The truth is, there is not much real poverty in this country. Our very paupers are rich, for they usually have plenty of wholesome food, and comfortable clothing, and what could a Crœsus, with all his riches, have more? Poverty exists much more in imagination than in reality. The shame of being thought poor, is a great and fatal weakness, to say the least. It depends, it is true, much upon the fashion.
So long as the phrase 'he is a good man,' means that the person spoken of is rich, we need not wonder that every one wishes to be thought richer than he is. When adulation is sure to follow wealth, and when contempt would be sure to follow many if they were not wealthy; when people are spoken of with deference, and even lauded to the skies because their riches are very great; when this is the case, I say, we need not wonder if men are ashamed to be thought poor. But this is one of the greatest dangers which young people have to encounter in setting out in life. It has brought thousands and hundreds of thousands to pecuniary ruin.
One of the most amiable features of good republican society is this; that men seldom boast of their riches, or disguise their poverty, but speak of both, as of any other matters that are proper for conversation. No man shuns another because he is poor; no man is preferred to another because he is rich. In hundreds and hundreds of instances have men in this country, not worth a shilling, been chosen by the people to take care of their rights and interests, in preference to men who ride in their carriages.
The shame of being thought poor leads to everlasting efforts to disguise one's poverty. The carriage—the domestics—the wine—the spirits—the decanters—the glass;—all the table apparatus, the horses, the dresses, the dinners, and the parties, must be kept up; not so much because he or she who keeps or gives them has any pleasure arising therefrom, as because not to keep and give them, would give rise to a suspicion of a want of means. And thus thousands upon thousands are yearly brought into a state of real poverty, merely by their great anxiety not to be thought poor. Look around you carefully, and see if this is not so.
In how many instances have you seen amiable and industrious families brought to ruin by nothing else but the fear they should be? Resolve, then, from the first, to set this false shame at defiance. When you have done that, effectually, you have laid the corner-stone of mental tranquillity.
There are thousands of families at this very moment, struggling to keep up appearances. They feel that it makes them miserable; but you can no more induce them to change their course, than you can put a stop to the miser's laying up gold.
Farmers accommodate themselves to their condition more easily than merchants, mechanics, and professional men. They live at a greater distance from their neighbors; they can change their style of living without being perceived; they can put away the decanter, change the china for something plain, and the world is none the wiser for it. But the mechanic, the doctor, the attorney, and the trader cannot make the change so quietly and unseen.
Stimulating drink, which is a sort of criterion of the scale of living,—(or scale to the plan,)—a sort of key to the tune;—this is the thing to banish first of all, because all the rest follow; and in a short time, come down to their proper level.
Am I asked, what is a glass of wine? I answer, it is every thing. It creates a demand for all the other unnecessary expenses; it is injurious to health, and must be so. Every bottle of wine that is drank contains a portion of spirit, to say nothing of other drugs still more poisonous; and of all friends to the doctors, alcoholic drinks are the greatest. It is nearly the same, however, with strong tea and coffee. But what adds to the folly and wickedness of using these drinks, the parties themselves do not always drink them by choice; and hardly ever because they believe they are useful;—but from mere ostentation, or the fear of being thought either rigid or stingy. At this very moment, thousands of families daily use some half a dozen drinks, besides the best, because if they drank water only, they might not be regarded as genteel; or might be suspected of poverty. And thus they waste their property and their health.
Poverty frequently arises from the very virtues of the impoverished parties. Not so frequently, I admit, as from vice, folly, and indiscretion; but still very frequently. And as it is according to scripture not to 'despise the poor, because he is poor,' so we ought not to honor the rich merely because he is rich. The true way is to take a fair survey of the character of a man as exhibited in his conduct; and to respect him, or otherwise, according to a due estimate of that character.
