02 - Letter 2

LETTER II TO A YOUNG MAN

53. In the foregoing Letter, I have given my advice to a Youth. In addressing myself to you, I am to presume that you have entered upon your present stage of life, having acted upon the precepts contained in that letter; and that, of course, you are a sober, abstinent, industrious and well-informed young man. In the succeeding letters, which will be addressed to the Lover, the Husband, the Father and the Citizen, I shall, of course, have to include my notion of your duties as a master, and as a person employed by another. In the present letter, therefore, I shall confine myself principally to the conduct of a young man with regard to the management of his means, or money.

54. Be you in what line of life you may, it will be amongst your misfortunes if you have not time properly to attend to this matter; for it very frequently happens, it has happened to thousands upon thousands, not only to be ruined, according to the common acceptation of the word; not only to be made poor, and to suffer from poverty, in consequence of want of attention to pecuniary matters; but it has frequently, and even generally, happened, that a want of attention to these matters has impeded the progress of science, and of genius itself. A man, oppressed with pecuniary cares and dangers, must be next to a miracle, if he have his mind in a state fit for intellectual labours; to say nothing of the temptations, arising from such distress, to abandon good principles, to suppress useful opinions and useful facts; and, in short, to become a disgrace to his kindred, and an evil to his country, instead of being an honour to the former and a blessing to the latter. To be poor and independent, is very nearly an impossibility.

55. But, then, poverty is not a positive, but a relative term. BURKE observed, and very truly, that a labourer who earned a sufficiency to maintain him as a labourer, and to maintain him in a suitable manner; to give him a sufficiency of good food, of clothing, of lodging, and of fuel, ought not to be called a poor man; for that, though he had little riches, though his, compared with that of a lord, was a state of poverty, it was not a state of poverty in itself. When, therefore, I say that poverty is the cause of a depression of spirit, of inactivity and of servility in men of literary talent, I must say, at the same time, that the evil arises from their own fault; from their having created for themselves imaginary wants; from their having indulged in unnecessary enjoyments, and from their having caused that to be poverty, which would not have been poverty, if they had been moderate in their enjoyments.

56. As it may be your lot (such has been mine) to live by your literary talent, I will here, before I proceed to matter more applicable to persons in other states of life, observe, that I cannot form an idea of a mortal more wretched than a man of real talent, compelled to curb his genius, and to submit himself in the exercise of that genius, to those whom he knows to be far inferior to himself, and whom he must despise from the bottom of his soul. The late Mr. WILLIAM GIFFORD, who was the son of a shoemaker at ASHBURTON in Devonshire; who was put to school and sent to the university at the expense of a generous and good clergyman of the name of COOKSON, and who died, the other day, a sort of whipper-in of MURRAY’S QUARTERLY REVIEW; this was a man of real genius; and, to my certain personal knowledge, he detested, from the bottom of his soul, the whole of the paper-money and Boroughmongering system, and despised those by whom the system was carried on. But, he had imaginary wants; he had been bred up in company with the rich and the extravagant; expensive indulgences had been made necessary to him by habit; and, when in the year 1798, or thereabouts, he had to choose between a bit of bacon, a scrag of mutton, and a lodging at ten shillings a week, on the one side, and made-dishes, wine, a fine house and a footman on the other side, he chose the latter. He became the servile Editor of CANNING’S Anti-jacobin newspaper; and he, who had more wit and learning than all the rest of the writers put together, became the miserable tool in circulating their attacks upon everything that was hostile to a system which he deplored and detested. But he secured the made-dishes, the wine, the footman and the coachman. A sinecure as ’clerk of the Foreign Estreats,’ gave him 329l. a year, a double commissionership of the lottery gave him 600l. or 700l. more; and, at a later period, his Editorship of the Quarterly Review gave him perhaps as much more. He rolled in his carriage for several years; he fared sumptuously; he was buried at Westminster Abbey, of which his friend and formerly his brother pamphleteer in defence of PITT was the Dean; and never is he to be heard of more! Mr. GIFFORD would have been full as happy; his health would have been better, his life longer, and his name would have lived for ages, if he could have turned to the bit of bacon and scrag of mutton in 1798; for his learning and talents were such, his reasonings so clear and conclusive, and his wit so pointed and keen, that his writings must have been generally read, must have been of long duration! and, indeed, must have enabled him (he being always a single man) to live in his latter days in as good style as that which he procured by becoming a sinecurist, a pensioner and a hack, all which he was from the moment he lent himself to the Quarterly Review. Think of the mortification of such a man, when he was called upon to justify the power-of-imprisonment bill in 1817! But to go into particulars would be tedious: his life was a life of luxurious misery, than which a worse is not to be imagined.

