“Who ­who ­who’s here  I, Robert of Doncaster.   That I spent, that I had;  That I gave, that I have;  That I left, that I lost.”         Epitaph, A.D. 1579.

“If thou art rich, thou art poor; For, like an ass, whose back with ingots bows Thou bear’st thy heavy riches but a journey And death unloads thee.” ­Shakespeare.

“II est bon d’etre charitable,  Mais envers qui?  C’est la lé point.” ­La Fontaine.

“There are many idlers to whom a penny begged is sweeter than a shilling earned.” ­Douglas Jerrold.

“He stole a pig, and in God’s name gave the trotters to the poor.” ­From the Spanish.

Man must be thrifty in order to be generous.  Thrift does not end with itself, but extends its benefits to others.  It founds hospitals, endows charities, establishes colleges, and extends educational influences.  Benevolence springs from the best qualities of the mind and heart.  Its divine spirit elevates the benefactors of the world ­the Howards, Clarksons, and Naviers ­to the highest pedestals of moral genius and of national worship.

The same feeling pervades our common humanity.  The poorest man, the daily worker, the obscurest individual, shares the gift and the blessing of doing good ­a blessing that imparts no less delight to him who gives than to him who receives.

“Man is dear to man; the poorest poor Long for some moments, in a weary life, When they can know and feel that they have been Themselves the fathers and the dealers-out Of some small blessings; have been kind to such As needed kindness, for this single cause, That we have all of us one human heart.”

The duty of helping the helpless is one that speaks trumpet-tongued; but especially to those who profess love to God and goodwill to men.  It is a duty that belongs to men as individuals, and as members of the social body.  As individuals, because we are enjoined to help the widow and the fatherless in their affliction; and as members of the social body, because society claims of every man that he shall be a helper in the cause of progress and of social well-being.

It is not necessary that men should be rich, to be helpful to others.  John Pounds was not a rich man; yet by his influence Ragged Schools were established.  He was temperate, and saved enough from his earnings to buy food for his pupils.  He attracted them by his kindness, sometimes by a “hot potato;” he taught them, and sent them out into the world, fortified by his good example, to work in it, and do their duty towards it.  Nor was Robert Raikes, the founder of Sunday and other schools, a rich man; neither was Thomas Wright, the prison philanthropist.  Nor were St. Vincent de Paul and Father Mathew ­the promoters of education and temperance.  Nor were the great men of science ­Newton, Watt, and Faraday; nor the great missionaries ­Xavier, Martyn, Carey, and Livingstone.

A fine instance of gentleness and generosity is recorded in Walton’s memoir of Dr. Donne.  When the latter, long straitened in his means, had entered upon the Deanery of St. Paul’s, and was thereby provided with an income more than sufficient for all his wants, he felt that those means had been entrusted to him, for good uses, and to employ for human help and to the glory of the Giver thereof.  At the foot of a private account, “to which God and His angels only were witnesses with him,” Dr. Donne computed first his revenue, then what was given to the poor and other pious uses, and lastly, what rested for him and his; and having done that, he then blessed each year’s poor remainder with a thankful prayer.

Dr. Donne did most of his good in secret, letting not his right hand know what his left hand did.  He redeemed many poor from prison; helped many a poor scholar; and employed a trusty servant or a discreet friend to distribute his bounty where it was most needed.  A friend whom he had known in days of affluence, having by a too liberal heart and carelessness become decayed in his estate and reduced to poverty, Donne sent him a hundred pounds.  But the decayed gentleman returned it with thanks, saying that he wanted it not; ­for, says Walton, in narrating the event, “as there be some spirits so generous as to labour to conceal and endure a sad poverty, rather than expose themselves to those blushes that attend the confession of it, so there be others to whom nature and grace have afforded such sweet and compassionate souls as to pity and prevent the distresses of mankind; which I have mentioned because of Dr. Donne’s reply, whose answer was, ’I know you want not what will sustain nature, for a little will do that; but my desire is that you, who in the days of your plenty have cheered and raised the hearts of so many of your dejected friends, would now receive this from me, and use it as a cordial for the cheering of your own;’” ­and upon these terms it was received.

The truth is, that we very much exaggerate the power of riches.  Immense subscriptions are got up for the purpose of reforming men from their sinful courses, and turning them from evil to good.  And yet subscriptions will not do it.  It is character that can do the work; money never can.  Great changes in society can never be effected through riches.  To turn men from intemperance, improvidence, and irreligion, and to induce them to seek their happiness in the pursuit of proper and noble objects, requires earnest purpose, honest self-devotion, and hard work.  Money may help in many respects; but money by itself can do nothing.  The apostle Paul planted the knowledge of the Christian religion over half the Roman empire; yet he supported himself by tent-making, and not by collecting subscriptions.  Men of anxious, earnest, honest hearts, are far more wanted than rich men ­willing to give money in charity.

Nothing is so much over-estimated as the power of money.  All the people who are looking out for front seats in “society,” think it the one thing needful.  They may be purse-liberal, but they are also purse-proud.  The hypocritical professions of some people, with a view to elicit the good opinion of others, in the teeth of their daily life and practice, is nothing short of disgusting.  “Oh, Geordie, jingling Geordie,” said King James, in the novel, “it was grand to hear Baby Charles laying down the guilt of dissimulation, and Steenie lecturing on the turpitude of incontinence!”