Few countries exhibit more of those fatal terminations of life, called suicides, than this. Many of these unnatural crimes arise from an unreasonable estimate of the evils of poverty. Their victims, it is true, may be called insane; but their insanity almost always arises from the dread of poverty. Not, indeed, from the dread of the want of means for sustaining life, or even decent living; but from the dread of being thought or known to be poor;—from the dread of what is called falling in the scale of society.8
Viewed in its true light, what is there in poverty that can tempt a man to take away his own life? He is the same man that he was before; he has the same body and the same mind. Suppose he can foresee an alteration in his dress or his diet, should he kill himself on that account? Are these all the things that a man wishes to live for?
I do not deny that we ought to take care of our means, use them prudently and sparingly, and keep our expenses always within the limits of our income, be that what it may. One of the effectual means of doing this, is to purchase with ready money. On this point, I have already remarked at length, and will only repeat here the injunction of St. Paul; 'Owe no man any thing;' although the fashion of the whole world should be against you.
Should you regard the advice of this section, the counsels of the next will be of less consequence; for you will have removed one of the strongest inducements to speculation, as well as to overtrading.
Section XVI. On Speculation
Young men are apt to be fond of speculation. This propensity is very early developed—first in the family—and afterwards at the school. By speculation, I mean the purchasing of something which you do not want for use, solely with a view to sell it again at a large profit; but on the sale of which there is a hazard.
When purchases of this sort are made with the person's own cash, they are not so unreasonable, but when they are made by one who is deeply indebted to his fellow beings, or with money borrowed for the purpose, it is not a whit better than gambling, let the practice be defended by whom it may: and has been in every country, especially in this, a fruitful source of poverty, misery, and suicide. Grant that this species of gambling has arisen from the facility of obtaining the fictitious means of making the purchase, still it is not the less necessary that I beseech you not to practise it, and if engaged in it already, to disentangle yourself as soon as you can. Your life, while thus engaged, is that of a gamester—call it by what smoother name you may. It is a life of constant anxiety, desire to overreach, and general gloom; enlivened now and then, by a gleam of hope or of success. Even that success is sure to lead to farther adventures; till at last, a thousand to one, that your fate is that of 'the pitcher to the well.'
The great temptation to this, as well as to every other species of gambling, is, the success of the few. As young men, who crowd to the army in search of rank and renown, never look into the ditch that holds their slaughtered companions, but have their eye constantly fixed on the commander-in-chief; and as each of them belongs to the same profession, and is sure to be conscious that he has equal merit, every one dreams himself the suitable successor of him who is surrounded with aides-de-camp, and who moves battalions and columns by his nod;—so with the rising generation of 'speculators.' They see those whom they suppose nature and good laws made to black shoes, or sweep chimneys or streets, rolling in carriages, or sitting in palaces, surrounded by servants or slaves; and they can see no earthly reason why they should not all do the same. They forget the thousands, and tens of thousands, who in making the attempt, have reduced themselves to beggary.
Section XVII. On Lawsuits
In every situation in life, avoid the law. Man's nature must be changed, perhaps, before lawsuits will entirely cease; and yet it is in the power of most men to avoid them, in a considerable degree.
One excellent rule is, to have as little as possible to do with those who are fond of litigation; and who, upon every slight occasion, talk of an appeal to the law. This may be called a disease; and, like many other diseases, it is contagious. Besides, these persons, from their frequent litigations, contract a habit of using the technical terms of the courts, in which they take a pride, and are therefore, as companions, peculiarly disgusting to men of sense. To such beings a lawsuit is a luxury, instead of being regarded as a source of anxiety, and a real scourge. Such men are always of a quarrelsome disposition, and avail themselves of every opportunity to indulge in that which is mischievous to their neighbors.
In thousands of instances, men go to law for the indulgence of mere anger. The Germans are said to bring spite-actions against one another, and to harass their poorer neighbors from motives of pure revenge. But I hope this is a mistake; for I am unwilling to think so ill of that intelligent nation.
