hear it said again, that "the poor are wasteful; and that to increase their wages is only to increase their vices." Let me tell you, that poverty is the parent of improvidence and desperation. Those who have been brought up in that school may, very possibly, for a while, abuse their increased means: but in the long run, it cannot be so. Nay, by the very terms of your proposition, the abuse will cease with the desperation of poverty. Give the poor some hope; give them some means; give them something to lean upon; give them some interest in the order and welfare of society; and they will become less wasteful, less reckless and vicious.

Indeed, is it not obvious, can any one with his eyes open deny, that the extremes of condition in the world, the extremes of wealth and poverty, furnish us with the extremes of vice and dissipation? And does not this fact settle and prove, beyond all question, that it is desirable that accumulation should be restrained within some bounds on the one hand; and on the other that indigence should be lessened? What is the state of the operatives in the manufacturing districts of England? Only worse than that of the idlers in that kingdom, who are living and rioting upon overgrown fortunes. Let the conditions of men approach the same inequality in this or any other country, and we shall witness the same results. The tendency of things among us, I rejoice to believe, is not to that result; but it is, no doubt, the constant tendency of private ambition.

I am sensible, my friends, that I have made a large demand on your candour, in laying this question before you. It is paying the highest compliment I could pay to your fairness of mind. I only ask that you will treat my argument with equal generosity.

But I proceed to another point. In order to the rapid accumulation of property in all ordinary cases, a great expansion of credit is necessary. A man cannot grow suddenly rich by the labour of his hands, and he must therefore use the property or the promises of others, in order to compass this end. Now there is a question which I have never seen stated in the books of moral philosophy, which I have not heard discussed in the pulpit, and yet it is a point which deserves a place in the code of commercial morality; and that is, how far it is right for a man to use credit-that is, to extend his business beyond his actual capital? I am sensible that it is extremely difficult, if it is not indeed impossible, to lay down any exact rule on this subject; and yet it seems to me none the less worthy of consideration. Certainly, it must be admitted that there is a point somewhere, beyond which it is not prudent, and, therefore, not right, to go. Certainly it cannot be right, as it appears to me, for a man to use all the credit he can get. It could not be right, for instance, that upon a capital of ten thousand, a man should do a business of ten millions. No man ought to trust his powers to such an undefinable extent. No man's creditors, were he to fail, could be satisfied with his having accepted trusts from others in the shape of credits, which common prudence shall pronounce to be rash and hazardous. There is a common prudence, if there is no exact rule about this matter; and the borrower is most especially bound to observe it; and certainly, every honest man, being a borrower, would observe it, if he did but sufficiently think of it. The want of this thought, is the very reason why I bring forward the subject.

With regard to the rule, I have it as the deliberate opinion of one of the greatest bankers in Europe, that a man should not extend his business to more than three times his capital; and if it be a large business, to not more than twice his capital. I do not say that this is the rule, though I have the greatest respect for the judgment that laid it down. I do not say that it is the rule, because I am advised on the other hand, by very competent judges, that the rule must vary exceedingly with the different kinds of business which a man may pursue.

I do not undertake, then, to lay down any particular rule, but I urge the claims of general prudence. I wish to call attention to this point. I am persuaded that it is for want of reflection, and not from want of principle, that many have adventured out upon an ocean of credit, where they have not only suffered shipwreck themselves, but carried down many a goodly vessel with them. It is said, that the government have spread temptation before the people, by adopting measures which lead to extraordinary issues of bank paper. It may be so: I believe that it is so; though this can scarcely be supposed, by the most jealous, to have been a matter of design. But grant that it be so; what I maintain is, that the people ought not to have yielded to the temptation to the extent that many have done. The borrower, I hold, is specially and solemnly bound to be prudent. He is bound to be more prudent in the use of other men's property than of his own. A man should be more cautious in taking credit than in using capital: but I fear that the very reverse of this is commonly the fact. I fear that most men are more reckless when they use the means which credit gives them, than they would be in using their own absolute and fixed property. In small matters, we know that immediate payment is a check to expenditure. Why is it, but for this, that every petty dealer is anxious to open a credit with your family? He knows that your expenditures will be freer, your purchases larger, and that a more considerable amount will be made up at the end of the year, because you buy on credit. But look at the subject in a wider view: I know that some men do plunge more recklessly into the great game of business, because the game is played with credit; with counters, and not with coins. I have heard it observed-and I confess, that it was with a coolness and nonchalance that amazed me that a man may as well take a good strong hold of business while he is about it, since he has nothing to lose by it. The sentiment is monstrous. It ought to shake the very foundations of every warehouse where it is uttered. There ought to be a sacred caution in the use of credit. And although I cannot pretend to define the precise law of its extension, yet this I will say, that never, till I see a man adventuring his own property more freely than he adventures that which he borrows of his neighbour, can I think he is right. Let this great and undeniably just moral principle be established, and I am persuaded that we shall at once see a wholesome restraint laid upon the use of credit.