57. So that poverty is, except where there is an actual want of food and raiment, a thing much more imaginary than real. The shame of poverty, the shame of being thought poor, is a great and fatal weakness, though arising, in this country, from the fashion of the times themselves. When a good man, as in the phraseology of the city, means a rich man, we are not to wonder that every one wishes to be thought richer than he is. When adulation is sure to follow wealth, and when contempt would be awarded to many if they were not wealthy, who are spoken of with deference, and even lauded to the skies, because their riches are great and notorious; when this is the case, we are not to be surprised that men are ashamed to be thought to be poor. This is one of the greatest of all the dangers at the outset of life: it has brought thousands and hundreds of thousands to ruin, even to pecuniary ruin. One of the most amiable features in the character of American society is this; that men never boast of their riches, and never disguise their poverty; but they talk of both as of any other matter fit for public 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, men, not worth a shilling, have been chosen by the people and entrusted with their rights and interests, in preference to men who ride in their carriages.

58. This shame of being thought poor, is not only dishonourable in itself, and fatally injurious to men of talent; but it is ruinous even in a pecuniary point of view, and equally destructive to farmers, traders, and even gentlemen of landed estate. It leads to everlasting efforts to disguise one’s poverty: the carriage, the servants, the wine, (oh, that fatal wine!) the spirits, the decanters, the glasses, all the table apparatus, the dress, the horses, the dinners, the parties, all 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 the want of means so to give and keep; and thus thousands upon thousands are yearly brought into a state of real poverty by their great anxiety not to be thought poor. Look round you, mark well what you behold, and say if this be not the case. In how many instances have you seen most amiable and even most industrious families brought to ruin by nothing but this! Mark it well; resolve to set this false shame at defiance, and when you have done that, you have laid the first stone of the surest foundation of your future tranquillity of mind. There are thousands of families, at this very moment, who are thus struggling to keep up appearances. The farmers accommodate themselves to circumstances more easily than tradesmen and professional men. They live at a greater distance from their neighbours: they can change their style of living unperceived: they can banish the decanter, change the dishes for a bit of bacon, make a treat out of a rasher and eggs, and the world is none the wiser all the while. But the tradesman, the doctor, the attorney, and the trader, cannot make the change so quietly, and unseen. The accursed wine, which is a sort of criterion of the style of living, a sort of 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 come down to their proper level in a short time. The accursed decanter cries footman or waiting maid, puts bells to the side of the wall, screams aloud for carpets; and when I am asked, ’Lord, what is a glass of wine?’ my answer is, that, in this country, it is everything; it is the pitcher of the key; it demands all the other unnecessary expenses; it is injurious to health, and must be injurious, every bottle of wine that is drunk containing a certain portion of ardent spirits, besides other drugs deleterious in their nature; and, of all the friends to the doctors, this fashionable beverage is the greatest. And, which adds greatly to the folly, or, I should say, the real vice of using it, is, that the parties themselves, nine times out of ten, do not drink it by choice; do not like it; do not relish it; but use it from mere ostentation, being ashamed to be seen even by their own servants, not to drink wine. At the very moment I am writing this, there are thousands of families in and near London, who daily have wine upon their tables, and who drink it too, merely because their own servants should not suspect them to be poor, and not deem them to be genteel; and thus families by thousands are ruined, only because they are ashamed to be thought poor.

59. There is no shame belonging to poverty, which frequently arises from the virtues of the impoverished parties. Not so frequently, indeed, as from vice, folly, and indiscretion; but still very frequently. And as the Scripture tells us, that we are not to ’despise the poor because he is poor’; so we ought not to honour the rich because he is rich. The true way is, to take a fair survey of the character of a man as depicted in his conduct, and to respect him, or despise him, according to a due estimate of that character. No country upon earth exhibits so many, as this, of those fatal terminations of life, called suicides. These arise, in nine instances out of ten, from this very source. The victims are, in general, what may be fairly called insane; but their insanity almost always arises from the dread of poverty; not from the dread of a want of the means of 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; a dread which is prevalent hardly in any country but this. Looked at in its true light, what is there in poverty to make a man take away his own life? he is the same man that he was before: he has the same body and the same mind: if he even foresee a great alteration in his dress or his diet, why should he kill himself on that account? Are these all the things that a man wishes to live for? But, such is the fact; so great is the disgrace upon this country, and so numerous and terrible are the evils arising from this dread of being thought to be poor.

