ESSAY XVI. THE MAIN CHANCE. "Search then the ruling passion: there alone This clue once found unravels all the rest, The prospect clears, and Wharton stands confest."-POPE. I AM one of those who do not think that mankind are exactly governed by reason or a cool calculation of consequences. I rather believe that habit, imagination, sense, passion, prejudice, words, make a strong and frequent diversion from the right line of prudence and wisdom. I have been told, however, that these are merely the irregularities and exceptions, and that reason forms the rule or basis; that the understanding, instead of being the sport of the capricious and arbitrary decisions of the will, generally dictates the line of conduct it is to pursue, and that self-interest or the main chance is the unvarying load-star of our affections or the chief ingredient in all our motives, that thrown in as ballast gives steadiness and direction to our voyage through life. I will not take upon me to give a verdict in this cause as judge; but I will try to plead one side of it as an advocate, perhaps a biassed and feeble one. As the passions are to be subject to the control of reason, and as reason is resolved (in the present case) into an attention to our own interest or a practical sense of the value of money, it will not be amiss to inquire how much of this principle itself is founded in a rational estimate of things or is calculated for the end it proposed, or how much of it will turn out (when analysed) to be mere madness and folly or a mixture, like all the rest, of obstinacy, whim, fancy, vanity, ill-nature, and so forth, or a nominal pursuit of good. This passion or an inordinate love of wealth shows itself, when it is strong, equally in two opposite ways, in saying or in spending, avarice (or stinginess) and in extravagance. To examine each of their order. That lowest and most familiar form of covetousness, commonly called stinginess, is at present (it must be owned) greatly on the wane in civilized society; it has been driven out of fashion either by ridicule and good sense, or by the spread of luxury, or by supplying the mind with other sources of interest, besides those which relate to the bare means of subsistence, so that it may almost be considered as a vice or absurdity struck off the list as a set off to some that in the change of manners and the progress of dissipation have been brought upon the stage. It is not, however, so entirely banished from the world, but that examples of it may be found to our purpose. It seems to have taken refuge in the petty provincial towns or in old baronial castles in the north of Scotland, where it is still triumphant. To go into this subject some-in detail. What is more common in these places than to stint the servants in their wages, to allowance them in the merest necessaries, never to indulge them with a morsel of savoury food, and to lock up every thing from them as if they were thieves or common vagabonds broke into the house? The natural consequence is that the mistresses live in continual hot water with their servants, keep watch and ward over themthe pantry being in a state of siege-grudge them every mouthful, every appearance of comfort or moment of leisure, and torment their own souls every minute of their lives about what if left wholly to itself would not make a difference of five shillings at the year's end. There are families so notorious for this kind of surveillance and meanness, that no servant will go to live with them; for to clench the matter, they are obliged to stay if they do, as under these amiable establishments and to provide against an evasion of their signal advantages, domestics are never hired but by the half-year. Cases have been know where servants have taken a pleasant revenge on their masters and mistresses without intending it: where the example of sordid saving and meanness having possession of those who in the first instance were victims to it, they have conscientiously applied it to the benefit of all parties, and scarcely suffered a thing to enter the house for the whole six months they stayed in it. To pass over, however, those cases which may plead poverty as their excuse, what shall we say to a lady of fortune (the sister of an old fashioned Scotch laird) allowing the fruit to rot in the gardens and hot-houses of a fine old mansion in large quantities sooner than let any of it be given away in presents to the neighbors, and when peremptorily ordered by the master of the house to send a basketfull every morning to a sick friend, purchasing a small pottle for the purpose, and satisfying her mind (an intelligent and well-informed one) with this miserable subterfuge? Nay farther, the same person, whenever they had green peas or other rarities served up at table, could hardly be prevailed on to help the guests to them, but if possible sent them away, though no other use could now be made of them, and she would never see them again! Is there common sense in this; or is it not more like madness? But is it not, at the same time, human nature ? Let us stop to explain a little. In my view, the real motive of action in this and other similar cases of grasping penuriousness has no more reference to self-love (properly so called) than artificial fruit and flowers have to natural ones. certain form or outside appearance of utility may deceive the mind, but natural, pulpy, wholesome, nutritious substance, the principle of vitality is gone. To this callous, frigid habit of mind the real uses of things harden and crystalize; the pith and marrow are extracted out of them, leaving nothing but the husk or shell. By a regular process, the idea of property is gradually abstracted from the advantage it may be of even to ourselves; and to a well-drilled, thorough-bred