comfortable: whilst the hard-working, self-supporting man, who disdains to throw himself upon charity, is compelled to pay rates for the maintenance of the idle. Charity stretches forth its hand to the rottenest parts of society; it rarely seeks out, or helps, the struggling and the honest. As Carlyle has said, "O my astonishing benevolent friends! that never think of meddling with the material while it continues sound; that stress and strain it with new rates and assessments, till even it has given way and declared itself rotten; whereupon you greedily snatch at it, and say, 'Now let us try to do some good upon it!'"