Before you decide to go to law, consider well the cost, for if you win your suit and are poorer than you were before, what do you gain by it? You only imbibe a little additional anger against your opponent; you injure him, but at the same time, injure yourself more. Better to put up with the loss of one dollar than of two; to which is to be added, all the loss of time, all the trouble, and all the mortification and anxiety attending a lawsuit. To set an attorney at work to worry and torment another man, and alarm his family as well as himself, while you are sitting quietly at home, is baseness. If a man owe you money which he cannot pay, why add to his distress, without even the chance of benefiting yourself? Thousands have injured themselves by resorting to the law, while very few, indeed, ever bettered their condition by it.
Nearly a million of dollars was once expended in England, during the progress of a single lawsuit. Those who brought the suit expended $444,000 to carry it through; and the opposite party was acquitted, and only sentenced to pay the cost of prosecution, amounting to $318,754. Another was sustained in court fifty years, at an enormous expense. In Meadville, in Pennsylvania, a petty law case occurred in which the damages recovered were only ten dollars, while the costs of court were one hundred. In one of the New England States, a lawsuit occurred, which could not have cost the parties less than $1,000 each; and yet after all this expense, they mutually agreed to take the matter out of court, and suffer it to end where it was. Probably it was the wisest course they could possibly have taken. It is also stated that a quarrel occurred between two persons in Middlebury, Vermont, a few years since, about six eggs, which was carried from one court to another, till it cost the parties $4,000.
I am well acquainted with a gentleman who was once engaged in a lawsuit, (than which none perhaps, was ever more just) where his claim was one to two thousand dollars; but it fell into such a train that a final decision could not have been expected in many months;—perhaps not in years. The gentleman was unwilling to be detained and perplexed with waiting for a trial, and he accordingly paid the whole amount of costs to that time, amounting to $150, went about his business, and believes, to this hour, that it was the wisest course he could have pursued.
A spirit of litigation often disturbs the peace of a whole neighborhood, perpetually, for several generations; and the hostile feeling thus engendered seems to be transmitted, like the color of the eyes or the hair, from father to son. Indeed it not unfrequently happens, that a lawsuit in a neighborhood, a society, or even a church, awakens feelings of discord, which never terminate, but at the death of the parties concerned.
How ought young men, then, to avoid, as they would a pestilence, this fiend-like spirit! How ought they to labor to settle all disputes—should disputes unfortunately arise,—without this tremendous resort! On the strength of much observation,—not experience, for I have been saved the pain of learning in that painful school, on this subject,—I do not hesitate to recommend the settlement of such difficulties by arbitration.
One thing however should be remembered. Would you dry up the river of discord, you must first exhaust the fountains and rills which form it. The moment you indulge one impassioned or angry feeling against your fellow being, you have taken a step in the high road which leads to litigation, war and murder. Thus it is, as I have already told you, that 'He that hateth his brother is a murderer.'
I have heard a father—for he hath the name of parent, though he little deserved it—gravely contend that there was no such thing as avoiding quarrels and lawsuits. He thought there was one thing, however, which might prevent them, which was to take the litigious individual and 'tar and feather' him without ceremony. How often is it true that mankind little know 'what manner of spirit they are of;' and to how many of us will this striking reproof of the Saviour apply!
Multitudes of men have been in active business during a long life, and yet avoided every thing in the shape of a lawsuit. 'What man has done, man may do;' in this respect, at the least.
Section XVIII. On Hard Dealing
Few things are more common among business-doing men, than hard dealing; yet few things reflect more dishonor on a Christian community. It seems, in general, to be regarded as morally right,—in defiance of all rules, whether golden or not,—to get as 'good a bargain' in trade, as possible; and this is defended as unavoidable, on account of the state of society! But what produced this state of society? Was it not the spirit of avarice? What will change it for the better? Nothing but the renunciation of this spirit, and a willingness to sacrifice, in this respect, for the public welfare.
We are pagans in this matter, in spite of our professions. It would be profitable for us to take lessons on this subject from the Mohammedans. They never have, it is said, but one price for an article; and to ask the meanest shopkeeper to lower his price, is to insult him. Would this were the only point, in which the Christian community are destined yet to learn even from Mohammedans.
