To these cautions, which, I fuppofe, are, at least among the graver part of mankind, undisputed, I will add another, Let no man fquander against his inclination. With this precept it may be, perhaps, imagined easy to comply; yet if those whom profufion has buried in prifons, or driven into banishment, were examined, it would be found that very few were ruined by their own choice, or purchased pleasure with the lofs of their eftates; but that they fuffered themselves to be borne away by the violence of those with whom they conversed, and yielded reluctantly to a thousand prodigalities, either from a trivial emulation of wealth and spirit, or a mean fear of contempt and ridicule; an emulation for the prize of folly, or the dread of the laugh of fools.

I am, SIR,

Your humble Servant,

SOPHRON,

1

NUMB. 58. SATURDAY, October 6, 1750.

-Improba

Crefcunt divitiæ, tamen

Curta nefcio quid femper abeft rei.

But, while in heaps his wicked wealth ascends,

He is not of his wifh poffefs'd;

There's fomething wanting ftill to make him blefs'd.

HOR.

FRANCIS.

S the love of money has been, in all ages,

one of the paffions that have given great difturbance to the tranquillity of the world, there is no topick more copioufly treated by the ancient moralifts than the folly of devoting the heart to the accumulation of riches. They who are acquainted with these authors need not be told how riches incite pity, contempt, or reproach, whenever they are mentioned; with what numbers of examples the danger of large poffeffions is illuftrated; and how all the powers of reafon and eloquence have been exhausted in endeavours to eradicate a defire, which seems to have intrenched itself too ftrongly in the mind to be driven out, and which, perhaps, had not loft its power, even over those who declaimed against it, but would have broken out in the poet or the fage, if it had been excited by opportunity, and invigorated by the approximation of its proper object.

Their arguments have been, indeed, fo unfuccefsful, that I know not whether it can be shown, that by all the wit and reason which this favourite caufe has called forth, a single convert was ever made; that even one man has refufed to be rich, when to be rich was in his power, from the conviction of the greater happiness of a narrow fortune; or difburthened himfelf of wealth, when he had tried its inquietudes, merely to enjoy the peace and leisure and fecurity of a mean and unenvied state.

It is true, indeed, that many have neglected opportunities of raising themselves to honours and to wealth, and rejected the kindeft offers of fortune: but, however their moderation may be boafted by themselves, or admired by fuch as only view them at a distance, it will be, perhaps, feldom found that they value riches less, but that they dread labour or danger more than others; they are unable to roufe themselves to action, to ftrain in the race of competition, or to stand the fhock of conteft; but though they, therefore, decline the toil of climbing, they nevertheless wifh themselves aloft, and would willingly enjoy what they dare not feize.

Others have retired from high ftations, and voluntarily condemned themselves to privacy and obfcurity. But, even these will not afford many occafions of triumph to the philofopher; for they have commonly either quitted that only which they thought themselves unable to hold, and prevented difgrace by refignation; or they have been induced to try new measures by general inconftancy, which always dreams of happiness in novelty, or by a gloomy difpofition, which is disgusted in the fame degree

Bb 2

degree with every ftate, and wifhes every fcene of life to change as foon as it is beheld. Such men found high and low ftations equally unable to fatisfy the wishes of a diftempered mind, and were unable to shelter themselves in the closest retreat from disappointment, folicitude, and misery.

Yet though thefe admonitions have been thus neglected by thofe, who either enjoyed riches, or were able to procure them, it is not rafhly to be determined that they are altogether without use; for fince far the greateft part of mankind must be confined to conditions comparatively mean, and placed in fituations, from which they naturally look up with envy to the eminences before them, thofe writers cannot be thought ill employed that have administered remedies to difcontent almoft univerfal, by fhowing, that what we cannot reach may very well be forborn, that the inequality of diftribution, at which we murmur, is for the most part lefs than it seems, and that the greatnefs, which we admire at a distance, has much fewer advantages, and much less fplendor, when we are fuffered to approach

it.

It is the bufinefs of moralifts to detect the frauds of fortune, and to fhow that fhe impofes upon the careless eye, by a quick fucceffion of fhadows, which will fhrink to nothing in the gripe; that fhe disguises life in extrinfick ornaments, which serve only for fhow, and are laid afide in the hours of folitude, and of pleasure; and that when greatness aspires either to felicity or to wifdom, it fhakes off those diftinctions which dazzle the gazer, and awe the fupplicant....

It may be remarked, that they whofe condition has not afforded them the light of moral or religious inftruction, and who collect all their ideas by. their own eyes, and digest them by their own understandings, feem to confider those who are placed in ranks of remote fuperiority, as almost another and higher fpecies of beings. As themfelves have known little other mifery than the confequences of want, they are with difficulty perfuaded that where there is wealth there can be forrow, or that those who glitter in dignity, and glide along in affluence, can be acquainted with pains and cares like thofe which lie heavy upon the reft of mankind.

This prejudice is, indeed, confined to the lowest meannefs, and the darkeft ignorance; but it is fo confined only because others have been fhown its folly, and its falfhood, because it has been oppofed in its progress by history and philofophy, and hindered from spreading its infection by powerful prefervatives.

The doctrine of the contempt of wealth, though it has not been able to extinguish avarice or ambition, or fupprefs that reluctance with which a man paffes his days in a state of inferiority, muft, aţ leaft, have made the lower conditions lefs grating and wearisome, and has confequently contributed to the general fecurity of life, by hindering that fraud and violence, rapine and circumvention, which must have been produced by an unbounded eagerness of wealth, arifing from an unfhaken conviction that to be rich is to be happy.