"Of what a hideous progeny is debt the father! What lies, what meanness, what invasions on self-respect, what cares, what double-dealing! How in due season it will carve the frank, open face into wrinkles: how like a knife, it will stab the houeat heart."—Douglas Jerrold.
"The human species, according to the best theory I can form of it, is composed of two distinct races, the men who borrow and the men who lend. To these two original diversities may be reduced all those impertinent classifications of Gothic and Celtic tribes, white men, black men, red men, and such-like."—Charles Lamb.
People do not know what troubles they are brewing for themselves when they run into debt. It does not matter for what the debt is incurred. It hangs like a millstone round a man's neck until he is relieved of it. It presses like a nightmare upon him. It hinders the well-being of his family. It destroys the happiness of his household.
Even those who are in the regular receipt of large incomes, feel crippled, often for years, by the incubus of debt. Weighed down by this, what can a man do to save—to economise with a view to the future of his wife and children? A man in debt is disabled from insuring his life, from insuring his house and goods, from putting money in the bank, from buying a house or a freehold. All his surplus gains must go towards the payment of his debt.
Even men of enormous property, great lords with vast landed estates, often feel themselves oppressed and made miserable by loads of debt. They or their forefathers having contracted extravagant habits—a taste for gambling, horseracing, or expensive living,—borrow money on their estates, and the burden of debt remains. Not, perhaps, in the case of strictly entailed estates—for the aristocracy have contrived so that their debts shall be wiped out at their death, and they can thus gratify their spendthrift tastes at the expense of the public—the estates going comparatively unburdened to the entailed heir. But comparatively few are in the position of the privileged classes. In the case of the majority, the debts are inherited with the estates, and often the debts are more than the estates are worth. Thus it happens that a large part of the lands of England are at this moment the property of mortgagees and money-lenders.
The greatest men have been in debt. It has even been alleged that greatness and debt have a certain relation to each other. Great men have great debts; they are trusted. So have great nations; they are respectable, and have credit. Spiritless men have no debts, neither have spiritless nations; nobody will trust them. Men as well as nations in debt secure a widely extended interest. Their names are written in many books; and many are the conjectures formed as to whether they will pay—or not. The man who has no debts slips through the world comparatively unnoticed; while he who is in everybody's books has all eyes fixed upon him. His health is enquired after with interest; and if he goes into foreign countries, his return is anxiously looked for.
The creditor is usually depicted as a severe man, with a hard visage; while the debtor is an open-handed generous man, ready to help and entertain everybody. He is the object of general sympathy. When Goldsmith was dunned for his milk-score and arrested for the rent of his apartments, who would think of pitying the milk-woman or the landlady? It is the man in debt who is the prominent feature of the piece, and all our sympathy is reserved for him. "What were you," asked Pantagruel of Panurge, "without your debts? God preserve me from ever being without them! Do you think there is anything divine in lending or in crediting others? No! To owe is the true heroic virtue!"
Yet, whatever may be said in praise of Debt, it has unquestionably a very seedy side. The man in debt is driven to resort to many sorry expedients to live. He is the victim of duns and sheriff's officers. Few can treat them with the indifference that Sheridan did, who put them into livery to wait upon his guests. The debtor starts and grows pale at every knock at his door. His friends grow cool, and his relatives shun him. He is ashamed to go abroad, and has no comfort at home. He becomes crabbed, morose, and querulous, losing all pleasure in life. He wants the passport to enjoyment and respect—money; he has only his debts, and these make him suspected, despised, and snubbed. He lives in the slough of despond. He feels degraded in others' eyes as well as in his own. He must submit to impertinent demands, which he can only put off by sham excuses. He has ceased to be his own master, and has lost the independent bearing of a man. He seeks to excite pity, and pleads for time. A sharp attorney pounces on him, and suddenly he feels himself in the vulture's gripe. He tries a friend or a relative, but all that he obtains is a civil leer, and a cool repulse. He tries a money-lender; and, if he succeeds, he is only out of the frying-pan into the fire. It is easy to see what the end will be,—a life of mean shifts and expedients, perhaps ending in the gaol or the workhouse.
Can a man keep out of debt? Is there a possibility of avoiding the moral degradation which accompanies it? Could not debt be dispensed with altogether, and man's independence preserved secure? There is only one way of doing this; by "living within the means." Unhappily, this is too little the practice in modern times. We incur debt, trusting to the future for the opportunity of defraying it. We cannot resist the temptation to spend money. One will have fine furniture and live in a high-rented house; another will have wines and a box at the opera; a third must give dinners and music-parties:—all good things in their way, but not to be indulged in if they cannot be paid for. Is it not a shabby thing to pretend to give dinners, if the real parties who provide them are the butcher, the poulterer, and the wine-merchant, whom you are in debt to, and cannot pay?
A man has no business to live in a style which his income cannot support, or to mortgage his earnings of next week or of next year, in order to live luxuriously to-day. The whole system of Debt, by means of which we forestall and anticipate the future, is wrong. They are almost as much to blame who give credit, and encourage customers to take credit, as those are who incur debts. A man knows what his actual position is, if he pays his way as he goes. He can keep within his means, and so apportion his expenditure as to reserve a fund of savings against a time of need. He is always balanced up; and if he buys nothing but what he pays for in cash, he cannot fail to be on the credit side of his household accounts at the year's end.