MONTHLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE, 



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prevailing desire of gain ; so that he who evinces a disposition to disinterested 

 benevolence is either distrusted as a hypocrite or derided as a fool. The 

 moralist complains that ' commerce has kindled in the nation a universal 

 emulation for wealth, and that money receives all the honours which are the 

 proper right of knowledge and virtue.' The candidate for worldly advance- 

 ment and honour protests against the arrangement which makes promotion 

 a matter of purchase, thus disparaging and discouraging all worth save that 

 of wealth. The poet laments that ' the world is too much with us,' that 

 all things are sold/ that every thing is made a marketable commodity, and 

 4 labelled with its price/ The student of mental and moral philosophy 

 laments that his favourite ' sciences are falling into decay, while the^ physical 

 are engrossing, every day, more respect and attention,' that the ' worship^ 

 of the beautiful and good has given place to a calculation of the profitable, 

 that ' every work which can be made use of to immediate profit, every work 

 which falls in with the desire of acquiring wealth suddenly is sure of an ap- 

 propriate circulation,' that we have been led to ' estimate the worth of all 

 pursuits and attainments by their marketable value.' 



" To the same unhallowed spirit of gain is to be traced that fierce 'competi- 

 tion* of which the labourer, the artisan, the dealer, the manufacturer, and 

 even the members of all the liberal professions, alike complain. That compe- 

 tition, under certain limits, is necessary to the activity and healthy condition 

 of the social economy is not to be denied. But when it rises to a struggle m 

 which neither time nor strength is left for higher pursuits, in which every 

 new competitor is looked on in the light of an enemy, in which every per- 

 sonal exertion, and practicable retrenchment, in the mode of conducting busi- 

 ness, do but barely leave a subsistence, there must be something essentially 

 wrong in our ruling spirit or social constitution. True, the fact that the evil 

 exists may palliate the conduct of the Christian, who in mere self-defence, 

 and without his own seeking, finds himself compelled by circumstances to en- 

 gage in the rivalry and turmoil, Such a man is an object, not of blame, but 

 of pity. But how small the number of those who are not actually augment- 

 ing the evil, either by a sumptuous style of living, which absorbs the entire 

 profits of business as fast as they accrue, and which even anticipates them, 

 or else by a morbid and exorbitant craving after something new, by which the 

 ingenuity and application of men of business are kept constantly taxed, and 

 competition is almost converted into hostility ! Our present concern, however, 

 is not with the cause, but with the fact. And on all hands it is admitted 

 that the way in which business is now conducted involves all the risk, un- 

 certainty, and unnatural excitement of a game of chance. 



" Nor is the strife of fashion less apparent than the struggle of business. 

 Each class of the community, in succession, is pressing on that which is im- 

 mediately before it. Many of those engaged in the rivalry are supporting 

 themselves by temporary expedients, concealing their real poverty by occa- 

 sional extravagance and display. Take the following description of the fact, 

 from an eminent Christian moralist, whose position in society enables him to 



judge correctly, and on a large scale : ' Others, a numerous class in 



our days, attach themselves to the pomps and vanities of life. Magnificent 

 houses, grand equipages, numerous retinues, splendid entertainments, high 

 and fashionable connections, appear to constitute, in their estimation, the su- 

 preme happiness of life. Persons to whose rank and station these indul- 

 gences most properly belong often are the most indifferent to them. Undue 

 solicitude about them is more visible in persons of inferior conditions and 

 smaller fortunes, in whom it is detected by the studious contrivances of a 

 misapplied ingenuity, to reconcile parade with economy, and to glitter at a 

 cheap rate. There is an evident effort and struggle to excel in the particulars 

 here in question, a manifest wish to rival superiors, to outstrip equals, and 

 to dazzle inferiors.' The truth of this picture, it is to be feared, has been 

 daily increasing ever since it was drawn. 



"A spirit of extravagance and display naturally seeks for resources in daring 