60. Nevertheless, men ought to take care of their means, ought to use them prudently and sparingly, and to keep their expenses always within the bounds of their income, be it what it may. One of the effectual means of doing this is to purchase with ready money. ST. PAUL says, ’Owe no man any thing:’ and of his numerous precepts this is by no means the least worthy of our attention. Credit has been boasted of as a very fine thing: to decry credit seems to be setting oneself up against the opinions of the whole world; and I remember a paper in the FREEHOLDER or the SPECTATOR, published just after the funding system had begun, representing ’PUBLIC Credit’ as a GODDESS, enthroned in a temple dedicated to her by her votaries, amongst whom she is dispensing blessings of every description. It must be more than forty years since I read this paper, which I read soon after the time when the late Mr. PITT uttered in Parliament an expression of his anxious hope, that his ’name would be inscribed on the monument which he should raise to ’public credit.’ Time has taught me, that PUBLIC CREDIT means, the contracting of debts which a nation never can pay; and I have lived to see this Goddess produce effects, in my country, which Satan himself never could have produced. It is a very bewitching Goddess; and not less fatal in her influence in private than in public affairs. It has been carried in this latter respect to such a pitch, that scarcely any transaction, however low and inconsiderable in amount, takes place in any other way. There is a trade in London, called the ’tally-trade,’ by which, household goods, coals, clothing, all sorts of things, are sold upon credit, the seller keeping a tally, and receiving payment for the goods, little by little; so that the income and the earnings of the buyers are always anticipated; are always gone, in fact, before they come in or are earned; the sellers receiving, of course, a great deal more than the proper profit.

61. Without supposing you to descend to so low a grade as this, and even supposing you to be lawyer, doctor, parson, or merchant; it is still the same thing, if you purchase on credit, and not, perhaps, in a much less degree of disadvantage. Besides the higher price that you pay there is the temptation to have what you really do not want. The cost seems a trifle, when you have not to pay the money until a future time. It has been observed, and very truly observed, that men used to lay out a one-pound note when they would not lay out a sovereign; a consciousness of the intrinsic value of the things produces a retentiveness in the latter case more than in the former: the sight and the touch assist the mind in forming its conclusions, and the one-pound note was parted with, when the sovereign would have been kept. Far greater is the difference between Credit and Ready money. Innumerable things are not bought at all with ready money, which would be bought in case of trust: it is so much easier to order a thing than to pay for it. A future day; a day of payment must come, to be sure, but that is little thought of at the time; but if the money were to be drawn out, the moment the thing was received or offered, this question would arise, ’Can I do without it?’ Is this thing indispensable; am I compelled to have it, or suffer a loss or injury greater in amount than the cost of the thing? If this question were put, every time we make a purchase, seldom should we hear of those suicides which are such a disgrace to this country.

62. I am aware, that it will be said, and very truly said, that the concerns of merchants; that the purchasing of great estates, and various other great transactions, cannot be carried on in this manner; but these are rare exceptions to the rule; even in these cases there might be much less of bills and bonds, and all the sources of litigation; but in the every-day business of life; in transactions with the butcher, the baker, the tailor, the shoemaker, what excuse can there be for pleading the example of the merchant, who carries on his work by ships and exchanges? I was delighted, some time ago, by being told of a young man, who, upon being advised to keep a little account of all he received and expended, answered, ’that his business was not to keep account books: that he was sure not to make a mistake as to his income; and that, as to his expenditure, the little bag that held his sovereigns would be an infallible guide, as he never bought anything that he did not immediately pay for.’

63. I believe that nobody will deny, that, generally speaking, you pay for the same article a fourth part more in the case of trust than you do in the case of ready money. Suppose, then, the baker, butcher, tailor, and shoemaker, receive from you only one hundred pounds a year. Put that together; that is to say, multiply twenty-five by twenty, and you will find, that, at the end of twenty years, you have 500l., besides the accumulating and growing interest. The fathers of the Church (I mean the ancient ones), and also the canons of the Church, forbade selling on trust at a higher price than for ready money, which was in effect to forbid trust; and this, doubtless, was one of the great objects which those wise and pious men had in view; for they were fathers in legislation and morals as well as in religion. But the doctrine of these fathers and canons no longer prevails; they are set at nought by the present age, even in the countries that adhere to their religion. ADDISON’S Goddess has prevailed over the fathers and the canons; and men not only make a difference in the price regulated by the difference in the mode of payment; but it would be absurd to expect them to do otherwise. They must not only charge something for the want of the use of the money; but they must charge something additional for the risk of its loss, which may frequently arise, and most frequently does arise, from the misfortunes of those to whom they have assigned their goods on trust. The man, therefore, who purchases on trust, not only pays for the trust, but he also pays his due share of what the tradesman loses by trust; and, after all, he is not so good a customer as the man who purchases cheaply with ready money; for there is his name indeed in the tradesman’s book; but with that name the tradesman cannot go to market to get a fresh supply.