Northern house-keeper (such as I have spoken of) the fruits or other produce of her garden would come at last to be things no more to be eaten or enjoyed than her jewels or trinkets, which are professedly of no use but to be kept as symbols of wealth, to be occasionally looked at, and carefully guarded from the approach of any unhallowed touch. A The calculation of consequences or of benefit to accrue to any living person is so far from being the main spring in this mechanical operation that it is never once thought of, or regarded with peevishness and impatience as an unwelcome intruder, because it must naturally divert the mind from the warped and false bias it has taken. The feeling of property is here removed from the sphere of practice to a chimerical and fictitious one. In the case of not sending the fruit out of the house, there might be some lurking idea of its being possibly wanted at home, that it might be sent to some one else, or made up into conserves: but when different articles of food are actually placed on the table, to hang back from using or offering them to others, is a deliberate infatuation. They must be destroyed, they could not appear again; and yet this person's heart failed her and shrunk back from the only opportunity of making the proper use of them with a petty, sensitive apprehension, as if it were a kind of sacrilege done to a cherished and favorite object. The impulse to save was become by indulgence a sort of desperate propensity and forlorn hope, no longer the understood means, but the mistaken end: habit had completely superseded the exercise and control of reason, and the rage of making the most of every thing by making no use of it at all resisted to the last moment the shocking project of feasting on a defenceless dish of green peas (that would fetch so much in the market) as an outrage against the Goddess of Stinginess and torture to the soul of Thrift! The principle of economy is inverted; and in order to avoid the possibility of wasting any thing, the way with such philosophers and housewives is to abstain from touching it altogether. Is not this a common error? Or are we conscious of our motives in such cases? Or do we not flatter ourselves by imputing every such act of idle folly to the necessity of adopting some sure and judicious plan to shun ruin, beggary, and the profligate abuse of wealth? An old maid in the same northern school of humanity calling upon some young ladies, her neighbors was so alarmed and scandalized at finding the safe open in their absence, that she engaged herself to drink tea the same afternoon, for the express purpose of reading them a lecture on the unheardof-imprudence and impropriety of such an example, and was mobbed on her way home by the poor servant-girl (who had been made the subject of her declamation) in return for her uncalled-for interference. She had nothing to fear, nothing to lose her safe was carefully locked up. Why then all this flutter, fidgetty anxiety, and itch of meddling? Out of pure romantic generosity-because the idea of any thing like comfort or liberality to a servant shocked her economical and screwed-up prejudices as much as the impugning any article of her religious or moral creed could have done. The very truisms and literal refinements of this passion are then sheer impertinence. The housekeeper came into the parlor of a big ha' house," in the same land of cakes and hospitality, to say that the workmen had refused to eat their dinner." Why so?"-Because there was nothing but sowins and sour milk." Then they must go without a dinner," said the young mistress delighted; "there is nothing else in the house for them." Yet the larder at that time groaned with cold rounds of beef, hams, pastries, and other plentiful remains of a huge entertainment the day before. This was flippancy and ill-nature, as well as a wrong notion of self-interest. Is it at all wonderful that a decent servant-girl, when applied to to go to this place, laughed at the idea of a service where there was nothing to eat? Yet this attention to the main chance on her part, had it come to the lady's knowledge, would have been treated as a great piece of insolence. So little conception have such people of their own obligations on the claims of others! 66 The clergyman of the parish (prolific in this sort of anecdote), a hearty, good sort of man enough, but irritable withal, took it into his head to fly into a violent passion if ever he found the glasses or spoons left out in the kitchen, and he always went into the kitchen to look after this sort of excitement. He pretended to be mightily afraid that the one would be broken (to his irreparable loss) and the other stolen, though there was no danger of either: he wanted an excuse to fret and fume about something. On the death of his wife he sent for her most intimate friend to condole and consult with, and having made some necessary arrangements, begged as a peculiar favor that she would look into the kitchen to see if the glasses and silver spoons were in their places. She repressed a smile at such a moment out of regard to his feelings, which were serious and acute; but burst into a fit of unrestrained laughter as soon as she got home. So ridiculous a thing is human nature, even to ourselves! Either our actions are absurd or we are absurd, in our constant censure and exposure of others. I wolud not from choice go into these details, but I might be required to fill up a vague outline; and the examples of folly, spite, and meanness are unfortunately" sown like a thick scurf o'er life!" Let us turn the tables and look at the other side of this sober, solid, engrossing passion for property and its appendages. A man lays out a thousand, nay, sometimes several thousand pounds in