Two lectures on the conditions of health and wealth educationally considered / by W.B. Hodgson.

  • Hodgson, W. B. (William Ballantyne), 1815-1880.
Date:
1860
    4S than it now is ? Can anything be plainer than that such qualities not only are incapable of producing wealth, but tend to destroy it wherever it exists ? Is it not obvious that it is just because, and exactly in the degree that, the opposites of these qualities now predominate, that intelligence, and in- dustry, and sobriety, and forethought, and self-control, and truthfulness, and honesty, and peacefulness, and chastity, and love of order and punctuality, and respect for property, and last, not least, parental care, are even now more prevalent than the contrasted vices; that this country possesses what amount of economic wellbeing it now enjoys ; and that, were these qualities made still more common, more general, and, finally, universal, our economic wellbeing as a nation would be proportionally increased. If a drunken workman does here and there prosper for a longer or shorter time, is it because of, or in spite of, his drunkenness? Is it his drunkenness, or what of sober interval is left to him, that enables him to earn the high wages that, in spite of drawbacks, peculiar skill com- mands? If he were more drunken, would he earn more or less? would his labour be more or less productive? But I would apologize to this meeting for question's so puerile, were it not that on this subject there is nothing so simple that it can be safely assumed to be even generally accepted, much less practically believed. If an individual here and there thrives, or seems to thrive, in a sense, and for a time, by dishonest means, he is a noxious parasite on the social tree, which it is the business of society to cut away. And what-an individual brigand is to the community in which he dwells, that is a nation of brigands to the earth at large. In neither case is there any element of permanence ; the laws of the universe are too powerful for both; their wealth turns to ashes not be- cause, as Mr. Dunlop thinks, it has been suddenly, but be- cause it has been wrongfully, acquired ; because the one has arrayed against him the outraged interests and moral sense of the community; ’the other, of collective humanity. Both have within themselves the seeds of sure and not slow decay.* * * “ The Romans, whose ruling passion was depredation and conquest, perished by the recoil of an engine which they themselves had erected against mankind.”—Dk. Adam
    We can now, perhaps, appreciate more justly than before the old and hackneyed contrasts between moral progress and "pro- gress (so-called) material. Such an institution as the Crystal Palace of 1851 was a type, and an evidence, certainly of material, but not less really of moral, progress. It is true that adulteration of goods and fraudulent banking, and false measures of length or weight, and other still too common practices of like nature, are not symptoms of moral progress. But not more are they symptoms of material progress. They are mischievous obstructions to the latter as well as to the former. The world is, materially, so much the poorer for them, as well as, morally, so much the worse. Thus, it is no vain or fanciful saying of the idealistic Emerson :— “ Money, which represents the prose of life, and which is hardly spoken of in parlours without an apology, is in its effects and laws as beautiful as roses. Property keeps the accounts of the world, and is always moral. The property will he found where the labour, the wisdom, and the virtue have been in nations, in classes, and (the whole lifetime considered, with the compensations) in the individual also.”* But to assert that moral qualities are indispensable to national wealth or economic wellbeing, and that the latter is indeed a measure, as'well as an evidence, of the former, is to state only one-half, one side of the truth. It is scarcely less true, that at least a certain amount of economic wellbeing is needful to give even moral qualities free play. Misery is a soil not propitious to the growth of moral excellence. Great riches have their temptations and dangers, it is not denied ; but great riches are necessarily exceptional and rare. Not so, alas ! misery and destitution; and vice is not more surely productive of misery than is misery of vice. That comfort is a moralizing influence, and discomfort the reverse, cannot, I think, be questioned by any one who will observe with ordi- nary attention the occurrences of daily life. It is well said by Dr. Samuel Johnson says—“ I know not why any one but a schoolboy in his declama- tion should whine over the Commonwealth of Rome, which grew great only by the misery of the rest of mankind.” “A people, who, when they were poor, robbed man- kind ; and as soon as they became rich, robbed one another.” Yet the same Dr John- son says, in- the same breath-” The Romans, like others, as soon as they ,,rew rich, gi tu corrupt; and in their corruption sold the lives and freedoms of themselves, and of one another. Is a robber not corrupt until he has grown rich ?—See Bosiuclls John- son, vol. 11. p. 66. Ed 1835. C. ii. See Appendix, No. IV. * Essays, 2d series, “Nominalist and Realist.” D
    one whose name is even less known than his writings, M. Osmond de Beauvoir Priaulx :— The more numerous the comforts, viewed as necessities by the great body of the people, and the further those comforts are removed from gross sensuality, the higher the moral condition of the people—is a principle in politics without an exception. The warm house, the neat furniture, the comfortable meal, the decent clothing, the well-weeded and flower-de- corated garden, the favourite singing-bird and spaniel, and the small but well-cliosen collection of books, are beyond the means of the idle, and not the choice of the tavern-hunter.”* With how caustic satire does the Rev. Sidney Smith treat the opposite doctrine ! “ The moral story,” he says, “ for the poor generally is, that a labourer with six children has nothing to live upon but mouldy bread and dirty water; yet nothing can exceed his cheerfulness and content—no murmurs, no discontent; of mutton he has scarcely heard, of bacon he never dreams; farinaceous bread and the water of the pool constitute his food, establish his felicity, and excite his warmest gratitude ; the squire or parson of the parish always happens to be walking by, and overhears him praying for the king, and the members of the county, and for all in autho- rity ; and it generally ends with their offering him a shilling, which this excellent man declares he does not want, and will not accept. These are the tracts which Goodies and Noodles are dispersing with unwearied diligence. It would be a great blessing if some genius would arise who had a talent of writing for the poor.” That such should be the close interdependence of social morality and social prosperity will be the more readily ac- cepted if, for a moment, we endeavour to imagine the facts to be reversed. If every step that a nation advanced in pros- perity were also, of necessity, a step in immorality ; if, on the other hand, all moral progress were equivalent to a diminu- tion of physical comfort; if rags and misery were the sure ac- companiment of virtue ; if, in short, every material gain were a moral loss; if every material loss were a moral gain ; if every moral gain were a material loss, and every moral loss a ma- terial gain ; if vice were the natural path towards wealth, and wealth towards vice; virtue towards misery, and misery to- wards virtue ;—what an appalling anomaly and contradiction would the life of man present! But the mind refuses to con- template, it is scarcely able to conceive, a world so inverted. * Outline of a System, of National Education, Lond. 1834 C. 3. p. 40.