Some people have an idolatrous worship of money.  The Israelites had their golden Calf; the Greeks had their golden Jupiter.  Old Bounderby valued the man who was worth a “hundred thousand pounds.”  Others do the same.  The lowest human nature loves money, possessions, value.  “What is he worth?” “What is his income?” are the usual questions.  If you say, “There is a thoroughly good, benevolent, virtuous man!” nobody will notice him.  But if you say, “There is a man worth a million of money,” he will be stared at till out of sight.  A crowd of people used to collect at Hyde Park Corner to see a rich man pass.  “Here comes old Crockie!” and the crowd would separate to allow him to pass, amidst whispers of admiration.  It was old Crockford, who made a large fortune by keeping a gambling-house.

“The very sound of millions,” says Mrs. Gore, “tickles the ear of an Englishman!  He loves it so much, indeed, that it all but reconciles him to the National Debt; and when applied to private proprietorship, it secures deference for lowness of mind, birth, habits, and pursuits....  Ambition and money-love, if they tend to ennoble a country, reduce to insignificance the human particles of which the nation is composed.  In their pursuit of riches, the English are gradually losing sight of higher characteristics; ... our pursuit of railway bubbles and every other frantic speculation of the hour, affords sufficient evidence of the craving after capital superseding every better aspiration, whether for this world or the next.”

The love of gold threatens to drive everything before it.  The pursuit of money has become the settled custom of the country.  Many are so absorbed by it, that every other kind of well-being is either lost sight of, or altogether undervalued.  And then the lovers of money think to recover their moral tone by bestowing charity!  Mountains of gold weigh heavily upon the heart and soul.  The man who can withstand the weight of riches, and still be diligent, industrious, and strong in mind and heart, must be made of strong stuff.  For, people who are rich, are almost invariably disposed to be idle, luxurious, and self-indulgent.

“If money,” said the Rev. Mr. Griffiths, Rector of Merthyr, “did not make men forget men, one-half of the evil that is in the world would never occur.  If masters drew nearer to the men, and men were permitted to draw nearer their masters, we should not be passing through this fiery ordeal.  Let them do something to win the men out of the public-houses; let them spare more of their enormous gains to build places of amusement and recreation for the people; let them provide better houses to live in, better conveniences for decency, better streets; and if all these things are done we shall have neither lock-outs nor strikes.  We hear with pomp and triumph of the millions and millions that have been dug out of this old Welsh land of ours, but we hear nothing ­and we see, indeed, less ­of the public buildings, the people’s parks, the public libraries and public institutions, and other civilizing agencies.  Fifteen months ago, when we were in the highest tide of prosperity, I said all this, and no notice was taken of it.  Why should any notice be taken of a preaching parson or a Christian minister of any kind, when sovereigns fly about like snowflakes in winter, or may be gathered like blackberries in summer?"

Men go on toiling and moiling, eager to be richer; desperately struggling, as if against poverty, at the same time that they are surrounded with abundance.  They scrape and scrape, add shilling to shilling, and sometimes do shabby things in order to make a little more profit; though they may have accumulated far more than they can actually enjoy.  And still they go on, worrying themselves incessantly in the endeavour to grasp at an additional increase of superfluity.  Perhaps such men have not enjoyed the advantages of education in early life.  They have no literary pleasures to fall back upon; they have no taste for books; sometimes they can scarcely write their own names.  They have nothing to think of but money, ­and of what will make money.  They have no faith, but in riches!  They keep their children under restriction and bring them up with a servile education.

At length, an accumulation of money comes into the children’s hands.  They have before been restricted in their expenditure; now they become lavish.  They have been educated in no better tastes.  They spend extravagantly.  They will not be drudges in business as their father was.  They will be “gentlemen,” and spend their money “like gentlemen.”  And very soon the money takes wings and flies away.  Many are the instances in which families have been raised to wealth in the first generation, launched into ruinous expense in the second, and disappeared in the third, ­being again reduced to poverty.  Hence the Lancashire proverb, “Twice clogs, once boots.”  The first man wore clogs, and accumulated a “a power o’ money;” his rich son spent it; and the third generation took up the clogs again.  A candidate for parliamentary honours, when speaking from the hustings, was asked if he had plenty brass.  “Plenty brass?” said he; “ay, I’ve lots o’ brass! ­I stink o’ brass!”

The same social transformations are known in Scotland.  The proverb there is, “The grandsire digs, the father bigs, the son thigs," ­that is, the grandfather worked hard and made a fortune, the father built a fine house, and the son, “an unthrifty son of Linne,” when land and goods were gone and spent, took to thieving.  Merchants are sometimes princes to-day and beggars to-morrow; and so long as the genius for speculation is exercised by a mercantile family, the talent which gave them landed property may eventually deprive them of it.

To be happy in old age ­at a time when men should leave for ever the toil, anxiety, and worry of money-making ­they must, during youth and middle life, have kept their minds healthily active.  They must familiarize themselves with knowledge, and take an interest in all that has been done, and is doing, to make the world wiser and better from age to age.  There is enough leisure in most men’s lives to enable them to interest themselves in biography and history.  They may also acquire considerable knowledge of science, or of some ennobling pursuit different from that by which money is made.  Mere amusement will not do.  No man can grow happy upon amusement.  The mere man of pleasure is a miserable creature, ­especially in old age.  The mere drudge in business is little better.  Whereas the study of literature, philosophy, and science is full of tranquil pleasure, down to the end of life.  If the rich old man has no enjoyment apart from money-making, his old age becomes miserable.  He goes on grinding and grinding in the same rut, perhaps growing richer and richer.  What matters it?  He cannot eat his gold.  He cannot spend it.  His money, instead of being beneficial to him, becomes a curse.  He is the slave of avarice, the meanest of sins.  He is spoken of as a despicable creature.  He becomes base, even in his own estimation.

