By running into debt yourself, or by your allowing your wife to run into
debt, you give another person power over your liberty. You cannot
venture to look your creditor in the face. A double knock at the door
frightens you: the postman may be delivering a lawyer's letter demanding
the amount you owe. You are unable to pay it, and make a sneaking
excuse. You invent some pretence for not paying. At length you are
driven to downright lying. For "lying rides on debt's back."

What madness it is to run in debt for superfluities! We buy fine
articles--finer than we can pay for. We are offered six months'--twelve
months' credit! It is the shopkeeper's temptation; and we fall before
it. We are too spiritless to live upon our own earnings; but must
meanwhile live upon others'. The Romans regarded their servants as their
enemies. One might almost regard modern shopkeepers in the same light.
By giving credit, by pressing women to buy fine clothes, they place the
strongest temptation before them. They inveigle the wives of men who are
disposed to be honest into debt, and afterwards send in untruthful
bills. They charge heavier prices, and their customers pay
them,--sometimes doubly pay them; for it is impossible to keep a proper
check upon long-due accounts.

Professor Newman's advice is worthy of being followed. "Heartily do I
wish," he says, "that shop debts were pronounced after a certain day
irrecoverable at law. The effect would be that no one would be able to
ask credit at a shop except where he was well known, and for trifling
sums. All prices would sink to the scale of cash prices. The
dishonourable system of fashionable debtors, who always pay too late, if
at all, and cast their deficiencies on other customers in the form of
increased charges, would be at once annihilated. Shopkeepers would be
rid of a great deal of care, which ruins the happiness of thousands."[1]

[Footnote 1: _Lectures on Political Economy_, p. 255.]

A perfect knowledge of human nature is in the prayer, "Lead us not into
temptation." No man and no woman ever resists temptation after it has
begun to be temptation. It is in the outworks of the habits that the
defence must lie. The woman who hesitates to incur a debt which she
ought not to incur, is lost. The clerk or apprentice who gloats over his
master's gold, sooner or later appropriates it. He does so when he has
got over the habitual feeling which made any approach to it an
impossibility. Thus the habits which insinuate themselves into the
thousand inconsiderable acts of life, constitute a very large part of
man's moral conduct.

This running into debt is a great cause of dishonesty. It does not
matter what the debt is, whether it be for bets unsettled, for losses by
cards, for milliners' or drapers' bills unpaid. Men who have been well
educated, well trained, and put in the way of earning money honestly,
are often run away with by extravagances, by keeping up appearances, by
betting, by speculation and gambling, and by the society of the
dissolute of both sexes.

The writer of this book has had considerable experience of the manner in
which young men have been led from the way of well-doing into that of
vice and criminality. On one occasion his name was forged by a clerk, to
enable him to obtain a sum of money to pay the debts incurred by him at
a public-house. The criminal was originally a young man of good
education, of reasonable ability, well-connected, and married to a
respectable young lady. But all his relatives and friends were
forgotten--wife and child and all--in his love for drink and
card-playing. He was condemned, and sentenced to several years'
imprisonment.

In another case the defaulter was the son of a dissenting minister. He
stole some valuable documents, which he converted into money. He
escaped, and was tracked. He had given out that he was going to
Australia, by Southampton. The Peninsular and Oriental steamer was
searched, but no person answering to his description was discovered.
Some time passed, when one of the Bank of England notes which he had
carried away with him, was returned to the Bank from Dublin. A detective
was put upon his track; he was found in the lowest company, brought back
to London, tried, and sentenced to twelve months' imprisonment.

In another case, the criminal occupied a high position in a railway
company,--so high that he was promoted from it to be Manager of the
Royal Swedish Railway. He was one of the too numerous persons who are
engaged in keeping up appearances, irrespective of honesty, morality, or
virtue. He got deeply into debt, as most of such people do; and then he
became dishonest. He became the associate of professional thieves. He
abstracted a key from the office of which he was in charge, and handed
it to a well-known thief. This was the key of the strong box in which
gold and silver were conveyed by railway from London to Paris. A cast of
the key was taken in wax, and it was copied in iron. It was by means of
this key that "The Great Gold Robbery" was effected. After some time the
thieves were apprehended, and the person who had stolen the key--the
keeper-up of appearances, then Manager of the Royal Swedish Railway--was
apprehended, convicted, and sentenced by Baron Martin to Transportation
for Life.