64. Infinite are the ways in which gentlemen lose by this sort of dealing. Servants go and order sometimes things not wanted at all; at other times, more than is wanted; at others, things of a higher quality; and all this would be obviated by purchasing with ready money; for, whether through the hands of the party himself, or through those of an inferior, there would always be an actual counting out of the money; somebody would see the thing bought and see the money paid; and, as the master would give the housekeeper or steward a bag of money at the time, he would see the money too, would set a proper value upon it, and would just desire to know upon what it had been expended.

65. How is it that farmers are so exact, and show such a disposition to retrench in the article of labour, when they seem to think little, or nothing, about the sums which they pay in tax upon malt, wine, sugar, tea, soap, candles, tobacco, and various other things? You find the utmost difficulty in making them understand, that they are affected by these. The reason is, that they see the money which they give to the labourer on each succeeding Saturday night; but they do not see that which they give in taxes on the articles before mentioned. Why is it that they make such an outcry about the six or seven millions a year which are paid in poor-rates, and say not a word about the sixty millions a year raised in other taxes? The consumer pays all; and, therefore, they are as much interested in the one as the other; and yet the farmers think of no tax but the poor tax. The reason is, that the latter is collected from them in money: they see it go out of their hands into the hands of another; and, therefore, they are everlastingly anxious to reduce the poor-rates, and they take care to keep them within the smallest possible bounds.

66. Just thus would it be with every man that never purchased but with ready money: he would make the amount as low as possible in proportion to his means: this care and frugality would make an addition to his means, and therefore, in the end, at the end of his life, he would have had a great deal more to spend, and still be as rich as if he had gone in trust; while he would have lived in tranquillity all the while, and would have avoided all the endless papers and writings and receipts and bills and disputes and law-suits inseparable from a system of credit. This is by no means a lesson of stinginess; by no means tends to inculcate a heaping up of money; for the purchasing with ready money really gives you more money to purchase with; you can afford to have a greater quantity and variety of things; and I will engage that, if horses or servants be your taste, the saving in this way gives you an additional horse or an additional servant, if you be in any profession or engaged in any considerable trade. In towns, it tends to accelerate your pace along the streets; for the temptation of the windows is answered in a moment by clapping your hand upon your thigh; and the question, ’Do I really want that?’ is sure to occur to you immediately, because the touch of the money is sure to put that thought in your mind.

67. Now, supposing you to have a plenty; to have a fortune beyond your wants, would not the money which you would save in this way be very well applied in acts of real benevolence? Can you walk many yards in the streets; can you ride a mile in the country; can you go to half-a-dozen cottages; can you, in short, open your eyes, without seeing some human being, some one born in the same country with yourself, and who, on that account alone, has some claim upon your good wishes and your charity; can you open your eyes without seeing some person to whom even a small portion of your annual savings would convey gladness of heart? Your own heart will suggest the answer; and, if there were no motive but this, what need I say more in the advice which I have here tendered to you?

68. Another great evil arising from this desire to be thought rich; or, rather from the desire not to be thought poor, is the destructive thing which has been honoured by the name of ’speculation;’ but which ought to be called Gambling. It is a purchasing of something which you do not want either in your family or in the way of ordinary trade: a something to be sold again with a great profit; and on the sale of which there is a considerable hazard. When purchases of this sort are made with ready money, they are not so offensive to reason and not attended with such risk; but when they are made with money borrowed for the purpose, they are neither more nor less than gambling transactions; and they have been, in this country, a source of ruin, misery, and suicide, admitting of no adequate description. I grant that this gambling has arisen from the influence of the ’Goddess’ before mentioned; I grant that it has arisen from the facility of obtaining the fictitious means of making the purchases; and I grant that that facility has been created by the system under the baneful influence of which we live. But it is not the less necessary that I beseech you not to practise such gambling; that I beseech you, if you be engaged in it, to disentangle yourself from it as soon as you can. Your life, while you are thus engaged, is the life of the gamester; a life of constant anxiety; constant desire to over-reach; constant apprehension; general gloom, enlivened, now and then, by a gleam of hope or of success. Even that success is sure to lead to further adventures; and, at last, a thousand to one, that your fate is that of the pitcher to the well.