    It shrinks from the audacity even of supposing what really to believe would be blasphemy and despair. If these things are so, how thoughtless, and foolish, and mischievous must appear to us the expressions of disparage- ment and contempt which we so often hear regarding wealth, or money, which is so generally and naturally taken as the type of wealth—expressions which, coming, as they often do, from those who have it in abundance, or, at least, sufficiency, sound strangely in the ears of those who have it not, and whose sad hourly experience contradicts the tenor of the denunciation. “ Moralists,” says Sidney Smith, with his usual horror of cant, “ tell you of the evils of wealth and station, and the happiness of poverty. I have been very poor the greatest part of my life. I have borne it, I believe, as well as most people ; but I can safely say that I have been happier every guinea I have gained.”* In a similar spirit, but with a more unctuous relish, writes the gentle and genial Charles Lamb : “ Goodly legs and shoulders of mutton, exhilarating cordials, books, pictures, the opportunities of seeing foreign countries, independence, a man’s own time to himself, are not muck, however we may be pleased to scandalize with that appellation the faithful metal that provides them for us.” “ Mark this!” says Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, “never treat money affairs with levity—Money is character /”f And, again, “ Beware of debt, and never call that economy meanness which is but the safeguard from mean degradation.”! “ Nothing,” says Mr. Henry Taylor, in his admirable Notes from Life, “ breaks down a man’s truthfulness more surely than pecuniary embarrassment: “ * An unthriffc was a liar from all time, Never was debtor that was not deceiver.’”§ These passages, and especially the phrase which I have cited with peculiar pleasure from Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, “ Money is character,” are full of wholesome warning to the many, especially of the young, who think it a proof of spirit, of noble disinterestedness, of a poetical temperament, * Memoir, &c., vol. i. p. 223, c. 9. f What will He do with It ? vol. iii. p. 57, b. 7, c. 7. 1859. t Ibid., vol. ii. p. 51. § Of Money, p. 19.1851.
    of superiority to “ grovelling cares,” to sneer at economy, at money. Foolish conduct follows in the steps of foolish speech ; and the first step to degrading dependence upon others, if not to actual dishonesty, is the neglect of that without which neither present nor future obligations can he met. I have watched more than one such downward career,—from heroic contempt of money to the hitter sense of the need of it; from that to debt; from debt to recklessness of engagements and loss of character and self-respect; from that to utter ruin and dis- grace. I have heard of a poet, who, in one of his works, exhorts “ the philosopher” to trim his midnight lamp while Mammon, on his luxurious couch, dreams of his sordid gains. Well, this high-minded person, disgusted with the money-making and selfishness of the old world, emigrated to the new, and, in a fit of poetic abstraction, forgot to take his wife with him ; and ever since, now for several years, his affection has been, in Douglas Jerrold’s phrase, “unremitting” for he has re- mitted nothing to relieve his wife from the cares of mammon, to which, alas ! she is not so insensible as her more highly gifted husband. The two parts of Sallust’s description of Catiline hang naturally together, “ He was lavish of his own money, greedy of that of others,”—a phrase which, brief as it is, Tacitus still further condenses thus : “He was profuse of others’ money and Mr. Thackeray happily, if unconsciously, modernizes: “ He was a free-handed fellow when he had any body’s money in his pocket.”* In serious earnest, it is the means of others, in the long run, that those must squander who neglect the duty of acquiring and saving for themselves. In fine, then, we may, in our dealing with the young, apply to wealth what Sidney Smith so wisely says of beauty :— “ Never teach false morality. How exquisitely absurd to tell girls that beauty is of no value, dress of no use. Beauty is of value, and if a girl has five grains of common sense she will find this out. The great thing is to teach her its just value. But never sacrifice truth.” f What, then, is the conclusion at which we seem to have * “ Lovel the Widower,” Cornhill Magazine, No. I. p. 47., 1860. t Life &c., vol. i. p. 335.