The Rev. John Davis, the late Chaplain of Newgate, published the
following among other accounts of the causes of crime among the
convicted young men who came under his notice:--

"I knew a youth, the child of an officer in the navy, who had served his
country with distinction, but whose premature death rendered his widow
thankful To receive an official appointment for her delicate boy in a
Government office. His income from the office was given faithfully to
his mother; and it was a pleasure and a pride to him to gladden her
heart by the thought that he was helping her. She had other
children--two little girls, just rising from the cradle to womanhood.
Her scanty pension and his salary made every one happy. But over this
youth came a love of dress. He had not strength of mind to see how much
more truly beautiful a pure mind is, than a finely decorated exterior.
He took pleasure in helping his mother and sisters, but did not take
greater pleasure in thinking that to do this kindness to them he must be
contented for a time to dress a little worse than his fellow-clerks; his
clothes might appear a little worn, but they were like the spot on the
dress of a soldier arising from the discharge of duty; they were no
marks of undue carelessness; necessity had wrought them; and while they
indicated necessity, they marked also the path of honour, and without
such spots duty must have been neglected. But this youth did not think
of such great thoughts as these. He felt ashamed at his threadbare but
clean coat. The smart, new-shining dress of other clerks mortified
him.... He wanted to appear finer. In an evil hour he ordered a suit of
clothes from a fashionable tailor. His situation and connections
procured him a short credit. But tradesmen must be paid, and he was
again and again importuned to defray his debt. To relieve himself of his
creditor he stole a letter containing a ВЈ10 note. His tailor was paid,
but the injured party knew the number of the note. It was traced to the
tailor, by him to the thief, with the means and opportunity of stealing
it, and in a few days he was transported. His handsome dress was
exchanged for the dress of a convict. Better by far would it have been
for him to have worn his poorer garb, with the marks of honest labour
upon it. He formed only another example of the intense folly of love of
dress, which, exists quite as much amongst foolish young men as amongst
foolish young women."

When Sir Charles Napier left India, he issued an order to the Army, in
which he reproved the officers for contracting debts without the
prospect of paying them. The Commander-in-Chief found that he was
subject to constant complaints against officers for non-payment of
debts; and in some cases he found that the ruin of deserving and
industrious tradesmen had been consequent on that cause. This growing
vice he severely reprimanded, as being derogatory to the character of
the gentleman, as a degrading thing, as entitling those who practised it
to "group with the infamous, with those who are cheats, and whose
society is contamination." He strongly urged them to stick to their
duties, to reprobate extravagance and expense of all sorts, and to
practise rigid economy; for "to drink unpaid-for champagne and
unpaid-for beer, and to ride unpaid-for horses, is to be a cheat and not
a gentleman."

The extravagance of these young "gentlemen" in India is, in too many
respects, but a counterpart of the extravagance of our young "gentlemen"
at home. The revelations of extravagances at Oxford and Cambridge point
to the school in which they have learnt their manners. Many worthy
parents have been ruined by the sons whom they had sent thither to be
made scholars of; but who have learnt only to be "gentlemen" in the
popular acceptation of the word. To be a "gentleman" nowadays, is to be
a gambler, a horse-racer, a card-player, a dancer, a hunter, a
_rouГ©_,--or all combined. The "gentleman" lives fast, spends fast,
drinks fast, dies fast. The old style of gentleman has degenerated into
a "gent" and a "fast" man. "Gentleman" has become disreputable; and when
it is now employed, it oftener signifies an idle spendthrift, than an
accomplished, virtuous, laborious man.

Young men are growing quite shameless about being in debt; and the
immorality extends throughout society. Tastes are becoming more
extravagant and luxurious, without the corresponding increase of means
to enable them to be gratified. But they are gratified, nevertheless;
and debts are incurred, which afterwards weigh like a millstone round
the neck. Extravagant habits, once formed and fostered, are very
difficult to give up. The existing recklessness of running into debt
without the prospect, often without even the intention, of paying the
debt, saps the public morals, and spreads misery throughout the middle
and upper classes of society. The tone of morality has sunk, and it will
be long before it is fairly recovered again.

In the mean time, those who can, ought to set their faces against all
expenditure where there are not sufficient means to justify it. The
safest plan is, to run up no bills, and never to get into debt; and the
next is, if one does get into debt, to get out of it again as quickly as
possible. A man in debt is not his own master: he is at the mercy of the
tradesmen he employs. He is the butt of lawyers, the byword of
creditors, the scandal of neighbours; he is a slave in his own house;
his moral character becomes degraded and defiled; and even his own
household and family regard him with pity akin to contempt.