69. The great temptation to this gambling is, as is the case in other gambling, 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 General-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 deems himself the suitable successor of him who is surrounded with Aides des camps, and who moves battalions and columns by his nod; so with the rising generation of ’speculators:’ they see the great estates that have succeeded the pencil-box and the orange-basket; they see those whom nature and good laws made to black shoes, sweep chimnies or the streets, rolling in carriages, or sitting in saloons surrounded by gaudy footmen with napkins twisted round their thumbs; and they can see no earthly reason why they should not all do the same; forgetting the thousands and thousands, who, in making the attempt, have reduced themselves to that beggary which, before their attempt, they would have regarded as a thing wholly impossible.

70. In all situations of life, avoid the trammels of the law. Man’s nature must be changed before law-suits will cease; and, perhaps, it would be next to impossible to make them less frequent than they are in the present state of this country; but though no man, who has any property at all, can say that he will have nothing to do with law-suits, it is in the power of most men to avoid them in a considerable degree. One good rule is to have as little as possible to do with any man who is fond of law-suits, and who, upon every slight occasion, talks of an appeal to the law. Such 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, companions peculiarly disgusting to men of sense. To such men a law-suit is a luxury, instead of being as it is, to men of ordinary minds, a source of anxiety and a real and substantial scourge. Such men are always of a quarrelsome disposition, and avail themselves of every opportunity to indulge in that which is mischievous to their neighbours. 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 neighbours from motives of pure revenge. They have carried this their disposition with them to America; for which reason no one likes to live in a German neighbourhood.

71. Before you go to law consider well the cost; for if you win your suit and are poorer than you were before, what do you accomplish? You only imbibe a little additional anger against your opponent; you injure him, but do harm to yourself. Better to put up with the loss of one pound than of two, to which latter is to be added all the loss of time, all the trouble, and all the mortification and anxiety attending a law-suit. To set an attorney to work to worry and torment another man is a very base act; to alarm his family as well as himself, while you are sitting quietly at home. If a man owe you money which he cannot pay, why add to his distress without the chance of benefit to yourself? Thousands of men have injured themselves by resorting to the law; while very few ever bettered themselves by it, except such resort were unavoidable.

72. Nothing is much more discreditable than what is called hard dealing. They say of the Turks, that they know nothing of two prices for the same article; and that to ask an abatement of the lowest shopkeeper is to insult him. It would be well if Christians imitated Mahometans in this respect. To ask one price and take another, or to offer one price and give another, besides the loss of time that it occasions, is highly dishonourable to the parties, and especially when pushed to the extent of solemn protestations. It is, in fact, a species of lying; and it answers no one advantageous purpose to either buyer or seller. I hope that every young man who reads this, will start in life with a resolution never to higgle and lie in dealings. There is this circumstance in favour of the bookseller’s business: every book has its fixed price, and no one ever asks an abatement. If it were thus in all other trades, how much time would be saved, and how much immorality prevented!

73. As to the spending of your time, your business or your profession is to claim the priority of everything else. Unless that be duly attended to, there can be no real pleasure in any other employment of a portion of your time. Men, however, must have some leisure, some relaxation from business; and in the choice of this relaxation much of your happiness will depend. Where fields and gardens are at hand, they present the most rational scenes for leisure. As to company, I have said enough in the former letter to deter any young man from that of drunkards and rioting companions; but there is such a thing as your quiet ’pipe-and-pot-companions,’ which are, perhaps, the most fatal of all. Nothing can be conceived more dull, more stupid, more the contrary of edification and rational amusement, than sitting, sotting, over a pot and a glass, sending out smoke from the head, and articulating, at intervals, nonsense about all sorts of things. Seven years service as a galley-slave would be more bearable to a man of sense, than seven months confinement to society like this. Yet, such is the effect of habit, that, if a young man become a frequenter of such scenes, the idle propensity sticks to him for life. Some companions, however, every man must have; but these every well-behaved man will find in private houses, where families are found residing and where the suitable intercourse takes place between women and men. A man that cannot pass an evening without drink merits the name of a sot. Why should there be drink for the purpose of carrying on conversation? Women stand in need of no drink to stimulate them to converse; and I have a thousand times admired their patience in sitting quietly at their work, while their husbands are engaged, in the same room, with bottles and glasses before them, thinking nothing of the expense and still less of the shame which the distinction reflects upon them. We have to thank the women for many things, and particularly for their sobriety, for fear of following their example in which men drive them from the table, as if they said to them: ’You have had enough; food is sufficient for you; but we must remain to fill ourselves with drink, and to talk in language which your ears ought not to endure.’ When women are getting up to retire from the table, men rise in honour of them; but they take special care not to follow their excellent example. That which is not fit to be uttered before women is not fit to be uttered at all; and it is next to a proclamation, tolerating drunkenness and indecency, to send women from the table the moment they have swallowed their food. The practice has been ascribed to a desire to leave them to themselves; but why should they be left to themselves? Their conversation is always the most lively, while their persons are generally the most agreeable objects. No: the plain truth is, that it is the love of the drink and of the indecent talk that send women from the table; and it is a practice which I have always abhorred. I like to see young men, especially, follow them out of the room, and prefer their company to that of the sots who are left behind.