purchasing a fine picture. This is thought by the vulgar a very fantastical folly and unaccountable waste of money. Why so? No one would give such a sum for a picture, unless there were others ready to offer nearly the same sum, and who are likely to appreciate its value and envy him the distinction. It is then a sign of taste, a proof of wealth to possess it; it is an ornament and. a luxury. If the same person lays out the same sum of money in building or purchasing a fine house, or enriching it with costly furniture, no notice is taken. This is supposed to be perfectly natural and in order. Yet both are equally gratuitous pieces of extravagance, and the value of the objects is in either case equally ideal. It will be asked, "But what is the use of the picture?" And what, pray, is the use of the fine house or costly furniture unless to be looked at, to be admired, and to display the taste and magnificence of the owner? Are not pictures and statues as much furniture as gold plate or jasper tables; or does the circumstance of the former having a meaning in them and appealing to the imagination as well as to the senses, neutralize their virtue and render it entirely chimerical and visionary? It is true, every one must have a house of some kind, furnished somehow, and the superfluous so far grows imperceptibly out of the necessary. But a fine house, fine furniture is necessary to no man, nor of more value than the plainest, except as a matter of taste, of fancy, of luxury, and ostentation. Again, no doubt, if a person is in the habit of keeping a number of servants, and entertaining a succession of fashionable guests, he must have more room than he wants for himself, apartments suitably decorated to receive them, and offices and stables for their horses and retinue. But is all this unavoidably dictated as a consequence of his attention to the main chance, or is it not sacrificing the latter and making it a stalking-horse to his vanity, dissipation, or love of society and hospitality? We are at least as fond of spending money as of making it. If a man runs through a fortune in the way here spoken of, is it out of love to him self? Yet who scruples to run through a fortune in this way, or accuses himself of any extraordinary disinterestedness or love of others? One bed is as much as any one can sleep in, one room is as much as he can dine in, and he may have another for study or to retire to after dinner; but he can only want more than this for the accommodation of his friends or the admiration of the stranger. At Fonthill Abbey (to take an extreme illustration) there was not a single room fit to sit, lie, or stand in: the whole was cut up into pigeon holes, or spread out into long endless galleries. The building this huge, ill-assorted pile cost, I believe, nearly a million of money; and if the circumstance was mentioned, it occasioned an expression of surprise at the amount of the wealth that had been thus squandered; but if it was said that a hundred pounds had been laid out on a highly finished picture, there was the same astonishment expressed at its misdirection. The sympathetic auditor makes up his mind to the first and greatest outlay, by reflecting that in case of the worst the building materials alone will fetch something considerable; or in the very idea of stone walls and mortar there is something solid and tangible, that repels the charge of frivolous levity or fine sentiment. This quaint excrescence in architecture, preposterous and ill-constructed as it was, occasioned, I suspect, many a heart-ache and bitter comparison to the throng of fashionable visitants; and I conceive it was the very want of comfort and convenience that enhanced this feeling, by magnifying as it were from contrast the expense that had been incurred in realizing an idle whim. When we judge thus perversely and invidiously of the employment of wealth by others, I cannot think that we are guided in our own choice of means to ends by a simple calculation of downright use and personal accommodation. The gentleman who purchased Fonthill, and was supposed to be possessed of wealth enough to purchase half a dozen more Fonthills, lived there himself for some time in a state of the greatest retirement; rose at six, and read till four, rode out for an hour for the benefit of the air, and dined abstemiously for the sake of his health. I could do all this myself. What then became of the rest of his fortune? It was lying in the funds or embarked in business to make it yet greater: that he might still rise at six and read till four, &c. It was of no other earthly use to him; for he did not wish to make a figure in the world, or to throw it away on studs of horses, or equipages, entertainments, gaming, electioneering, subscriptions to charitable institutions, mistresses, or any of the usual fashionable modes of squandering wealth for the amusement and wonder of others and our own fancied enjoyment. Mr. Farquhar did not probably lay out five hundred a-year on himself: yet it cost Mr. Beckford, who also led a life of perfect seclusion, twenty thousand a-year to defray the expenses of his table and of his household establishment. When I find that such and so various are the tastes of men, I am a little puzzled to know what is meant by self-interest, of which some persons talk so fluently, as if it was a jackin-a-box, which they could take out and show you, and which they tell you is the object that all men equally aim at. If money, is it for its own sake, or the sake of other things? Is it to hoard it, or to spend it on ourselves or others? In all these points, we find the utmost diversity and contradiction, both of feeling and practice. Certainly he who puts his money into a strong box, and he who puts it into a dice-box, must be al |