Montaigne said, "I always feel a pleasure in paying my debts, because I
discharge my shoulders of a wearisome load and of an image of slavery."
Johnson might well call Economy the mother of Liberty. No man can be
free who is in debt. The inevitable effect of debt is not only to injure
personal independence, but, in the long run, to inflict moral
degradation. The debtor is exposed to constant humiliations. Men of
honourable principles must be disgusted by borrowing money from persons
to whom they cannot pay it back;--disgusted with drinking wine, wearing
clothes, and keeping up appearances, with other people's money. The Earl
of Dorset, like many other young nobles, became involved in debt, and
borrowed money upon his property. He was cured of his prodigality by the
impertinence of a city alderman, who haunted his antechamber for the
purpose of dunning him for his debt. From that day the Earl determined
to economize, to keep entirely out of everybody's debt,--and he kept his
word.

Let every man have the fortitude to look his affairs in the face,--to
keep an account of his items of income and debts, no matter how long or
black the list may be. He must know how he stands from day to day, to be
able to look the world fairly in the face. Let him also inform his wife,
if he has one, how he stands with the world. If his wife be a prudent
woman, she will help him to economize his expenditure, and enable him to
live honourably and honestly. No good wife will ever consent to wear
clothes and give dinners that belong not to her, but to her shopkeeper.

The knowledge of arithmetic is absolutely necessary to those who would
live within their means. Women are especially ignorant of arithmetic;
they are scarcely taught the simplest elements, for female teachers
think the information useless. They prefer to teach languages, music,
deportment, the use of the globes. All these may be important, but the
first four rules of arithmetic are better than all. How can they compare
their expenditure with their receipts, without the knowledge of addition
and subtraction? How can they know precisely what to spend in rent, or
clothing, or food, or for service, unless they know the value of
figures? How can they check the accounts of their tradesmen or their
servants? This want of knowledge of arithmetic is the cause, not only of
great waste, but of great misery. Many a family of good position has
fallen into destitution merely because of their ignorance of this branch
of knowledge.

Young people often rush into marriage without reflection. A young man
meets a pretty face in a ball-room, likes it, dances with it, flirts
with it, and goes home to dream about it. At length he falls in love
with it, courts it, marries it, and then he takes the pretty face home,
and begins to know something more about it. All has as yet been "very
jolly." The face has hitherto been charming, graceful, artless, and
beautiful. It has now to enter upon another sphere of life. It has to be
seen much closer; it has to be seen daily; and it has to begin
housekeeping.

Most newly married people require some time to settle quietly down
together. Even those whose married life has been the happiest, arrive at
peace and repose through a period of little struggles and bewilderments.
The husband does not all at once find his place, nor the wife hers. One
of the very happiest women we know has told us, that the first year of
her married life was the most uncomfortable of all. She had so much to
learn--was so fearful of doing wrong--and had not yet found her proper
position. But, feeling their way, kind and loving natures will have no
difficulty in at last settling down comfortably and peacefully together.

It was not so with the supposed young man and his pretty "face." Both
entered upon their new life without thinking; or perhaps with
exaggerated expectations of its unalloyed happiness. They could not make
allowances for lovers subsiding into husband and wife; nor were they
prepared for the little ruffles and frettings of individual temper; and
both felt disappointed. There was a relaxation of the little attentions
which are so novel and charming to lovers. Then the pretty face, when
neglected, found relief in tears.

There is nothing of which men tire sooner, especially when the tears are
about trifles. Tears do not in such cases cause sympathy, but breed
repulsion. They occasion sourness, both on the one side and the other.
Tears are dangerous weapons to play with. Were women to try kindness and
cheerfulness instead, how infinitely happier would they be. Many are the
lives that are made miserable by an indulgence in fretting and carking,
until the character is indelibly stamped, and the rational enjoyment of
life becomes next to a moral impossibility.

Mental qualities are certainly admirable gifts in domestic life. But
though they may dazzle and delight, they will not excite love and
affection to anything like the same extent as a warm and happy heart.
They do not wear half so well, and do not please half so much. And yet
how little pains are taken to cultivate the beautiful quality of good
temper and happy disposition! And how often is life, which otherwise
might have been blessed, embittered and soured by the encouragement of
peevish and fretful habits, so totally destructive of everything like
social and domestic comfort! How often have we seen both men and women
set themselves round about as if with bristles, so that no one dared to
approach them without the fear of being pricked. For want of a little
occasional command over one's temper, an amount of misery is occasioned
in society which is positively frightful. Thus is enjoyment turned into
bitterness, and life becomes like a journey barefooted, amongst
prickles, and thorns, and briars.