There is one further point to which I wish to invite your attention; and that is, the practice, in cases of bankruptcy, of giving preference to certain creditors, who have made loans on that condition. Now, I maintain, that no man ought to offer credit, and that no man ought to accept it, on that condition. The practice is abolished in England; and I know, that there it is regarded as bringing a stain upon the commercial morality of this country.

I do not mean to charge with personal dereliction, any person who has, in times past, taken advantage of this rule. It has been the rule of the country, and has passed unquestioned. And so long as it has been the rule, and money has been borrowed and lent on that principle, and it was considered right so to do, it was perhaps right, as between man and man, that cases of insolvency should be settled on that principle; but as a theoretical principle of general application, I hold that it is utterly wrong. Our laws, indeed, disallow it, and public opinion ought not, for another hour, to sustain it.

The principle is dishonest: it is treachery to the body of a man's creditors. He appeared before them with a certain amount of means; and upon the strength of those means, they were willing to give him credit. Those means were the implied condition, the very basis of the loan; without them they would not have made it. They saw that he had a large stock of goods; that he was doing a large business; and they thought there was no danger: they depended, in fact, upon that visible property, in case of difficulties. But difficulty arises, failure comes; and then they find that much or all of that property is preoc cupied and wrested from their hands by certain confidential pledges. If they had known this, they would have stood aloof; and therefore, I say, that there is essential deception in the case.

Again, lending on such a principle loses all its generosity; and borrowing is liable to lose all the prudence and virtue that properly belong to it. If a man lends to his young friend or relative, on the sole strength of affection and confidence towards him, it is a transaction which bestows a grace upon mercantile life. But if he lends as a preference creditor, he takes no risk, and shows no confidence; for he knows that the borrower, upon the strength of his loan, can easily get property enough into his hands, to make him perfectly secure. And let it be observed, that, in proportion as the acquisition of confidence is less necessary; in proportion, that is to say, as virtue aud ability are less necessary to set up a man in business, are they less likely to be cultivated and so far as this principle goes, therefore, it tends to sap and undermine the whole business character of a country. Nay, it is easy to see, that, under the cloak of these confidential transactions, the entire business between the borrower and lender may be the grossest and most iniquitous gambling. Of course, I do not say that this is common; but I say, that the principle ought not to be tolerated, which is capable of such abuses.

This principle, I think, moreover, is the very key-stone of the arch that supports many an overgrown fabric of credit. And this observation has a two-fold bearing. Much of the credit that is obtained, could not exist without this principle; that is one thing: but furthermore, I hold, that all the extension of credit which depends on this principle, ought not to exist at all. It ought not, because the principle is dishonest and treacherous; and it would not, because the first credit which often puts a man in the possession of visible means, is not given on the strength of confidence in him, but on the strength of the secret pledge; and then the after credits are based on those visible means. Let every man that borrows tell, as he ought to do, the amount of his confidential obligations, and many would find their credit seriously curtailed; and to that extent, most assuredly, it ought to be curtailed.

I have thus spoken of the spirit of gain as liable—not as always being, but as liable-to be in conflict with the great principles of social and commercial justice. I might add, that the manner in which the gains of business are sometimes clung to, amidst the wreck of fortunes, is a powerful and striking illustration of the same moral danger. He who regards no limits of justice in acquiring property, will break all bonds of justice to keep it.