What a miserable end was that of the rich man who, when dying, found no comfort save in plunging his hands into a pile of new sovereigns, which had been brought to him from the bank.  As the world faded from him, he still clutched them; handled and fondled them one by one, ­and then he passed away, ­his last effort being to finger his gold!  Elwes the miser died shrieking, “I will keep my money! ­nobody shall deprive me of my property!” A ghastly and humiliating spectacle!

Rich men are more punished for their excess of economy, than poor men are for their want of it.  They become miserly, think themselves daily growing poorer, and die the deaths of beggars.  We have known several instances.  One of the richest merchants in London, after living for some time in penury, went down into the country, to the parish where he was born, and applied to the overseers for poor’s relief.  Though possessing millions, he was horror-struck by the fear of becoming poor.  Relief was granted him, and he positively died the death of a pauper.  One of the richest merchants in the North died in the receipt of poor’s relief.  Of course, all that the parish authorities had doled out to these poor-rich men was duly repaid by their executors.

And what did these rich persons leave behind them?  Only the reputation that they had died rich men.  But riches do not constitute any claim to distinction.  It is only the vulgar who admire riches as riches.  Money is a drug in the market.  Some of the most wealthy men living are mere nobodies.  Many of them are comparatively ignorant.  They are of no moral or social account.  A short time since, a list was published of two hundred and twenty-four English millionaires.  Some were known as screws; some were “smart men” in regard to speculations; some were large navvies, coal-miners, and manufacturers; some were almost unknown beyond their own local circle; some were very poor creatures; very few were men of distinction.  All that one could say of them was, that they died rich men.

“All the rich and all the covetous men in the world,” said Jeremy Taylor, “will perceive, and all the world will perceive for them, that it is but an ill recompense for all their cares, that by this time all that shall be left will be this, that the neighbours shall say, He died a rich man: and yet his wealth will not profit him in the grave, but hugely swell the sad accounts of his doomsday.”

“One of the chief causes,” says Mrs. Gore, “which render the pursuit of wealth a bitterer as well as more pardonable struggle in England than on the Continent, is the unequal and capricious distribution of family property....  Country gentlemen and professional men, ­nay, men without the pretension of being gentlemen, ­are scarcely less smitten with the mania of creating ‘an eldest son’ to the exclusion and degradation of their younger children; and by the individuals thus defrauded by their nearest and dearest, is the idolatry of Mammon pursued without the least regard to self-respect, or the rights of their fellow-creatures.  Injured, they injure in their turn.  Their days are devoted to a campaign for the recovery of their birthright.  Interested marriages, shabby bargains, and political jobbery, may be traced to the vile system of things which converts the elder son into a Dives, and makes a Lazarus of his brother.”

But democrats have quite as great a love for riches as aristocrats; and many austere republicans are eager to be millionaires.  Forms of government do not influence the desire for wealth.  The elder Cato was a usurer.  One of his means of making money was by buying young half-fed slaves at a low price; then, by fattening them up, and training them to work, he sold them at an enhanced price.  Brutus, when in the Isle of Cyprus, lent his money at forty-eight per cent. interest, and no one thought the worse of him for his Usury.  Washington, the hero of American freedom, bequeathed his slaves to his wife.  It did not occur to him to give them their liberty.  Municipal jobbery is not unknown in New York; and its influential citizens are said to be steeped to the lips in political corruption.  Mr. Mills says, that the people of the North-Eastern States have apparently got rid of all social injustices and inequalities; that the proportion of population to capital and land is such as to ensure abundance for every able-bodied man; that they enjoy the six points of the Charter, and need never complain of poverty.  Yet “all that these advantages have done for them is, that the life of the whole of our sex is devoted to dollar-hunting; and of the other, to breeding dollar-hunters.  This,” Mr. Mill adds, “is not a kind of social perfection which philanthropists to come will feel any very eager desire to assist in realizing."

Saladin the Great conquered Syria, Arabia, Persia, and Mesopotamia.  He was the greatest warrior and conqueror of his time.  His power and wealth were enormous.  Yet he was fully persuaded of the utter hollowness of riches.  He ordered, by his will, that considerable sums should be distributed to Mussulmans, Jews, and Christians, in order that the priests of the three religions might implore for him the mercy of God.  He commanded that the shirt or tunic which he wore at the time of his death should be carried on the end of a spear throughout the whole camp and at the head of his army, and that the soldier who bore it should pause at intervals and say aloud, “Behold all that remains of the Emperor Saladin! ­of all the states he had conquered; of all the provinces he had subdued; of the boundless treasures he had amassed; of the countless wealth he possessed, he retained, in dying, nothing but this shroud!”

