To these tauten?, which, I fuppose, we, at least among the graver pan of mankind, undisputed, I "will add another. Ltt *: msm \*~*jier his iaclimMtitt. "With this precept it may be, perhaps, imagined easy to comply yet if thoie whom |mo« fusion has buried in prisons, or driven into banish« mem, were examined, it would be found that verj . sew were ruined by their own choice, or purchases! pleasure with the lofs of their estates; but that they fuffered themselves to be born away by the violence of thofe with whom they conversed, and yielded reluctantly to a thousand prodigalities, either from a trivial emulation of wealth and spirit, or a mean sear of contempt and ridicule; an emulation for the prize of folly, or the dread of the laugh of fools.

I am, SI R,

Your humble Servant,

SOPHROM.

Vol. V.

Numb. 58. Saturday, OElober 6, 1750.

Improbct
Cre/cunt d'fvitirc, tamen

Curtæ nrscio quid femper abrst ret. Hor»

But, -while in heaps his wicked wealth ascends,

He is not of his wiih possess'd j
There's something wanting still to make him bless'd.

Francis.

AS the love of money has been, in all ages, one of the passions that have given great disturbance to the tranquillity of the world, there is no topick more copiously treated by the ancient moralists than the folly of devoting the heart to the accumulation of riches. They who are acquainted v/ith these authors need not be told how riches incite pity, contempt, or reproach, whenever they are mentioned; with what numbers os examples the danger of large possessions is illustrated; and how all the powers of reason and eloquence have been exhausted in endeavours to eradicate a desire, which seems to have intrenched itself too strongly in the mind to be driven out, and which, perhaps, . had not lost its power, even over thofe who declaimed against it, but would have broken out in the poet or the sage, if it had been excited by opportunity, and invigorated by the approximation of its proper object.

Their arguments have been, indeed, so unsuccesssul, that I know not whether it can be shown* that by all the wit and reason which this favourite cause has called forth, a single convert was evermade; that even one man has resused to be richt when to be rich was in his power, from the conviction of the greater happiness of a narrow fortune; or disburdened himself of wealth, when he had tried its inquietudes, merely to enjoy the peace and leisure and security 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 kindest offers of fortune: but, however their moderation may be boasted by themselves, or admired by such as only view them at a distance, it will be, perhaps, seldom found that they value riches less, but that they dread labour or danger more than others; they are unable to rouse themselves to action, to strain in the race of competition, or to stand the shock of contest; but though they, theresore, decline the toil of climbing, they nevertheless wish themselves aloft, find would willingly enjoy what they dare not seize.

Others have retired from high stations, and voluntarily condemned themselves to privacy and obscurity. But, even these will not afford many occacasions of triumph to the philosopher; for they have commonly either quitted that only which they thought themselves unable to hold, and prevented disgrace by resignation; or they have been induced to try new measures by general inconstancy, which always dreams of happiness in novelty, or by a gloomy disposition, which is disgusted in the fame

B b 2 degree

degree with every state, and wishes every scene of lise to change as soon as it is beheld. Such men found high and low stations equally unable to satissy the wishes of a distempered mind, and were unable to shelter themselves in the clofest retreat from disap* pointment, solicitude, and misery.

Yet though these admonitions have been thus neglected by thofe, who either enjoyed riches, or were able to procure them, it is not rashly to be determined that they are altogether without use; for since sar the greatest part of mankind must be confined to conditions comparatively mean, and placed in situations, 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 discontent almost universal, by showing, that what we cannot reach may very well be forborn, that the inequality of distribution, at which we murmur, is for the most part less than it seems, and that the greatness, which we admire at a distance, has much sewer advantages, and much less splendor, when we are suffered to approach it.

It is the business of moralists to detect the frauds of fortune, and to show that she impofes upon the careless eye, by a quick fucceflion of shadows, Which will shrink to nothing in the gripe; that she disguises lise in extrinffck ornaments, which serve only for show, and are laid aside in the hours of solitude, and of pleasure; and that when greatness aspires either to selicity or to wisdom, it shakes off thofe distinctions which dazzle the gazer, and aw$ the supplicant.

It may be remarked, that they whofe condition has not afforded them the light of moral or relK gious instruction, and who collect all their ideas by their own eyes, and digest them by their own understandings, seem to consider thofe who are placed in ranks of remote superiority, as almost another and higher species of beings. As themselves have known little other misery than the consequences of want, they are with difficulty persuaded that where there is wealth there can be sorrow, or that thofe who glitter in dignity, and glide along in affluence, can be acquainted with pains and cares like thofe which lie heavy upon the rest of mankind.

This prejudice is, indeed, confined to the lowest meanness, and the darkest ignorance; but it is so confined only because others have been shown its folly, and its salsehood, because it has been oppofed in its progress by history and philofophy, and hindered srom spreading its insection by powersul preservatives.

The doctrine of the contempt of wealth, though it has not been able to extinguish avarice or ambition, or suppress that reluctance with which a man passes his days in a state of inseriority, must, at least, have made the lower conditions less grating and wearisome, and has consequently contributed to the general security of lise, by hindering that fraud and violence, rapine and circumvention, which must have been produced by an unbounded eagerness of wealth, arising from an unshaken conviction that to be rich is to be happy.