ry." He was then asked if this was not
Mandeville's doctrine of "private vices are public benefits." Of course
this did not suit him, and he demolished it. He said, "Mandeville puts
the case of a man who gets drunk at an alehouse, and says it is a public
benefit, because so much money is got by it to the public. But it must
be considered that all the good gained by this through the gradation of
alehouse-keeper, brewer, maltster, and farmer, is overbalanced by the
evil caused to the man and his family by his getting drunk."

Perhaps you will say, what is a man to do with his money, if he may not
spend it in luxury? If, as Dr. Johnson says, and as we all of us find
out occasionally, it is worse spent if given in charity, are we to hoard
it? No, surely this is more contemptible still. "What is the use of all
your money," said one distinguished barrister to another, "you can't live
many more years, and you can't take it with you when you go? Besides, if
you could, it would all melt where you're going." This hoarding of
wealth, this craving for it, is only another form of luxury, the luxury
of growing rich. Some like to be thought rich, and called rich, and
treated with a fawning respect on account of their riches; others love to
hide their riches, but to hug their money in secret, and seem to enjoy
the prospect of dying rich. I was engaged in a singular case some time
ago, in which an old lady who had starved herself to death, and lived in
the greatest squalor, had secreted 250 pounds in a stocking under the
mattress of her bed. It was stolen by one nephew, who was sued for it by
another, and all the money went in law expenses. If then we are not to
spend our money upon luxuries, and if we are not to hoard it, what are we
to do with it if we have more than we can lay out in what is useful. I
have not time (nor is the question a part of my subject) to discuss what
should be done with the money hitherto spent in idle luxury. We know,
however, that we have the poor always with us, and that we can always
learn the luxury of doing good. In one way or another we ought to see
that our superfluous wealth should drain from the high lands into the
valleys; not indeed to make the poor luxurious, but to provide them with
comfort, to give them health, strength, and enjoyment. I think then that
if we are wise men, seeing that we are placed in a world of care,
trouble, and hard work, from which no man can escape; and seeing