Don Jose de Salamanca, the great railway contractor of Spain, was, in the early part of his life, a student at the University of Granada.  He there wore, as he himself says, the oldest and most worn of cassocks.  He was a diligent student; and after leaving college he became a member of the Spanish press.  From thence he was translated to the Cabinet of Queen Christina, of which he became Finance Minister.  This brought out his commercial capacities, and induced him to enter on commercial speculations.  He constructed railways in Spain and Italy, and took the principal share in establishing several steam-shipping companies.  But while pursuing commerce, he did not forget literature.  Once a week he kept an open table, to which the foremost men in literature and the press were invited.  They returned his hospitality by inviting him to a dinner on the most economic scale.  Busts of Shakespeare, Cervantes, Dante, Schiller, and other literary men, adorned the room.

In returning thanks for his health, Salamanca referred to his university experience, and to his labours in connection with the press.  “Then,” he went on to say, “the love of gold took possession of my soul, and it was at Madrid that I found the object of my adoration; but not, alas! without the loss of my juvenile illusions.  Believe me, gentlemen, the man who can satisfy all his wishes has no more enjoyment.  Keep to the course you have entered on, I advise you.  Rothschild’s celebrity will expire on the day of his death.  Immortality can be earned, not bought.  Here are before us the effigies of men who have gloriously cultivated liberal arts; their busts I have met with in every part of Europe; but nowhere have I found a statue erected to the honour of a man who has devoted his life to making money.”

Riches and happiness have no necessary connection with each other.  In some cases it might be said that happiness is in the inverse proportion to riches.  The happiest part of most men’s lives is while they are battling with poverty, and gradually raising themselves above it.  It is then that they deny themselves for the sake of others, ­that they save from their earnings to secure a future independence, ­that they cultivate their minds while labouring for their daily bread, ­that they endeavour to render themselves wiser and better ­happier in their homes and more useful to society at large.  William Chambers, the Edinburgh publisher, speaking of the labours of his early years, says, “I look back to those times with great pleasure, and I am almost sorry that I have not to go through the same experience again; for I reaped more pleasure when I had not a sixpence in my pocket, studying in a garret in Edinburgh, than I now find when sitting amidst all the elegancies and comforts of a parlour.”

There are compensations in every condition of life.  The difference in the lot of the rich and the poor is not so great as is generally imagined.  The rich man has often to pay a heavy price for his privileges.  He is anxious about his possessions.  He may be the victim of extortion.  He is apt to be cheated.  He is the mark for every man’s shaft.  He is surrounded by a host of clients, till his purse bleeds at every pore.  As they say in Yorkshire when people become rich, the money soon “broddles through.”  Or, if engaged in speculation, the rich man’s wealth may fly away at any moment.  He may try again, and then wear his heart out in speculating on the “chances of the market.” Insomnia is a rich man’s disease.  The thought of his winnings and losings keeps him sleepless.  He is awake by day, and awake by night.  “Riches on the brain” is full of restlessness and agony.

The rich man over-eats or over-drinks; and he has gout.  Imagine a man with a vice fitted to his toe.  Let the vice descend upon the joint, and be firmly screwed down.  Screw it again.  He is in agony.  Then suddenly turn the screw tighter ­down, down!  That is gout!  Gout ­of which Sydenham has said, that “unlike any other disease, it kills more rich men than poor, more wise than simple.  Great kings, emperors, generals, admirals, and philosophers, have died of gout.  Hereby nature shows her impartiality, since those whom she favours in one way, she afflicts in another Or, the rich man may become satiated with food, and lose his appetite; while the poor man relishes and digests anything.  A beggar asked alms of a rich man “because he was hungry.”  “Hungry?” said the millionaire; “how I envy you!” Abernethy’s prescription to the rich man was, “Live upon a shilling a day, and earn it!” When the Duke of York consulted him about his health, Abernethy’s answer was, “Cut off the supplies, and the enemy will soon leave the citadel.”  The labourer who feels little and thinks less, has the digestion of an ostrich; while the non-worker is never allowed to forget that he has a stomach, and is obliged to watch every mouthful that he eats.  Industry and indigestion are two things seldom found united.

Many people envy the possessions of the rich, but will not pass through the risks, the fatigues, or the dangers of acquiring them.  It is related of the Duke of Dantzic that an old comrade, whom he had not seen for many years, called upon him at his hotel in Paris, and seemed amazed at the luxury of his apartments, the richness of his furniture, and the magnificence of his gardens.  The Duke, supposing that he saw in his old comrade’s face a feeling of jealousy, said to him bluntly, “You may have all that you see before you, on one condition.”  “What is that?” said his friend.  “It is that you will place yourself twenty paces off, and let me fire at you with a musket a hundred times.”  “I will certainly not accept your offer at that price.”  “Well,” replied the Marshal, “to gain all that you see before you, I have faced more than a thousand gunshots, fired at not move than ten paces off.”

The Duke of Marlborough often faced death.  He became rich, and left a million and a half to his descendants to squander.  The Duke was a penurious man.  He is said to have scolded his servant for lighting four candles in his tent, when Prince Eugene called upon him to hold a conference before the battle of Blenheim.  Swift said of the Duke, “I dare hold a wager that in all his compaigns he was never known to lose his baggage.”  But this merely showed his consummate generalship.  When ill and feeble at Bath, he is said to have walked home from the rooms to his lodgings, to save sixpence.  And yet this may be excused, for he may have walked home for exercise.  He is certainly known to have given a thousand pounds to a young and deserving soldier who wished to purchase a commission.  When Bolingbroke was reminded of one of the weaknesses of Marlborough, he observed, “He was so great a man, that I forgot that he had that defect.”