In the instance we have cited, the pretty face soon became forgotten.
But as the young man had merely bargained for the "face"--as it was that
to which he had paid his attentions--that which he had vowed to love,
honour, and protect.--when it ceased to be pretty, he began to find out
that he had made a mistake. And if the home be not made attractive,--if
the newly married man finds that it is only an indifferent
boarding-house,--he will gradually absent himself from it. He will stay
out in the evenings, and console himself with cigars, cards, politics,
the theatre, the drinking club; and the poor pretty face will then
become more and more disconsolate, hopeless, and miserable.

Perhaps children grow up; but neither husband nor wife know much about
training them, or keeping them healthy. They are regarded as toys when
babies, dolls when boys and girls, drudges when young men and women.
There is scarcely a quiet, happy, hearty hour spent during the life of
such a luckless couple. Where there is no comfort at home, there is only
a succession of petty miseries to endure. Where there is no
cheerfulness,--no disposition to accommodate, to oblige, to sympathize
with one another,--affection gradually subsides on both sides.

It is said, that "When poverty comes in at the door, loves flies out at
the window." But it is not from poor men's houses only that love flies.
It flies quite as often from the homes of the rich, where there is a
want of loving and cheerful hearts. This little home might have been
snug enough; with no appearance of want about it; rooms well furnished;
cleanliness pervading it; the table well supplied; the fire burning
bright; and yet without cheerfulness. There wanted the happy faces,
radiant with contentment and good humour. Physical comfort, after all,
forms but a small part of the blessings of a happy home. As in all other
concerns of life, it is the moral state which determines the weal or woe
of the human condition.

Most young men think very little of what has to follow courtship and
marriage. They think little of the seriousness of the step. They forget
that when the pledge has once been given, there is no turning back, The
knot cannot be untied. If a thoughtless mistake has been made, the
inevitable results will nevertheless follow. The maxim is current, that
"marriage is a lottery." It may be so if we abjure the teachings of
prudence--if we refuse to examine, inquire, and think--if we are content
to choose a husband or a wife, with less reflection than we bestow upon
the hiring of a servant, whom we can discharge any day--if we merely
regard attractions of face, of form, or of purse, and give way to
temporary impulse or to greedy avarice--then, in such cases, marriage
does resemble a lottery, in which you _may_ draw a prize, though there
are a hundred chances to one that you will only draw a blank.

But we deny that marriage has any necessary resemblance to a lottery.
When girls are taught wisely how to love, and what qualities to esteem
in a companion for life, instead of being left to gather their stock of
information on the subject from the fictitious and generally false
personations given to them in novels; and when young men accustom
themselves to think of the virtues, graces, and solid acquirements
requisite in a wife, with whom they are to spend their days, and on
whose temper and good sense the whole happiness of their home is to
depend, then it will be found that there is very little of the "lottery
" in marriage; and that, like any concern of business or of life, the
man or woman who judges and acts wisely, with proper foresight and
discrimination, will reap the almost certain consequences in a happy and
prosperous future. True, mistakes may be made, and will be made, as in
all things human; but nothing like the grievous mistake of those who
stake their happiness in the venture of a lottery.

Another great point is, to be able to say No on proper occasions. When
enticements allure, or temptations assail, say No at once, resolutely
and determinedly. "No; I can't" afford it." Many have not the moral
courage to adopt this course. They consider only their selfish
gratification. They are unable to practise self-denial. They yield, give
way, and "enjoy themselves." The end is often defalcation, fraud, and
ruin. What is the verdict of society in such cases? "The man has been
living beyond his means." Of those who may have been entertained by him,
not one of them will thank him, not one of them will pity him, not one
of them will help him.

Every one has heard of the man who couldn't say No. He was everybody's
friend but his own. His worst enemy was himself. He ran rapidly through
his means, and then called upon his friends for bonds, bails, and
"promises to pay." After spending his last guinea, he died in the odour
of harmless stupidity and folly.

His course in life seemed to be directed by the maxim of doing for
everybody what everybody asked him to do. Whether it was that his heart
beat responsive to every other heart, or that he did not like to give
offence, could never be ascertained; but certain it is, that he was
rarely asked to sign a requisition, to promise a vote, to lend money, or
to endorse a bill, that he did not comply. He couldn't say "No;" and
there were many who knew him well, who said he had not the moral courage
to do so.