74. Another mode of spending the leisure time is that of books. Rational and well-informed companions may be still more instructive; but books never annoy; they cost little; and they are always at hand, and ready at your call. The sort of books must, in some degree, depend upon your pursuit in life; but there are some books necessary to every one who aims at the character of a well-informed man. I have slightly mentioned HISTORY and Geography in the preceding letter; but I must here observe, that, as to both these, you should begin with your own country, and make yourself well acquainted, not only with its ancient state, but with the origin of all its principal institutions. To read of the battles which it has fought, and of the intrigues by which one king or one minister has succeeded another, is very little more profitable than the reading of a romance. To understand well the history of the country, you should first understand how it came to be divided into counties, hundreds, and into parishes; how judges, sheriffs, and juries, first arose; to what end they were all invented, and how the changes with respect to any of them have been produced. But it is of particular consequence that you ascertain the state of the people in former times, which is to be ascertained by comparing the then price of labour with the then price of food. You hear enough, and you read enough, about the glorious wars in the reign of KING EDWARD the THIRD; and it is very proper that those glories should be recorded and remembered; but you never read, in the works of the historians, that, in that reign, a common labourer earned threepence-halfpenny a day; and that a fat sheep was sold, at the same time, for one shilling and twopence, and a fat hog, two years old, for three shillings and fourpence, and a fat goose for twopence-halfpenny. You never read that women received a penny a day for hay-making or weeding in the corn, and that a gallon of red wine was sold for fourpence. These are matters which historians have deemed to be beneath their notice; but they are matters of real importance: they are matters which ought to have practical effect at this time; for these furnish the criterion whereby we are to judge of our condition compared with that of our forefathers. The poor-rates form a great feature in the laws and customs of this country. Put to a thousand persons who have read what is called the history of England; put to them the question, how the poor-rates came? and nine hundred and ninety-nine of the thousand will tell you, that they know nothing at all of the matter. This is not history; a list of battles and a string of intrigues are not history, they communicate no knowledge applicable to our present state; and it really is better to amuse oneself with an avowed romance, which latter is a great deal worse than passing one’s time in counting the trees.

75. History has been described as affording arguments of experience; as a record of what has been, in order to guide us as to what is likely to be, or what ought to be; but, from this romancing history, no such experience is to be derived: for it furnishes no facts on which to found arguments relative to the existing or future state of things. To come at the true history of a country you must read its laws: you must read books treating of its usages and customs in former times; and you must particularly inform yourself as to prices of labour and of food. By reading the single Act of the 23rd year of EDWARD the THIRD, specifying the price of labour at that time; by reading an Act of Parliament passed in the 24th year of HENRY the EIGHTH; by reading these two Acts, and then reading the CHRONICON PRECIOSUM of BISHOP FLEETWOOD, which shows the price of food in the former reign, you come into full possession of the knowledge of what England was in former times. Divers books teach how the divisions of the country arose, and how its great institutions were established; and the result of this reading is a store of knowledge, which will afford you pleasure for the whole of your life.