It is no disgrace to be poor.  The praise of honest poverty has often been sung.  When a man will not stoop to do wrong, when he will not sell himself for money, when he will not do a dishonest act, then his poverty is most honourable.  But the man is not poor who can pay his way, and save something besides.  He who pays cash for all that he purchases, is not poor but well off.  He is in a happier condition than the idle gentleman who runs into debt, and is clothed, shod, and fed at the expense of his tailor, shoemaker, and butcher.  Montesquieu says, that a man is not poor because he has nothing, but he is poor when he will not or cannot work.  The man who is able and willing to work, is better off than the man who possesses a thousand crowns without the necessity for working.

Nothing sharpens a man’s wits like poverty.  Hence many of the greatest men have originally been poor men.  Poverty often purifies and braces a man’s morals.  To spirited people, difficult tasks are usually the most delightful ones.  If we may rely upon the testimony of history, men are brave, truthful, and magnanimous, not in proportion to their wealth, but in proportion to their smallness of means.  And the best are often the poorest, ­always supposing that they have sufficient to meet their temporal wants.  A divine has said that God has created poverty, but He has not created misery.  And there is certainly a great difference between the two.  While honest poverty is honourable, misery is humiliating; inasmuch as the latter is for the most part the result of misconduct, and often of idleness and drunkenness.  Poverty is no disgrace to him who can put up with it; but he who finds the beggar’s staff once get warm in his hand, never does any good, but a great amount of evil.

The poor are often the happiest of people ­far more so than the rich; but though they may be envied, no one will be found willing to take their place.  Moore has told the story of the over-fed, over-satisfied eastern despot, who sent a messenger to travel through the world, in order to find out the happiest man.  When discovered, the messenger was immediately to seize him, take his shirt off his back, and bring it to the Caliph.  The messenger found the happiest man in an Irishman, ­happy, dancing, and flourishing his shillelagh.  But when the ambassador proceeded to seize him, and undress him, he found that the Irishman had got no shirt to his back!

The portion of Agur is unquestionably the best:  “Remove far from me vanity and lies; give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me.”  The unequal distribution of the disposition to be happy, is of far greater importance than the unequal distribution of wealth.  The disposition to be content and satisfied, said David Hume, is at least equal to an income of a thousand a year.  Montaigne has observed that Fortune confers but little.  Human good or ill does not depend upon it.  It is but the seed of good, which the soul, infinitely stronger than wealth, changes and applies as it pleases, and is thus the only cause of a happy or unhappy disposition.

England is celebrated for its charities.  M. Guizot declares that there is nothing in this land that so fills the mind of the stranger with amazement at our resources, and admiration at our use of them, as the noble free-gift monuments raised on every side for the relief of multiform suffering.  The home philanthropist, who looks a little deeper than the foreign visitor, may be disposed to take another view of the effects of money-giving.  That charity produces unmixed good, is very much questioned.  Charity, like man, is sometimes blind, and frequently misguided.  Unless money is wisely distributed, it will frequently do more harm than good.  If charity could help or elevate the poor, London would now be the happiest city in the world; for about three millions of money are spent on charity, and about one in every three of the London population are relieved by charitable institutions.

It is very easy to raise money for charity.  Subscription lists constantly attest the fact.  A rich man is asked by some influential person for money.  It is very easy to give it.  It saves time to give it.  It is considered a religious duty to give it.  Yet to give money unthinkingly, to give it without considering how it is to be used, ­instead of being for the good of our fellow-creatures, ­may often prove the greatest injury we could inflict upon them.  True benevolence does not consist in giving money.  Nor can charitable donations, given indiscriminately to the poor, have any other effect than to sap the foundations of self-respect, and break down the very outworks of virtue itself.  There are many forms of benevolence which create the very evils they are intended to cure, and encourage the poorer classes in the habit of dependence upon the charity of others, ­to the neglect of those far healthier means of social well-being which lie within their own reach.

One would think that three million a year were sufficient to relieve all the actual distress that exists in London.  Yet the distress, notwithstanding all the money spent upon it, goes on increasing.  May not the money spent in charity, create the distress it relieves, ­besides creating other distress which it fails to relieve?  Uneducated and idle people will not exert themselves for a living, when they have the hope of obtaining the living without exertion.  Who will be frugal and provident, when charity offers all that frugality and providence can confer?  Does not the gift of the advantages, comforts, and rewards of industry, without the necessity of labouring for them, tend to sap the very foundations of energy and self-reliance?  Is not the circumstance that poverty is the only requisite qualification on the part of the applicant for charity, calculated to tempt the people to self-indulgence, to dissipation, and to those courses of life which keep them poor?

Men who will not struggle and exert themselves, are those who are helped first.  The worst sort of persons are made comfortable:  whilst the hard-working, self-supporting man, who disdains to throw himself upon charity, is compelled to pay rates for the maintenance of the idle.  Charity stretches forth its hand to the rottenest parts of society; it rarely seeks out, or helps, the struggling and the honest.  As Carlyle has said, “O my astonishing benevolent friends! that never think of meddling with the material while it continues sound; that stress and strain it with new rates and assessments, till even it has given way and declared itself rotten; whereupon you greedily snatch at it, and say, ‘Now let us try to do some good upon it!’”

