1827.] On the Want of Money. 45 



object, and without having any thing to shew for it. They have not, 

 for instance, a fine house, but they hire two houses at a time ; they have 

 not a hot-house in their garden, but a shrubbery within doors ; they do 

 not gamble, but they purchase a library, and dispose of it when they 

 move house. A princely benefactor provides them with lodgings, where, 

 for a time, you are sure to find them at home : and they furnish them 

 in a handsome style for those who are to come after them. With all 

 this sieve-like economy, they can only afford a leg of mutton and a bottle 

 of wine, and are glad to get a lift in a common stage ; whereas with a 

 little management and the same disbursements, they might entertain a 

 round of company and drive a smart tilbury. But they set no value 

 upon money, and throw it away on any object or in any manner that 

 first presents itself, merely to have it off their hands, so that you wonder 

 what has become of it. The second class above spoken of not only 

 make away with what belongs to themselves, but you cannot keep any- 

 thing you have from their rapacious grasp. If you refuse to lend them 

 what you want, they insist that you must : if you let them have any 

 thing to take charge of for a time (a print or a bust) they swear 

 that you have given it them, and that they have too great a 

 regard for the donor ever to part with it. You express surprise 

 at their having run so largely in debt ; but where is the singularity 

 while others continue to lend ? And how is this to be helped, when the 

 manner of these sturdy beggars anlounts to dragooning you out of your 

 money, and they will not go away without your purse, any more than 

 if they came with a pistol in their hand ? If a person has no delicacy, 

 he has you in his power, for you necessarily feel some towards him ; 

 and since he will take no denial, you must comply with his peremptory 

 demands, or send for a constable, which out of respect for his character 

 you will not do. These persons are also poor light come, light go and 

 the bubble bursts at last. . Yet if they had employed the same time and 

 pains in any laudable art or study that they have in raising a surrepti- 

 tious livelihood, they would have been respectable, if not rich. It is 

 their facility in borrowing money that has ruined them. No one will 

 set heartily to work, who has the face to enter a strange house, ask the 

 master of it for a considerable loan, on some plausible and pompous 

 pretext, and walk off with it in his pocket. You might as well suspect a 

 highway-man of addicting himself to hard study in the intervals of his 

 profession. 



There is only one other class of persons I can think of, in connexion 

 with the subject of this Essay those who are always in want of money 

 from the want of spirit to make use of it. Such persons are perhaps 

 more to be pitied than all the rest. They live in want, in the midst 

 of plenty dare not touch what belongs to them, are afraid to say that 

 their soul is their own, have their wealth locked up from them by fear 

 and meanness as effectually as by bolts and bars, scarcely allow them- 

 selves a coat to their backs or a morsel to eat, are in dread of coming to 

 the parish all their lives, and are not sorry when they die, to think that 

 they shall no longer be an expense to themselves according to the old 

 epigram : 



" Here lies Father Clarges, 

 Who died to save charges !" 