76. History, however, is by no means the only thing about which every man’s leisure furnishes him with the means of reading; besides which, every man has not the same taste. Poetry, geography, moral essays, the divers subjects of philosophy, travels, natural history, books on sciences; and, in short, the whole range of book-knowledge is before you; but there is one thing always to be guarded against; and that is, not to admire and applaud anything you read, merely because it is the fashion to admire and applaud it. Read, consider well what you read, form your own judgment, and stand by that judgment in despite of the sayings of what are called learned men, until fact or argument be offered to convince you of your error. One writer praises another; and it is very possible for writers so to combine as to cry down and, in some sort, to destroy the reputation of any one who meddles with the combination, unless the person thus assailed be blessed with uncommon talent and uncommon perseverance. When I read the works of POPE and of SWIFT, I was greatly delighted with their lashing of DENNIS; but wondered, at the same time, why they should have taken so much pains in running down such a fool. By the merest accident in the world, being at a tavern in the woods of America, I took up an old book, in order to pass away the time while my travelling companions were drinking in the next room; but seeing the book contained the criticisms of DENNIS, I was about to lay it down, when the play of ’CATO’ caught my eye; and having been accustomed to read books in which this play was lauded to the skies, and knowing it to have been written by ADDISON, every line of whose works I had been taught to believe teemed with wisdom and genius, I condescended to begin to read, though the work was from the pen of that fool DENNIS. I read on, and soon began to laugh, not at Dennis, but at Addison. I laughed so much and so loud, that the landlord, who was in the passage, came in to see what I was laughing at. In short, I found it a most masterly production, one of the most witty things that I had ever read in my life. I was delighted with DENNIS, and was heartily ashamed of my former admiration of CATO, and felt no little resentment against POPE and SWIFT for their endless reviling of this most able and witty critic. This, as far as I recollect, was the first emancipation that had assisted me in my reading. I have, since that time, never taken any thing upon trust: I have judged for myself, trusting neither to the opinions of writers nor in the fashions of the day. Having been told by DR. BLAIR, in his lectures on Rhetoric, that, if I meant to write correctly, I must ’give my days and nights to ADDISON,’ I read a few numbers of the Spectator at the time I was writing my English Grammar: I gave neither my nights nor my days to him; but I found an abundance of matter to afford examples of false grammar; and, upon a reperusal, I found that the criticisms of DENNIS might have been extended to this book too.

77. But that which never ought to have been forgotten by those who were men at the time, and that which ought to be made known to every young man of the present day, in order that he may be induced to exercise his own judgment with regard to books, is, the transactions relative to the writings of SHAKSPEARE, which transactions took place about thirty years ago. It is still, and it was then much more, the practice to extol every line of SHAKSPEARE to the skies: not to admire SHAKSPEARE has been deemed to be a proof of want of understanding and taste. MR. GARRICK, and some others after him, had their own good and profitable reasons for crying up the works of this poet. When I was a very little boy, there was a jubilee in honour of SHAKSPEARE, and as he was said to have planted a Mulberry tree, boxes, and other little ornamental things in wood, were sold all over the country, as having been made out of the trunk or limbs of this ancient and sacred tree. We Protestants laugh at the relics so highly prized by Catholics; but never was a Catholic people half so much duped by the relics of saints, as this nation was by the mulberry tree, of which, probably, more wood was sold than would have been sufficient in quantity to build a ship of war, or a large house. This madness abated for some years; but, towards the end of the last century it broke out again with more fury than ever. SHAKSPEARE’S works were published by BOYDELL, an Alderman of London, at a subscription of five hundred pounds for each copy, accompanied by plates, each forming a large picture. Amongst the mad men of the day was a MR. IRELAND, who seemed to be more mad than any of the rest. His adoration of the poet led him to perform a pilgrimage to an old farm-house, near Stratford-upon-Avon, said to have been the birth-place of the poet. Arrived at the spot, he requested the farmer and his wife to let him search the house for papers, first going upon his knees, and praying, in the poetic style, the gods to aid him in his quest. He found no papers; but he found that the farmer’s wife, in clearing out a garret some years before, had found some rubbishy old papers which she had burnt, and which had probably been papers used in the wrapping up of pigs’ cheeks to keep them from the bats. ’O, wretched woman!’ exclaimed he; ’do you know what you have done?’ ’O dear, no!’ said the woman, half frightened out of her wits: ’no harm, I hope; for the papers were very old; I dare say as old as the house itself.’ This threw him into an additional degree of excitement, as it is now fashionably called: he raved, he stamped, he foamed, and at last quitted the house, covering the poor woman with very term of reproach; and hastening back to Stratford, took post-chaise for London, to relate to his brother madmen the horrible sacrilege of this heathenish woman. Unfortunately for MR. IRELAND, unfortunately for his learned brothers in the metropolis, and unfortunately for the reputation of SHAKSPEARE, MR. IRELAND took with him to the scene of his adoration a son, about sixteen years of age, who was articled to an attorney in London. The son was by no means so sharply bitten as the father; and, upon returning to town, he conceived the idea of supplying the place of the invaluable papers which the farm-house heathen had destroyed. He thought, and he thought rightly, that he should have little difficulty in writing plays just like those of Shakspeare! To get paper that should seem to have been made in the reign of QUEEN ELIZABETH, and ink that should give to writing the appearance of having the same age, was somewhat difficult; but both were overcome. Young IRELAND was acquainted with a son of a bookseller, who dealt in old books: the blank leaves of these books supplied the young author with paper; and he found out the way of making proper ink for his purpose. To work he went, wrote several plays, some love-letters, and other things; and having got a Bible, extant in the time of SHAKSPEARE, he wrote notes in the margin. All these, together with sonnets in abundance, and other little detached pieces, he produced to his father, telling him he got them from a gentleman, who had made him swear that he would not divulge his name. The father announced the invaluable discovery to the literary world: the literary world rushed to him; the manuscripts were regarded as genuine by the most grave and learned Doctors, some of whom (and amongst these were DOCTORS PARR and WARTON) gave, under their hands, an opinion, that the manuscripts must have been written by SHAKSPEARE; for that no other man in the world could have been capable of writing them!