The charity which merely consists in giving, is an idle indulgence ­often an idle vice.  The mere giving of money will never do the work of philanthropy.  As a recent writer has said, “The crimes of the virtuous, the blasphemies of the pious, and the follies of the wise, would scarcely fill a larger volume than the cruelties of the humane.  In this world a large part of the occupation of the wise has been to neutralize the efforts of the good.”

“Public charities,” said the late Lord Lytton, “are too often merely a bonus to public indolence and vice.  What a dark lesson of the fallacy of human wisdom does this knowledge strike into the heart!  What a waste of the materials of kindly sympathies!  What a perversion individual mistakes can cause, even in the virtues of a nation!  Charity is a feeling dear to the pride of the human heart ­it is an aristocratic emotion!  Mahomet testified his deep knowledge of his kind when he allowed the vice hardest to control, ­sexual licentiousness; and encouraged the virtue easiest to practise, ­charity."

There are clergymen in London who say that charity acts against the extension of religion amongst the people.  The Rev. Mr. Stone says, “He is an unwelcome visitor to the poor who brings the Bible in one hand, without a loaf, a blanket, or a shilling in the other.  And no wonder.  By the prevailing system of charitable relief they have been nursed in this carnal spirit; they have been justified in those selfish expectations.  Instead of being allowed to learn the great and salutary lesson of providence, that there is a necessary connection between their conduct and their condition, they have, by this artificial system, been taught that indigence is of itself sufficient to constitute a claim to relief.  They have been thus encouraged in improvidence, immorality, fraud, and hypocrisy.”

The truest philanthropists are those who endeavour to prevent misery, dependence, and destitution; and especially those who diligently help the poor to help themselves.  This is the great advantage of the “Parochial Mission-Women Association." They bring themselves into close communication with the people in the several parishes of London, and endeavour to assist them in many ways.  But they avoid giving indiscriminate alms.  Their objects are “to help the poor to help themselves, and to raise them by making them feel that they can help themselves.”  There is abundant room for philanthropy amongst all classes; and it is most gratifying to find ladies of high distinction taking part in this noble work.

There are numerous other societies established of late years, which afford gratifying instances of the higher and more rational, as well as really more Christian, forms of charity.  The societies for improving the dwellings of the industrial classes, ­for building baths and washhouses, ­for establishing workmen’s, seamen’s, and servants’ homes, ­for cultivating habits of providence and frugality amongst the working-classes, ­and for extending the advantages of knowledge amongst the people, ­are important agencies of this kind.  These, instead of sapping the foundations of self-reliance, are really and truly helping the people to help themselves, and are deserving of every approbation and encouragement.  They tend to elevate the condition of the mass; they are embodiments of philanthropy in its highest form; and are calculated to bear good fruit through all time.

Rich men, with the prospect of death before them, are often very much concerned about their money affairs.  If unmarried and without successors, they find a considerable difficulty in knowing what to do with the pile of gold they have gathered together during their lifetime.  They must make a will, and leave it to somebody.  In olden times, rich people left money to pay for masses for their souls.  Perhaps many do so still.  Some founded almshouses; others hospitals.  Money was left for the purpose of distributing doles to poor persons, or to persons of the same name and trade as the deceased.

“These doles,” said the wife of a clergyman in the neighbourhood of London, “are doing an infinite deal of mischief:  they are rapidly pauperising the parish.”  Not long since, the town of Bedford was corrupted and demoralized by the doles and benefactions which rich men had left to the poorer classes.  Give a man money without working for it, and he will soon claim it as a right.  It practically forbids him to exercise forethought, or to provide against the vicissitudes of trade, or the accidents of life.  It not only breaks down the bulwarks of independence, but the outposts of virtue itself.

Large sums of money are left by rich men to found “Charities.”  They wish to do good, but in many cases they do much moral injury.  Their “Charities” are anything but charitable.  They destroy the self-respect of the working-classes, and also of the classes above them.  “We can get this charity for nothing.  We can get medical assistance for nothing.  We can get our children educated for nothing.  Why should we work?  Why should we save?” Such is the idea which charity, so-called, inculcates.  The “Charitable Institution” becomes a genteel poor-house; and the lesson is extensively taught that we can do better by begging than by working.

The bequeathment of Stephen Girard, the wealthy American merchant, was of a different character.  Girard was a native of Bordeaux.  An orphan at an early age, he was put on board a ship as a cabin boy.  He made his first voyage to North America when about ten or twelve years old.  He had little education, and only a limited acquaintance with reading and writing.  He worked hard.  He gradually improved in means so that he was able to set up a store.  Whilst living in Water Street, New York, he fell in love with Polly Luna, the daughter of a caulker.  The father forbade the marriage.  But Girard persevered, and at length he won and married Polly Lum.  It proved a most unfortunate marriage.  His wife had no sympathy with him; and he became cross, snappish, morose.  He took to sea again; and at forty he commanded his own sloop, and was engaged in the coasting trade between New York, Philadelphia, and New Orleans.

Then he settled in Philadelphia, and became a merchant.  He devoted his whole soul to his business; for he had determined to become rich.  He practised the most rigid economy.  He performed any work by which money could be made.  He shut his heart against the blandishments of life.  The desire for wealth seems to have possessed his soul.  His life was one of unceasing labour.  Remember, that Girard was unhappy at home.  His nature might have been softened, had he been blessed with a happy wife.  He led ten miserable years with her; and then she became insane.  She lay for about twenty years in the Pennsylvania hospital, and died there.