His father left him a snug little fortune, and he was at once beset by
persons wanting a share of it. Now was the time to say "No," if he
could; but he couldn't. His habit of yielding had been formed; he did
not like to be bored; could not bear to refuse; could not stand
importunity; and almost invariably yielded to the demands made upon his
purse. While his money lasted, he had no end of friends. He was a
universal referee--everybody's bondsman. "Just sign me this little bit
of paper," was a request often made to him by particular friends, "What
is it?" he would mildly ask; for, with all his simplicity, he prided
himself upon his caution! Yet he never refused. Three months after, a
bill for a rather heavy amount would fall due, and who should be called
upon to make it good but everybody's friend--the man who couldn't say
"No."

At last a maltster, for whom he was bondsman--a person with whom he had
only a nodding acquaintance--suddenly came to a stand in his business,
ruined by heavy speculations in funds and shares; when the man who
couldn't say "No" was called upon to make good the heavy duties due to
the Crown. It was a heavy stroke, and made him a poor man. But he never
grew wise. He was a post against which every needy fellow came and
rubbed himself; a tap, from which every thirsty soul could drink; a
flitch, at which every hungry dog had a pull; an ass, on which every
needy rogue must have his ride; a mill, that ground everybody's corn but
his own; in short, a "good-hearted fellow," who couldn't for the life of
him say "No."

It is of great importance to a man's peace and well-being that he should
be able to say "No" at the right time. Many are ruined because they
cannot or will not say it. Vice often gains a footing within us, because
we will not summon up the courage to say "No." We offer ourselves too
often as willing sacrifices to the fashion of the world, because we have
not the honesty to pronounce the little word. The duellist dares not say
"No," for he would be "cut." The beauty hesitates to say it, when a rich
blockhead offers her his hand, because she has set her ambition on an
"establishment." The courtier will not say it, for he must smile and
promise to all.

When pleasure tempts with its seductions, have the courage to say "No"
at once. The little monitor within will approve the decision; and virtue
will become stronger by the act. When dissipation invites, and offers
its secret pleasures, boldly say "No." If you do not, if you acquiesce
and succumb, virtue will have gone from you, and your self-reliance will
have received a fatal shock. The first time may require an effort; but
strength will grow with use. It is the only way of meeting temptations
to idleness, to self-indulgence, to folly, to bad custom, to meet it at
once with an indignant "No." There is, indeed, great virtue in a "No,"
when pronounced at the right time.

A man may live beyond his means until he has nothing left. He may die in
debt, and yet "society" does not quit its hold of him until he is laid
in his grave. He must be buried as "society" is buried. He must have a
fashionable funeral. He must, to the last, bear witness to the power of
Mrs. Grundy. It is to please her, that the funeral cloaks, hatbands,
scarves, mourning coaches, gilded hearses, and processions of mutes are
hired. And yet, how worthless and extravagant is the mummery of the
undertaker's grief; and the feigned woe of the mutes, saulies, and plume
bearers, who are paid for their day's parade!

It is not so much among the wealthy upper classes that the mischiefs of
this useless and expensive mummery are felt, as amongst the middle and
working classes. An expensive funeral is held to be "respectable."
Middle-class people, who are struggling for front places in society,
make an effort to rise into the region of mutes and nodding plumes; and,
like their "betters," they are victimised by the undertakers. These fix
the fashion for the rest; "we must do as Others do;" and most people
submit to pay the tax. They array themselves, friends, and servants, in
mourning; and a respectable funeral is thus purchased.

The expenditure falls heavily upon a family, at a time when they are the
least able to bear it. The bread-winner has been taken away, and
everything is left to the undertaker. How is a wretched widow in the
midst of her agony, or how are orphan children, deprived of the
protecting hand of a parent, to higgle with a tradesman about the
cheapening of mourning suits, black gloves, weepers, and the other
miserable "trappings of woe"? It is at such a moment, when in thousands
of cases every pound and every shilling is of consequence to the
survivors, that the little ready money they can scrape together is
lavished, without question, upon a vulgar and extravagant piece of
pageantry. Would not the means which have been thus foolishly expended
in paying an empty honour to the dead, be much better applied in being
used for the comfort and maintenance of the living?

The same evil propagates itself downwards in society. The working
classes suffer equally with the middle classes, in proportion to their
means. The average cost of a tradesman's funeral in England is about
fifty pounds; of a mechanic, or labourer, it ranges from five pounds to
ten pounds. In Scotland funeral expenses are considerably lower. The
desire to secure respectable interment for departed relatives, is a
strong and widely-diffused feeling among the labouring population; and
it does them honour. They will subscribe for this purpose, when they
will for no other. The largest of the working-men's clubs are burial
clubs. Ten pounds are usually allowed for the funeral of a husband, and
five pounds for the funeral of a wife. As much as fifteen, twenty,
thirty, and even forty pounds, are occasionally expended on a mechanic's
funeral, in cases where the deceased has been a member of several clubs,
on which occasions the undertakers meet and "settle" between them their
several shares in the performance of the funeral. It is not unusual to
insure a child's life in four or five of these burial clubs; and we have
heard of a case where one man had insured payments in no fewer than
nineteen different burial clubs in Manchester!