78. MR. IRELAND opened a subscription, published these new and invaluable manuscripts at an enormous price; and preparations were instantly made for performing one of the plays, called VORTIGERN. Soon after the acting of the play, the indiscretion of the lad caused the secret to explode; and, instantly, those who had declared that he had written as well as SHAKSPEARE, did every thing in their power to destroy him! The attorney drove him from his office; the father drove him from his house; and, in short, he was hunted down as if he had been a malefactor of the worst description. The truth of this relation is undeniable; it is recorded in numberless books. The young man is, I believe, yet alive; and, in short, no man will question any one of the facts.

79. After this, where is the person of sense who will be guided in these matters by fashion? where is the man, who wishes not to be deluded, who will not, when he has read a book, judge for himself? After all these jubilees and pilgrimages; after BOYDELL’S subscription of 500l. for one single copy; after it had been deemed almost impiety to doubt of the genius of SHAKSPEARE surpassing that of all the rest of mankind; after he had been called the ’Immortal Bard,’ as a matter of course, as we speak of MOSES and AARON, there having been but one of each in the world; after all this, comes a lad of sixteen years of age, writes that which learned Doctors declare could have been written by no man but SHAKSPEARE, and, when it is discovered that this laughing boy is the real author, the DOCTORS turn round upon him, with all the newspapers, magazines, and reviews, and, of course, the public at their back, revile him as an impostor; and, under that odious name, hunt him out of society, and doom him to starve! This lesson, at any rate, he has given us: not to rely on the judgment of Doctors and other pretenders to literary superiority. Every young man, when he takes up a book for the first time, ought to remember this story; and if he do remember it, he will disregard fashion with regard to the book, and will pay little attention to the decision of those who call themselves critics.

80. I hope that your taste would keep you aloof from the writings of those detestable villains, who employ the powers of their mind in debauching the minds of others, or in endeavours to do it. They present their poison in such captivating forms, that it requires great virtue and resolution to withstand their temptations; and, they have, perhaps, done a thousand times as much mischief in the world as all the infidels and atheists put together. These men ought to be called literary pimps: they ought to be held in universal abhorrence, and never spoken of but with execration. Any appeal to bad passions is to be despised; any appeal to ignorance and prejudice; but here is an appeal to the frailties of human nature, and an endeavour to make the mind corrupt, just as it is beginning to possess its powers. I never have known any but bad men, worthless men, men unworthy of any portion of respect, who took delight in, or even kept in their possession, writings of the description to which I here allude. The writings of SWIFT have this blemish; and, though he is not a teacher of lewdness, but rather the contrary, there are certain parts of his poems which are much too filthy for any decent person to read. It was beneath him to stoop to such means of setting forth that wit which would have been far more brilliant without them. I have heard, that, in the library of what is called an ’illustrious person,’ sold some time ago, there was an immense collection of books of this infamous description; and from this circumstance, if from no other, I should have formed my judgment of the character of that person.

81. Besides reading, a young man ought to write, if he have the capacity and the leisure. If you wish to remember a thing well, put it into writing, even if you burn the paper immediately after you have done; for the eye greatly assists the mind. Memory consists of a concatenation of ideas, the place, the time, and other circumstances, lead to the recollection of facts; and no circumstance more effectually than stating the facts upon paper. A JOURNAL should be kept by every young man. Put down something against every day in the year, if it be merely a description of the weather. You will not have done this for one year without finding the benefit of it. It disburthens the mind of many things to be recollected; it is amusing and useful, and ought by no means to be neglected. How often does it happen that we cannot make a statement of facts, sometimes very interesting to ourselves and our friends, for the want of a record of the places where we were, and of things that occurred on such and such a day! How often does it happen that we get into disagreeable disputes about things that have passed, and about the time and other circumstances attending them! As a thing of mere curiosity, it is of some value, and may frequently prove of very great utility. It demands not more than a minute in the twenty-four hours; and that minute is most agreeably and advantageously employed. It tends greatly to produce regularity in the conducting of affairs: it is a thing demanding a small portion of attention once in every day; I myself have found it to be attended with great and numerous benefits, and I therefore strongly recommend it to the practice of every reader.