Of course, so far as they are influenced by religious considerations, the rich recognise the truth that all their possessions are held in trust, and only lent to them by a superior Power for the service of their fellow-beings. But the rich have difficulties as well as the poor, and one of these lies in determining how to distribute their expenditure in a way that shall prove beneficial to society. The question, ‘To whom or to what cause shall I contribute money?’ must be a very anxious one to conscientious men of wealth. ‘How are we to measure,’ we may suppose rich men to ask, ‘the relative utility of charities? And then political economists are down upon us if, by mistake, we help those who might have helped themselves. It is easy to talk against our extravagance; tell us rather how to spend our money advantageously—that is to say, for the greatest good of the greatest number.’ The fact is, riches must now be considered by all good men as a distinct profession, with responsibilities no less onerous than those of other professions. And this very difficult profession of wealth ought to be learned by studying social science and otherwise with as much care as the professions of divinity, law, and medicine are learned. When in this way the rich accept and prepare themselves for the duties of their high calling, it will cease to be a cause of complaint that, in the nature of things, money tends to fall into the hands of a few large capitalists.
Nor is the money-spending of the poor less careless than that of the rich. During the time of high wages, labouring people buy salmon and green peas when they are barely in season; and Professor Leone Levi computes that their annual drink-bill amounts to thirty-six millions. That is exactly the sum which the working-classes spend in rent; so, although better houses are the strongest and most imperative demands for the working-classes, those classes are spending, on the lowest estimate, a sum equal to what they are spending on rent.
Some two years ago, an eminent London physician went into Hyde Park and sat down upon a bench, and there sat down by him a pauper eighty years of age. The physician entered into conversation with him, and asked him what his trade was. The man said he was a carpenter.
‘A very good trade indeed. Well, how is it that you come at this time of life to be a pauper? Have you been addicted to drink?’
‘Not at all; I have only taken my three pints a day—never spent more than sixpence daily.’
The physician, taking out a pencil and a piece of paper, asked: ‘How long have you continued this practice of drinking three pints of ale a day?’
‘I am now eighty, and I have continued that practice, more or less, for sixty years.’
‘Very well,’ continued the physician, ‘I will just do the sum.’ He found that sixpence a day laid by for sixty years amounted, with compound interest, to three thousand two hundred and twenty-six pounds; and he said to the old carpenter: ‘My good man, instead of being a pauper, you might have been the possessor of three thousand two hundred and twenty-six pounds at this moment; in other words, you might have had one hundred and fifty pounds a year, or some three pounds a week, not by working an hour longer or doing anything differently, except by putting by the money that you have been spending day by day these sixty years on ale.’ The physician’s conclusion, however, should perhaps be modified by the consideration that if this man had ceased spending sixpence on beer, he might have required to spend a portion of that sixpence on an increased supply of food. But notwithstanding this, the physician’s argument is in the main a sound one.
It is not ‘ologies’ that the working-classes require to be taught so much, as the right use of money and the good things that can be purchased with it. It often astonishes the rich to see the wasteful expenditure of the poor; but an explanation will be found in the caution which Dr Johnson gives to men who fancy that poor girls must necessarily make the most economical wives. ‘A woman of fortune,’ he says, ‘being used to the handling of money, spends it judiciously; but a woman who gets the command of money for the first time upon her marriage, has such a gust in spending, that she throws it away with great profusion.’ That was excellent advice also which Dr Johnson gave to Boswell, when the latter inherited his paternal estates. ‘You, dear sir, have now a new station, and have therefore new cares and new employments. Life, as Cowley seems to say, ought to resemble a well-ordered poem; of which one rule generally received is, that the exordium should be simple and should promise little. Begin your new course of life with the least show and the least expense possible; you may at pleasure increase both, but you cannot easily diminish them. Do not think your estate your own while any man can call upon you for money which you cannot pay; therefore begin with timorous parsimony. Let it be your first care not to be in any man’s debt.’
People beginning to keep house should be careful not to pitch their scale of expenditure higher than they can hope to continue it, and they should remember that, as Lord Bacon said, ‘it is less dishonourable to abridge petty charges than to stoop to petty gettings.’