When the working-man, in whose family a death has occurred, does not
happen to be a member of a burial club, he is still governed by their
example, and has to tax himself seriously to comply with the usages of
society, and give to his wife or child a respectable funeral. Where it
is the father of the family himself who has died, the case is still
harder. Perhaps all the savings of his life are spent in providing
mourning for his wife and children at his death. Such an expense, at
such a time, is ruinous, and altogether unjustifiable.

Does putting on garments of a certain colour constitute true mourning?
Is it not the heart and the affections that mourn, rather than the
outside raiment? Bingham, in speaking of the primitive Christians, says
that "they did not condemn the notion of going into a mourning habit for
the dead, nor yet much approve of it, but left it to all men's liberty
as an indifferent thing, rather commending those that either omitted it
wholly, or in short laid it aside again, as acting more according to the
bravery and philosophy of a Christian."

John Wesley directed, in his will, that six poor men should have twenty
shillings each for carrying his body to the grave,--"For," said he, "I
particularly desire that there may be no hearse, no coach, no
escutcheon, no pomp, except the tears of those that loved me, and are
following me to Abraham's bosom. I solemnly adjure my executors, in the
name of God, punctually to observe this."

It will be very difficult to alter the mourning customs of our time. We
may anxiously desire to do so, but the usual question will occur--"What
will people say?" "What will the world say?" We involuntarily shrink
back, and play the coward like our neighbours. Still, common sense,
repeatedly expressed, will have its influence; and, in course of time,
it cannot fail to modify the fashions of society The last act of Queen
Adelaide, by which she dispensed with the hired mummery of undertakers'
grief,--and the equally characteristic request of Sir Robert Peel on his
deathbed, that no ceremony, nor pomp, should attend his last
obsequies,--cannot fail to have their due effect upon the fashionable
world; and through them, the middle classes, who are so disposed to
imitate them in all things, will in course of time benefit by their
example. There is also, we believe, a growing disposition on the part of
the people at large to avoid the unmeaning displays we refer to; and it
only needs the repeated and decided expression of public opinion, to
secure a large measure of beneficial reform in this direction.

Societies have already been established in the United States, the
members of which undertake to disuse mourning themselves, and to
discountenance the use of it by others. It is only, perhaps, by
association and the power of numbers that this reform is to be
accomplished; for individuals here and there could scarcely be expected
to make way against the deeply-rooted prejudices of the community at
large.




CHAPTER XIII.

GREAT DEBTORS.


"What would life be without arithmetic, but a scene of horrors? You are
going to Boulogne, the city of debts, peopled by men who never
understood arithmetic."--_Sydney Smith._

"Quand on doit et qu'on ne paye pas, c'est comme si on ne devait
pas."--_Araene Houssaye._

"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.

But once let him commence the practice of running up bills--one at the
tailor's, another at the dressmaker's and milliner's, another at the
butcher's, another at the grocer's, and so on,--and he never knows how
he stands. He is deceived into debt; the road is made smooth and
pleasant for him; things flow into the house, for which he does not seem
to pay. But they are all set down against him; and at the year's end,
when the bills come in, he is ready to lift up his hands in dismay. Then
he finds that the sweet of the honey will not repay for the smart of the
sting.

It is the same as respects the poorer classes. Not many years since,
Parliament passed a law facilitating the establishment of Small Loan
Societies, for the purpose of helping small tradesmen and poor people
generally to raise money on an emergency. The law was at once pounced
upon by the numerous race of Graballs, as a means of putting money in
their purse. They gave the working classes facilities for running into
debt, and for mortgaging their future industry. A few men, desirous of
making money, would form themselves into a Loan Club, and offer sums of
money ostensibly at five per cent, interest, repayable in weekly
instalments. The labouring people eagerly availed themselves of the
facility for getting into debt. One wanted money for a "spree," another
wanted money for a suit of clothes, a third for an eight-day clock, and
so on; and instead of saving the money beforehand, they preferred
getting the money from the Club, keeping themselves in difficulties and
poverty until the debt was paid off. Such a practice is worse than
living from hand to mouth: it is living upon one's own vitals.