To ask one price and take another, or to offer one price and give another, besides being a loss of time, is highly dishonorable to the parties. It is, in fact, a species of lying; and it answers no one advantageous purpose, either to the buyer or seller. I hope that every young man will start in life with a resolution never to be hard in his dealings.
'It is an evil which will correct itself;' say those who wish to avail themselves of its present advantages a little longer. But when and where did a general evil correct itself? When or where was an erroneous practice permanently removed, except by a change of public sentiment? And what has ever produced a change in the public sentiment but the determination of individuals, or their combined action?
While on this topic, I will hazard the assertion—even at the risk of its being thought misplaced—that great effects are yet to be produced on public opinion, in this country, by associations of spirited and intelligent young men. I am not now speaking of associations for political purposes, though I am not sure that even these might not be usefully conducted; but of associations for mutual improvement, and for the correction and elevation of the public morals. The "Boston Young Men's Society," afford a specimen of what may be done in this way; and numerous associations of the kind have sprung up and are springing up in various parts of the country. Judiciously managed, they must inevitably do great good;—though it should not be forgotten that they may also be productive of immense evil.
CHAPTER III.
On Amusements and Indulgences
Section I. On Gaming
Even Voltaire asserts that 'every gambler is, has been, or will be a robber.' Few practices are more ancient, few more general, and few, if any, more pernicious than gaming. An English writer has ingeniously suggested that the Devil himself might have been the first player, and that he contrived the plan of introducing games among men, to afford them temporary amusement, and divert their attention from themselves. 'What numberless disciples,' he adds, 'of his sable majesty, might we not count in our own metropolis!'
Whether his satanic majesty has any very direct agency in this matter or not, one thing is certain;—gaming is opposed to the happiness of mankind, and ought, in every civilized country, to be suppressed by public opinion. By gaming, however, I here refer to those cases only in which property is at stake, to be won or lost. The subject of diversions will be considered in another place.
Gaming is an evil, because, in the first place, it is a practice which produces nothing. He who makes two blades of grass grow where but one grew before, has usually been admitted to be a public benefactor; for he is a producer. So is he who combines or arranges these productions in a useful manner,—I mean the mechanic, manufacturer, &c. He is equally a public benefactor, too, who produces mental or moral wealth, as well as physical. In gaming, it is true, property is shifted from one individual to another, and here and there one probably gains more than he loses; but nothing is actually made, or produced. If the whole human family were all skilful gamesters, and should play constantly for a year, there would not be a dollar more in the world at the end of the year, than there was at its commencement. On the contrary, is it not obvious that there would be much less, besides even an immense loss of time?9
But, secondly, gaming favors corruption of manners. It is difficult to trace the progress of the gamester's mind, from the time he commences his downward course, but we know too well the goal at which he is destined to arrive. There may be exceptions, but not many; generally speaking, every gamester, sooner or later travels the road to perdition, and often adds to his own wo, by dragging others along with him.
Thirdly, it discourages industry. He who is accustomed to receive large sums at once, which bear no sort of proportion to the labor by which they are obtained, will gradually come to regard the moderate but constant and certain rewards of industrious exertion as insipid. He is also in danger of falling into the habit of paying an undue regard to hazard or chance, and of becoming devoted to the doctrine of fatality.
As to the few who are skilful enough to gain more, on the whole, than they lose, scarcely one of them pays any regard to prudence or economy in his expenditures. What is thus lightly acquired, is lightly disposed of. Or if, in one instance in a thousand, it happens otherwise, the result is still unfavorable. It is but to make the miser still more a miser, and the covetous only the more so. Man is so constituted as to be unable to bear, with safety, a rapid accumulation of property. To the truth of this, all history attests, whether ancient or modern, sacred or profane.