Yet there was something more than hardness and harshness in Girard.  There was a deep under-current of humanity in him.  When the yellow fever broke out in Philadelphia, in 1793, his better nature showed itself.  The people were smitten to death by thousands.  Nurses could not be found to attend the patients in the hospital.  It was regarded as certain death to nurse the sick.

“Wealth had no power to bribe, nor beauty to charm, the oppressor; But all perished alike beneath the scourge of his anger; Only, alas I the poor, who had neither friends nor attendants, Crept away to die in the almshouse, home of the homeless.”

It was at this time, when many were stricken with fever, that Girard abandoned his business, and offered his services as superintendent of the public hospital.  He had Peter Helm for his associate.  Girard’s business faculty immediately displayed itself.  His powers of organization were immense, and the results of his work were soon observed.  Order began to reign where everything had before been in confusion.  Dirt was conquered by cleanliness.  Where there had been wastefulness, there was now thriftiness.  Where there had been neglect, there was unremitting attention.  Girard saw that every case was properly attended to.  He himself attended to the patients afflicted by the loathsome disease, ministered to the dying, and performed the last kind offices for the dead.  At last the plague was stayed; and Girard and Helm returned to their ordinary occupations.

The visitors of the poor in Philadelphia placed the following minute on their books:  “Stephen Girard and Peter Helm, members of the committee, commiserating the calamitous state to which the sick may probably be reduced for want of suitable persons to superintend the hospital, voluntarily offered their services for that benevolent employment, and excited a surprise and satisfaction that can be better conceived than expressed.”

The results of Stephen Girard’s industry and economy may be seen in Philadelphia ­in the beautiful dwelling houses, row after row, ­but more than all, in the magnificent marble edifice of Girard College.  He left the greater part of his fortune for public purposes, ­principally to erect and maintain a public library and a large orphanage.  It might have been in regard to his own desolate condition, when cast an orphan amongst strangers and foreigners, that he devised his splendid charity for poor, forlorn, and fatherless children.  One of the rooms in the college is singularly furnished.  “Girard had directed that a suitable room was to be set apart for the preservation of his books and papers; but from excess of pious care, or dread of the next-of kin, all the plain homely man’s effects were shovelled into this room.  Here are his boxes and his bookcase, his gig and his gaiters, his pictures and his pottery; and in a bookcase, hanging with careless grace, are his braces ­old homely knitted braces, telling their tale of simplicity and carefulness."

One of the finest hospitals in London is that founded by Thomas Guy, the bookseller.  He is said to have been a miser.  At all events he must have been a thrifty and saving man.  No foundation such as that of Guy’s can be accomplished without thrift.  Men who accomplish such things must deny themselves for the benefit of others.  Thomas Guy appears early to have projected schemes of benevolence.  He first built and endowed almshouses at Tamworth for fourteen poor men and women, with pensions for each occupant; and with a thoughtfulness becoming his vocation, he furnished them with a library.  He had himself been educated at Tamworth, where he had doubtless seen hungry and homeless persons suffering from cleanness of teeth and the winter’s rage; and the almshouses were his contribution for their relief.  He was a bookseller in London at that time.  Guy prospered, not so much by bookselling, as by buying and selling South Sea Stock.  When the bubble burst, he did not hold a share:  but he had realized a profit of several hundred thousand pounds.  This sum he principally employed in building and endowing the hospital which bears his name.  The building was roofed in before his death, in 1724.

Scotch benefactors for the most part leave their savings for the purpose of founding hospitals for educational purposes.  There was first the Heriot’s Hospital, founded in Edinburgh by George Heriot, the goldsmith of James I., for maintaining and educating a hundred and eighty boys.  But the property of the hospital having increased in value ­the New Town of Edinburgh being for the most part built on George Heriot’s land ­the operations of the charity have been greatly extended; as many as four thousand boys and girls being now educated free of expense, in different parts of the city.  There are also the George Watson’s Hospital, the John Watson’s Hospital, the Orphan Hospital, two Maiden Hospitals, the Cauven’s Hospital, the Donaldson’s Hospital, the Stewart’s Hospital, and the splendid Fettes College (recently opened), ­all founded by Scottish benefactors for the ordinary education of boys and girls, and also for their higher education.  Edinburgh may well be called the City of Educational Endowments.  There is also the Madras College, at St. Andrews, founded by the late Andrew Bell, D.D.; the Dollar Institution, founded by John Macrat; and the Dick Bequest, for elevating the character and position of the parochial schools and schoolmasters, in the counties of Aberdeen, Banff, and Moray.  The effects of this last bequest have been most salutary.  It has raised the character of the education given in the public schools, and the results have been frequently observed at Cambridge, where men from the northern counties have taken high honours in all departments of learning.

English benefactors have recently been following in the same direction.  The Owen’s College at Manchester; the Brown Library and Museum at Liverpool; the Whitworth Benefaction, by which thirty scholarships of the annual value of L100 each have been founded for the promotion of technical instruction; and the Scientific College at Birmingham, founded by Sir Josiah Mason, for the purpose of educating the rising generation in “sound, extensive, and practical scientific knowledge,” ­form a series of excellent institutions which will, we hope, be followed by many similar benefactions.  A man need not moulder with the green grass over his grave, before his means are applied to noble purposes.  He can make his benefactions while living, and assist at the outset in carrying out his liberal intentions.

