There is a good old national proverb, which tells us that the king’s errand may come in the pedlar’s road—that is to say, a very lofty man may occasionally have to take a favour from one in humble life. This is no mere flattering unction applied by the common people to themselves. It breathes the very spirit of an enlarged and humane philosophy. It tells us that all ranks of men are in reality dependent upon each other, and that every one, filling its proper place, is entitled to its proportion of regard from the rest. Treating the expression in its more limited sense, it instructs us that, in the prospect of our being occasionally obliged to accept of favours from very mean hands, we should never treat any person beneath us with disrespect—as, otherwise, with what grace can we accept of such a favour? On this point I take the liberty to relate a simple anecdote, as told to me some years ago, in illustration of the subject of this essay, by the individual chiefly concerned—the wife of a shopkeeper in a country town in the north of Scotland.
“In —— there lived a poor woman, named Peggy Williamson, a kind of washerwoman, whom every body looked upon as a wretched creature. This despised and not very reputable person had a son, who on one occasion was taken up by the town-officers for some trifling offence, and would have been thrown into prison, if I had not thought the case rather a hard one, and interceded with the magistrate in his behalf. Peggy, with all her faults, was not ungrateful; she came to me, and said she never would forget my kindness.
“A long time after this, in consequence of a particular calamity, my husband’s affairs got into a very hopeless state. I was attending the shop one bleak November day. Few customers were coming in, or likely to come in, and our prospects were gloomy and dull as the atmosphere itself. I never, indeed, since we began business, saw a day when things seemed less promising. The whole street—the whole town—appeared deserted. All was desolate, cold, and wintry; and with the dread of utter ruin impending over us, you may suppose that our spirits were not very good. Well, just while we were in this dolorous state, in came my old friend Peggy Williamson, accompanied by a country girl, who, she said, wanted to provide herself with a number of our wares, being about to be married. This person expended six or eight pounds with us, and we could not help feeling it as a kind of godsend. It was, however, the result of my having at one time done a just, for I can hardly call it a kind, action, to a person whom the most of people despised. Peggy, who was not perhaps aware of the full extent to which we appreciated her good offices, told me very modestly, as she left the shop with her friend, that she was glad to have had it in her power to recommend any body to us for goods, ‘as she never could forget my kindness to Tam.’ I thus satisfied myself, not only that an act of ordinary benevolence is likely to produce its reward where it is least expected, but that some good feeling may exist even in those characters, whom on ordinary principles we may be most inclined to despise.”
Let us judge, then, or at least let us always be inclined to judge, with tenderness, both of persons and of things. Let us not take our impressions of the characters of our fellow-creatures from the little obvious fault or foible which lies upon the surface, and affords, of course, the subject of largest discourse to the superficial; but, dashing aside the weeds which mantle the surface of the character, ascertain the extent and sweetness of the clear water beneath. It is of great importance to men, but especially to young men, to acquire a power of judging correctly and definitely of every thing. They must learn to estimate every thing relatively, and not be prevented from allowing merit, even where it exists in the smallest quantities, by its being mingled with a larger proportion of less worthy qualities. We often find one kind of merit denied, because it is not another. A man of untutored genius is sneered at because he wants learning. A learned man is termed a stupid dunce or a pedant, because he wants genius. The writer of an unpretending narrative is described by some of his invidious fellows as no Hume, or Gibbon, or Robertson. An industrious tradesman is ridiculed as a mere plodder; a farmer is laughed at because he is only acquainted with country affairs. Glasgow is condemned as deficient in the refined professional and literary classes of inhabitants, who reside in Edinburgh; and Edinburgh is scouted for its being “not at all a place of business.” These are vicious habits of thought and speech—if thought there can be in what argues a total absence of every thing like reason.
TRUST TO YOURSELF.
This is a glorious principle for the industrious and trading classes of the community, and yet the philosophy of it is not perhaps understood so well as it ought to be.
There is hardly any thing more common in the country than to hear men spoken of who originally, or at some period of their lives, were rich, but were ruined by “security”—that is, by becoming bound to too great an extent for the engagements of their neighbours. This must arise in a great measure from an imperfect understanding of the question; and it therefore seems necessary that something should be said in explanation of it.
I would be far from desiring to see men shut up their hearts against each other, and each stand, in the panoply of his own resolutions, determined against every friendly appeal whatsoever. It is possible, however, to be not altogether a churl, and yet to take care lest we be tempted into an exertion of benevolence, dangerous to ourselves, while it is of little advantage to our friends.
Notwithstanding the many ties which connect a man with society, he nevertheless bears largely imprinted on his forehead the original doom, that he must chiefly be dependent on his own labour for subsistence. It is found by all men of experience, that, in so far as one trusts to his own exertions solely, he will be apt to flourish; and, in so far as he leans and depends upon others, he will be the reverse. Nothing can give so good a general assurance of well-doing as the personal activity of the individual, day by day exerted for his own interest. If a man, on the contrary, suddenly finds, in the midst of such a career, a prospect of some patronage which seems likely to enrich him at once, or if he fails into the heritage of some antiquated claims to property or title, which he thinks it necessary to prosecute, it is ten to one that he declines from that moment, and is finally ruined. The only true way to make a happy progress through this world, is to go on in a dogged, persevering pursuit of one good object, neither turning to the right nor to the left, making our business as much as possible our pleasure, and not permitting ourselves to awake from our dream of activity—not permitting ourselves to think that we have been active—till we suddenly find ourselves at the goal of our wishes, with fortune almost unconsciously within our grasp.
Now, it is a most violent and unhappy disturbance of this system, to be always poking about after large favours from friends, whether for the purpose of adding fuel to what we think a good fire, or preserving a bad one from extinction. All that is obtained in this way is obtained against the very spirit of correct business, and is likely to be only mischievous to both parties. In the first place, it is probable that we shall not make such a good use of money got thus in a slump, without being painfully and gradually won, as of that which is the acquisition of our own daily industry. Then, it is always a presumption against a man that he should require such subsidies; and, accordingly, his commercial reputation is apt to suffer from every request he makes. Next, to consider the case in reference to the friend from whom the demand is made, it is obviously a most unfair thing, that, when men find it so necessary to be cautious in adventuring money on unusual risks, even for their own interest, and are, in such circumstances, so strongly called upon to make themselves acquainted with every circumstance of the case before venturing—when, moreover, they only do so in the prospect of an unusual profit—I say it is unfair, that, when they only adventure money on their own account under these circumstances, they should be called upon occasionally to adventure it for the profit of a friend, without knowing any thing of the likelihood of its turning out well, without being able to take any of those expedients which they would use in their own case for insuring its eventual re-appearance, without the least chance of profit to compensate the risk—trusting the whole, in fact, to the uncertain and hidden sea of another man’s mind, when perhaps they would not trust it upon their own, with a full knowledge of soundings, tide, wind, and pilotage. Men may grant such favours, from their dislike to express such a want of confidence in a friend as a refusal is supposed to intimate. But this proceeds upon the erroneous principle that the refusal indicates want of confidence. In reality, it ought only to be held as indicating a want of confidence in the particular line of use upon which it is to be adventured. When the man now wanting the loan of money expresses himself as certain to reproduce it at the proper time, he pledges too much of his honour; for there cannot be a stronger proof of the unlikelihood of his having money then than his wanting it now, so that the uncertainty of the reproduction of the sum could never be greater. The person from whom it is demanded is entitled, therefore, to take care that the petitioner is not deceiving both himself and the individual whom he wishes to supply his necessities.