The famous philosopher Locke, in his 'Thoughts on Education,' thus observes: 'It is certain, gaming leaves no satisfaction behind it to those who reflect when it is over; and it no way profits either body or mind. As to their estates, if it strike so deep as to concern them, it is a trade then, and not a recreation, wherein few thrive; and at best a thriving gamester has but a poor trade of it, who fills his pockets at the price of his reputation.'
In regard to the criminality of the practice, a late writer has the following striking remarks.
'As to gaming, it is always criminal, either in itself or in its tendency. The basis of it is covetousness; a desire to take from others something for which you have neither given, nor intend to give an equivalent. No gambler was ever yet a happy man, and few gamblers have escaped being positively miserable. Remember, too, that to game for nothing is still gaming; and naturally leads to gaming for something. It is sacrificing time, and that, too, for the worst of purposes.
'I have kept house for nearly forty years; I have reared a family; I have entertained as many friends as most people; and I never had cards, dice, a chess board, nor any implement of gaming under my roof. The hours that young men spend in this way, are hours murdered; precious hours that ought to be spent either in reading or in writing; or in rest; preparatory to the duties of the dawn.
'Though I do not agree with those base flatterers who declare the army to be the best school for statesmen, it is certainly a school in which we learn, experimentally, many useful lessons; and in this school I learned that men fond of gaming, are rarely, if ever, trust-worthy. I have known many a decent man rejected in the way of promotion, only because he was addicted to gaming. Men, in that state of life, cannot ruin themselves by gaming, for they possess no fortune, nor money; but the taste for gaming is always regarded as an indication of a radically bad disposition; and I can truly say that I never in my whole life—and it has been a long and eventful one—knew a man fond of gaming, who was not, in some way or other, unworthy of confidence. This vice creeps on by very slow degrees, till, at last, it becomes an ungovernable passion, swallowing up every good and kind feeling of the heart.'
For my own part I know not the names of cards; and could never take interest enough in card-playing to remember them. I have always wondered how sober and intelligent people, who have consciences, and believe the doctrine of accountability to God—how professing Christians even, as is the case in some parts of this country, can sit whole evenings at cards. Why, what notions have they of the value of time? Can they conceive of Him, whose example we are bound to follow, as engaged in this way? The thought should shock us! What a Herculean task Christianity has yet to accomplish!
The excess of this vice has caused even the overthrow of empires. It leads to conspiracies, and creates conspirators. Men overwhelmed with debt, are always ready to obey the orders of any bold chieftain who may attempt a decisive stroke, even against government itself. Catiline had very soon under his command an army of scoundrels. 'Every man,' says Sallust, 'who by his follies or losses at the gaming table had consumed the inheritance of his fathers, and all who were sufferers by such misery, were the friends of this perverse man.'
Perhaps this vice has nowhere been carried to greater excess than in France. There it has its administration, its chief, its stockholders, its officers, and its priests. It has its domestics, its pimps, its spies, its informers, its assassins, its bullies, its aiders, its abettors,—in fact, its scoundrels of every description; particularly its hireling swindlers, who are paid for decoying the unwary into this 'hell upon earth,' so odious to morality, and so destructive to virtue and Christianity.
In England, this vice has at all times been looked upon as one of pernicious consequence to the commonwealth, and has, therefore, long been prohibited. The money lost in this way, is even recoverable again by law. Some of the laws on this subject were enacted as early as the time of Queen Anne, and not a few of the penalties are very severe. Every species of gambling is strictly forbidden in the British army, and occasionally punished with great severity, by order of the commander in chief. These facts show the state of public opinion in that country, in regard to the evil tendency of this practice.
Men of immense wealth have, in some instances, entered gambling houses, and in the short space of an hour have found themselves reduced to absolute beggary. 'Such men often lose not only what their purses or their bankers can supply, but houses, lands, equipage, jewels; in fine, every thing of which they call themselves masters, even to their very clothes; then perhaps a pistol terminates their mortal career.'