It is easy to understand how the partners in the Loan Club made money.
Suppose that they advanced ten pounds for three months at five per cent.
It is repayable in weekly instalments at ten shillings a week,--the
repayments commencing the very first week after the advance has been
made. But though ten shillings are repaid weekly until the debt is wiped
off, interest at five per cent, is charged upon the whole amount until
the last instalment is paid off. So that, though the nominal interest is
five per cent., it goes on increasing until, during the last week, it
reaches the enormous rate of one hundred per cent.! This is what is
called "eating the calf in the cow's belly."

Men of genius are equally facile in running into debt. Genius has no
necessary connection with prudence or self-restraint, nor does it
exercise any influence over the common rules of arithmetic, which are
rigid and inflexible. Men of genius are often superior to what Bacon
calls "the wisdom of business." Yet Bacon himself did not follow his own
advice, but was ruined by his improvidence. He was in straits and
difficulties when a youth, and in still greater straits and difficulties
when a man. His life was splendid; but his excessive expenditure
involved him in debts which created a perpetual craving for money. One
day, in passing out to his antechambers, where his followers waited for
his appearance, he said, "Be seated, my masters; your rise has been my
fall." To supply his wants, Bacon took bribes, and was thereupon beset
by his enemies, convicted, degraded, and ruined.

Even men with a special genius for finance on a grand scale, may
completely break down in the management of their own private affairs.
Pitt managed the national finances during a period of unexampled
difficulty, yet was himself always plunged in debt. Lord Carrington, the
ex-banker, once or twice, at Mr. Pitt's request, examined his household
accounts, and found the quantity of butcher's meat charged in the bills
was one hundredweight a week. The charge for servants' wages, board
wages, living, and household bills, exceeded ВЈ2,300 a year. At Pitt's
death, the nation voted ВЈ40,000 to satisfy the demands of his creditors;
yet his income had never been less than ВЈ6,000 a year; and at one time,
with the Wardenship of the Cinque Ports, it was nearly ВЈ4,000 a year
more. Macaulay truly says that "the character of Pitt would have stood
higher if, with the disinterestedness of Pericles and De Witt, he had
united their dignified frugality."

But Pitt by no means stood alone. Lord Melville was as unthrifty in the
management of his own affairs, as he was of the money of the public. Fox
was an enormous ower, his financial maxim being that a man need never
want money if he was willing to pay enough for it. Fox called the outer
room at Almack's, where he borrowed on occasions from Jew lenders at
exorbitant premiums, his "Jerusalem Chamber." Passion for play was his
great vice, and at a very early age it involved him in debt to an
enormous amount. It is stated by Gibbon that on one occasion Fox sat
playing at hazard for twenty hours in succession, losing ВЈ11,000. But
deep play was the vice of high life in those days, and cheating was not
unknown. Selwyn, alluding to Fox's losses at play, called him Charles
the Martyr.

Sheridan was the hero of debt. He lived on it. Though he received large
sums of money in one way or another, no one knew what became of it, for
he paid nobody. It seemed to melt away in his hands like snow in summer.
He spent his first wife's fortune of ВЈ1,600 in a six weeks' jaunt to
Bath. Necessity drove him to literature, and perhaps to the stimulus of
poverty we owe "The Rivals," and the dramas which succeeded it. With his
second wife he obtained a fortune of ВЈ5,000, and with ВЈ15,000 which he
realized by the sale of Drury Lane shares, he bought an estate in
Surrey, from which he was driven by debt and duns. The remainder of his
life was a series of shifts, sometimes brilliant, but oftener degrading,
to raise money and evade creditors. Taylor, of the Opera-house, used to
say that if he took off his hat to Sheridan in the street, it would cost
him fifty pounds; but if he stopped to speak to him, it would cost a
hundred.

One of Sheridan's creditors came for his money on horseback." That is a
nice mare," said Sheridan. "Do you think so?" "Yes, indeed;--how does
she trot?" The creditor, flattered, told him he should see, and
immediately put the mare at full trotting pace, on which Sheridan took
the opportunity of trotting round the nearest corner. His duns would
come in numbers each morning, to catch him before he went out. They were
shown into the rooms on each side of the entrance hall. When Sheridan
had breakfasted, he would come down, and ask, "Are those doors all shut,
John?" and on being assured that they were, he marched out deliberately
between them.

He was in debt all round--to his milkman, his grocer, his baker, and his
butcher. Sometimes Mrs. Sheridan would be kept waiting for an hour or
more while the servants were beating up the neighbourhood for coffee,
butter, eggs, and rolls. While Sheridan was Paymaster of the Navy, a
butcher one day brought a leg of mutton to the kitchen. The cook took it
and clapped it in the pot to boil, and went upstairs for the money; but
not returning, the butcher coolly removed the pot lid, took out the
mutton, and walked away with it in his tray.[1] Yet, while living in
these straits, Sheridan, when invited with his son into the country,
usually went in two chaises and four--he in one, and his son Tom
following in the other.