And here I must carefully and widely distinguish. I give all honour to the spirit which many among us have shown in such circumstances; to the manly fortitude and disinterestedness of men, who have comparatively cared nothing for themselves, but who have been almost crushed to the earth by what they have suffered for their friends; to the heroic cheerfulness and soothing tenderness of woman in such an hour, ready to part with every luxury, and holding the very pearl of her life in the unsullied integrity of her husband. I know full well that that lofty integrity is the only rule ever thought of by many, in the painful adjustment of their broken fortunes. And I know, and the public knows, that, if they retain a portion of their splendour for a season, it is reluctantly, and because it cannot, in the present circumstances, be profitably disposed of-and in strict trust for their creditors. But there are bankrupts of a different character, as you well know. I do not know that any such are in this presence; but if there were a congregation of such before me, I should speak no otherwise than I shall now speak. I say, that there are men of a different character; men who intend permanently to keep back a part of the price which they have sworn to pay and I tell you, that God's altar, at which I minister, shall hear no word from me, concerning them, but a word of denunciation. It is dishonesty, and it ought to be infamy. It is robbery, though it live in splendour, and ride in state; robbery, I say, as truly as if instead of inhabiting a palace, it were consigned to the dungeons of Sing-Sing. And take care, my brethren, as ye shall stand at the judgment-bar of conscience and of God, that ye fall not at all beneath this temptation. The times are times of sore and dreadful peril to the virtue of the country; they are times, in which it is necessary even for honest men to gird up the loins of their minds, and to be sober and watchful; ay, watchful over themselves. Remember, all such, I adjure you, that the dearest fortune you can carry into the world, will not compensate you for the least iota of your integrity surrendered and given up. Oh! sweeter, in the lowliest dwelling to which you may descend, shall be the thought that you have kept your integrity immaculate, than all the concentrated essence of luxury to your taste. all its combined softness to your couch, all its gathered splendour to your state. Ay, prouder shall you be in the humblest seat, than if, with ill-kept gains, you sat upon the throne of a kingdom.

I come now to consider, in the last place, the limitations to be set to the desire of wealth, by a sober consideration of its too probable effects upon ourselves, upon our children, and upon the world at large. And here let me ask two preliminary questions.

Can that be so necessary to human well-being, as many consider wealth to be, which necessarily falls to the lot but of a few? Can that be the very feast and wine of life, when but a few thousands of the human race are allowed to partake of it? If it were so, surely God's

providence were less kind and liberal, than we are bound to think it. God has not made a world of rich men, but rather a world of poor men; or of men, at least, who must toil for a subsistence. That, then, must be the good condition for man, nay, the best condition; and we see, indeed, that it is the grand sphere of human improvement.

In the next place, can that be so important to human welfare, which, if it were possessed by all, would be the most fatal injury possible? And here I must desire that every person, whose pursuit of property this question may affect, will extend his thoughts beyond himself. He may say that it would be a good thing, if he could acquire wealth; and perhaps it would; he may say that he does not see that riches would do him any harm; and perhaps they would not: he may have views that ennoble the pursuit of fortune. But the question is, would it be well and safe for four-fifths of the business community around him to become opulent? He must remember, that his neighbours have sought as well as he, and in a proportion, too, not far distant from what I have stated. They have sought, and had as good a right to succeed, as he had. Would it be well, that so general an expectation of fortune should be gratified? Would it be well for society, well for the world? Only carry the supposition a little farther; only suppose the whole world to acquire wealth; only suppose it were possible that the present generation could lay up a complete provision for the next, as some men desire to do for their children, and you destroy the world at a single blow. All industry would cease with the necessity for it; all improvement would stop with the demand for exertion; the dissipation of fortunes, whose mischiefs are now countervailed by the healthful tone of society, would then breed universal disease, and break out into universal licence, and the world would sink into the grave of its own loathsome vices.

But let us look more closely, for a moment, at the general effect of wealth upon individuals and upon nations.

I am obliged, then, to regard with considerable distrust, the influence of wealth upon individuals. I know that it is a mere instrument, which may be converted to good or to bad ends. I know that it is often used for good ends; but I more than doubt whether the chances lean that way. Independence and luxury are not likely to be good for any man. Leisure and luxury are almost always bad for every man. I know that there are noble exceptions. But I have seen so much of the evil effect of wealth upon the mind-making it proud, haughty, and impatient; robbing it of its simplicity, modesty, and humility; bereaving it of its large, and gentle, and considerate humanity: and I have heard such testimonies, such astonishing testimonies, to the same effect, from those whose professional business it is to settle and adjust the affairs of large estates-that I more and more distrust its boasted advantages. I deny the validity of that boast. In truth, I am sick of the world's admiration of wealth. Almost all the noblest things that have been achieved in the world, have been achieved by poor men; poor scholars, and professional men; poor artisans and artists; poor philosophers and poets, and men of genius.

It does appear to me, that there is a certain staidness and sobriety, a certain moderation and restraint, a certain pressure of circumstances, that is good for man. His body was not made for luxuries; it sickens, sinks, and dies under them. His mind was not made for indulgence;