Fifteen hours a day are devoted by many infatuated persons in some countries to this unhappy practice. In the middle of the day, while the wife directs with prudence and economy the administration of her husband's house, he abandons himself to become the prey of rapacious midnight and mid-day robbers. The result is, that he contracts debts, is stripped of his property, and his wife and children are sent to the alms-house, whilst he, perhaps, perishes in a prison.
My life has been chiefly spent in a situation where comparatively little of this vice prevails. Yet, I have known one individual who divided his time between hunting and gaming. About four days in the week were regularly devoted to the latter practice. From breakfast to dinner, from dinner to tea, from tea to nine o'clock, this was his regular employment, and was pursued incessantly. The man was about seventy years of age. He did not play for very large sums, it is true; seldom more than five to twenty dollars; and it was his uniform practice to retire precisely at nine o'clock, and without supper.
Generally, however, the night is more especially devoted to this employment. I have occasionally been at public houses, or on board vessels where a company was playing, and have known many hundreds of dollars lost in a single night. In one instance, the most horrid midnight oaths and blasphemy were indulged. Besides, there is an almost direct connection between the gambling table and brothel; and the one is seldom long unaccompanied by the other.
Scarcely less obvious and direct is the connection between this vice and intemperance. If the drunkard is not always a gamester, the gamester is almost without exception intemperate. There is for the most part a union of the three—horrible as the alliance may be—I mean gambling, intemperance, and debauchery.
There is even a species of intoxication attendant on gambling. Rede, in speaking of one form of this vice which prevails in Europe, says; 'It is, in fact, a prompt murderer; irregular as all other games of hazard—rapid as lightning in its movements—its strokes succeed each other with an activity that redoubles the ardor of the player's blood, and often deprives him of the advantage of reflection. In fact, a man after half an hour's play, who for the whole night may not have taken any thing stronger than water, has all the appearance of drunkenness.' And who has not seen the flushed cheek and the red eye, produced simply by the excitement of an ordinary gaming table?
It is an additional proof of the evil of gaming that every person devoted to it, feels it to be an evil. Why then does he not refrain? Because he has sold himself a slave to the deadly habit, as effectually as the drunkard to his cups.
Burgh, in his Dignity of Human Nature, sums up the evils of this practice in a single paragraph:
'Gaming is an amusement wholly unworthy of rational beings, having neither the pretence of exercising the body, of exerting ingenuity, or of giving any natural pleasure, and owing its entertainment wholly to an unnatural and vitiated taste;—the cause of infinite loss of time, of enormous destruction of money, of irritating the passions, of stirring up avarice, of innumerable sneaking tricks and frauds, of encouraging idleness, of disgusting people against their proper employments, and of sinking and debasing all that is truly great and valuable in the mind.'
Let me warn you, then, my young readers,—nay, more, let me urge you never to enter this dreadful road. Shun it as you would the road to destruction. Take not the first step,—the moment you do, all may be lost. Say not that you can command yourselves, and can stop when you approach the confines of danger. So thousands have thought as sincerely as yourselves—and yet they fell. 'The probabilities that we shall fall where so many have fallen,' says Dr. Dwight, 'are millions to one; and the contrary opinion is only the dream of lunacy.'
When you are inclined to think yourselves safe, consider the multitudes who once felt themselves equally so, have been corrupted, distressed, and ruined by gaming, both for this world, and that which is to come. Think how many families have been plunged by it in beggary, and overwhelmed by it in vice. Think how many persons have become liars at the gaming table; how many perjured; how many drunkards; how many blasphemers; how many suicides. 'If Europe,' said Montesquieu, 'is to be ruined, it will be ruined by gaming.' If the United States are to be ruined, gaming in some of its forms will be a very efficient agent in accomplishing the work.
Some of the most common games practised in this country, are cards, dice, billiards, shooting matches, and last, though not least, lotteries. Horse-racing and cockfighting are still in use in some parts of the United States, though less so than formerly. In addition to the general remarks already made, I now proceed to notice a few of the particular forms of this vice.