[Footnote 1: Haydon--_Autobiography_, vol. ii., p. 104.]

The end of all was very sad. For some weeks before his death he was
nearly destitute of the means of subsistence. His noble and royal
friends had entirely deserted him. Executions for debt were in his
house, and he passed his last days in the custody of sheriffs' officers,
who abstained from conveying him to prison merely because they were
assured that to remove him would cause his immediate death.[2]

[Footnote 2: _Memoirs of the Life of Sir S. Romilly,_ vol. iii., p.
262.]

The Cardinal de Retz sold off everything to pay his debts, but he did
not recover his liberty. He described the perpetual anguish of the
debtor. He even preferred confinement in the Castle of Vincennes, to
being exposed to the annoyances of his creditors. Mirabeau's life was
one of perpetual debt; for he was a dreadful spendthrift. The only mode
by which his father could keep him out of scrapes, was by obtaining a
_lettre de cachet,_ and having him-safely imprisoned. Though Mirabeau
wielded the powers of the State, when he died he was so poor, or had
been so extravagant, that he was still indebted to the tailor for his
wedding suit.

Lamartine ran through half-a-dozen fortunes, and at the end of his life
was "sending round the hat." Lamartine boldly proclaimed that he hated
arithmetic, "that negative of every noble thought." He was accordingly
driven to very shabby shifts to live. The _Cours de Litterature_ alone
brought him in 200,000 francs a year, yet 'the money ran through his
hands like quicksilver. His debts are said to have amounted to three
millions of francs; yet his style of living remained unchanged. One of
his enthusiastic admirers, having stinted himself in subscribing towards
the repurchase of the Lamartine estates, went into a fishmonger's one
day to purchase a piece of turbot. It was too dear for his means. A
distinguished-looking personage entered, paused for a moment before the
turbot, and without questioning the price, ordered the fish to be sent
to his house. It was M. de Lamartine.

Webster, the American statesman, was afflicted with impecuniosity,
arising from his carelessness about money matters, as well as from his
extravagance. If we are to believe Theodore Parker, Webster, like Bacon,
took bribes. "He contracted debts and did not settle, borrowed and
yielded not again. Private money sometimes clove to his hands.... A
senator of the United States, he was pensioned by the manufacturers of
Boston. His later speeches smell of bribes." Monroe and Jefferson were
always in want of money, and often in debt; though they were both honest
men.

The life which public men lead nowadays, is often an incentive to
excessive expenditure. They may be men of moderate means; they may even
be poor; but not many of them moving in general society have the moral
courage to _seem_ to be so. To maintain their social position, they
think it necessary to live as others do. They are thus drawn into the
vortex of debt, and into all the troubles, annoyances, shabby shifts,
and dishonesties, which debt involves.

Men of science are for the most part exempt from the necessity of
shining in society; and hence they furnish but a small number of
instances of illustrious debtors. Many of them have been poor, but they
have usually lived within their means. Kepler's life was indeed a
struggle with poverty and debt; arising principally from the
circumstance of his salary, as principal mathematician to the Emperor of
Germany, having been always in arrear. This drove him to casting
nativities in order to earn a living. "I pass my time," he once wrote,
"in begging at the doors of crown treasurers." At his death he left only
twenty-two crowns, the dress he wore, two shirts, a few books, and many
manuscripts. Leibnitz left behind him a large amount of debt; but this
may have been caused by the fact that he was a politician as well as a
philosopher, and had frequent occasion to visit foreign courts, and to
mix on equal terms with the society of the great.

Spinoza was poor in means; yet inasmuch as what he earned by polishing
glasses for the opticians was enough to supply his wants, he incurred no
debts. He refused a professorship, and refused a pension, preferring to
live and die independent. Dalton had a philosophical disregard for
money. When his fellow-townsmen at Manchester once proposed to provide
him with an independence, that he might devote the rest of his life to
scientific investigation, he declined the offer, saying that "teaching
was a kind of recreation to him, and that if richer he would probably
not spend more time in his investigations than he was accustomed to do."
Faraday's was another instance of moderate means and noble independence.
Lagrange was accustomed to attribute his fame and happiness to the
poverty of his father, the astronomer royal of Turin. "Had I been rich,"
he said, "probably I should not have become a mathematician."