Among the great benefactors of London, the name of Mr. Peabody, the American banker, cannot be forgotten.  It would take a volume to discuss his merits, though we must dismiss him in a paragraph.  He was one of the first to see, or at all events to make amends for, the houseless condition of the working classes of London.  In the formation of railways under and above ground, in opening out and widening new streets, in erecting new public buildings, ­the dwellings of the poor were destroyed, and their occupants swarmed away, no one knew whither.  Perhaps they crowded closer together, and bred disease in many forms.  Societies and companies were formed to remedy the evil to a certain extent.  Sir Sydney Waterlow was one of the first to lead the way, and he was followed by others.  But it was not until Mr. Peabody had left his splendid benefaction to the poor of London, that any steps could be taken to deal with the evil on a large and comprehensive scale.  His trustees have already erected ranges of workmen’s dwellings in many parts of the metropolis, ­which will from time to time be extended to other parts.  The Peabody dwellings furnish an example of what working men’s dwellings ought to be.  They are clean, tidy, and comfortable homes.  They have diminished drunkenness; they have promoted morality.  Mr. Peabody intended that his bounty should “directly ameliorate the condition and augment the comforts of the poor,” and he hoped that the results would “be appreciated, not only by the present, but by future generations of the people of London.”  From all that the trustees have done, it is clear that they are faithfully and nobly carrying out his intentions.

All these benefactors of the poor were originally men of moderate means.  Some of them were at one time poor men.  Sir Joseph Whitworth was a journeyman engineer with Mr. Clement, in Southwark, the inventor of the planing machine.  Sir Josiah Mason was by turns a costermonger, journeyman baker, shoemaker, carpet weaver, jeweller, split-steel ring maker (here he made his first thousand pounds), steel-pen maker, copper-smelter, and electro-plater, in which last trade he made his fortune.  Mr, Peabody worked his way up by small degrees, from a clerk in America to a banker in London.  Their benefactions have been the result of self-denial, industry, sobriety, and thrift.

Benevolence throws out blossoms which do not always ripen into fruit.  It is easy enough to project a benevolent undertaking, but more difficult to carry it out.  The author was once induced to take an interest in a proposed Navvy’s Home; but cold water was thrown upon the project, and it failed.  The navvy workmen, who have made the railways and docks of England, are a hard-working but a rather thriftless set.  They are good-hearted fellows, but sometimes drunken.  In carrying out their operations, they often run great dangers.  They are sometimes so seriously injured by wounds and fractures as to be disabled for life.  For instance, in carrying out the works of the Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincolnshire Railway, there were twenty-two cases of compound fractures seventy-four simple fractures, besides burns from blasts, severe contusions, lacerations, and dislocations.  One man lost both his eyes by a blast, another had his arm broken by a blast.  Many lost their fingers, feet, legs, and arms; which disabled them for further work.  Knowing the perils to which railway labourers were exposed, it occurred to a late eminent contractor to adopt some method for helping and comforting them in their declining years.  The subject was brought under the author’s notice by his friend the late Mr. Eborall, in the following words:  “I have just been visiting a large contractor ­a man of great wealth; and he requests your assistance in establishing a ’Navvy’s Home.’  You know that many of the contractors and engineers, who have been engaged in the construction of railways, are men who have accumulated immense fortunes:  the savings of some of them amount to millions.  Well, my friend the contractor not long since found a miserable, worn-out old man in a ditch by the roadside.  ‘What,’ said he, ‘is that you?’ naming the man in the ditch by his name.  ‘Ay,’ replied the man, ‘’deed it is!’ ‘What are you doing there?’ ’I have come here to die.  I can work no more.’  ’Why don’t you go to the workhouse? they will attend to your wants there.’  ’No! no workhouse for me!  If I am to die, I will die in the open air.’  The contractor recognized in the man one of his former navvies.  He had worked for him and for other contractors many years; and while they had been making their fortunes, the navvy who had worked for them had fallen so low as to be found dying in a ditch.  The contractor was much affected.  He thought of the numerous other navvies who must be wanting similar help.  Shortly after, he took ill, and during his illness, thinking of what he might do for the navvies, the idea occurred to him of founding a ‘Navvy’s Home;’ and he has desired me to ask you to assist him in bringing out the institution.”

It seemed to the author an admirable project, and he consented to do all that he could for it.  But when the persons who were the most likely to contribute to such an institution were applied to, they threw such floods of cold water upon it, that it became evident, in the face of their opposition, that “The Navvy’s Home” could not be established.  Of course, excuses were abundant.  “Navvies were the most extravagant workmen.  They threw away everything that they earned.  They spent their money on beer, whisky, tally-women, and champagne.  If they died in ditches, it was their own fault.  They might have established themselves in comfort, if they wished to do so.  Why should other people provide for them in old age, more than for any other class of labourers?  There was the workhouse:  let them go there.”  And so on.  It is easy to find a stick to beat a sick dog.  As for the original projector, he recovered his health, he forgot to subscribe for “The Navvy’s Home,” and the scheme fell to the ground.

“The devil was sick, the devil a saint would be:  The devil grew well, the devil a saint was he.’