in regard to speculations; some were large
navvies, coal-miners, and manufacturers; some were almost unknown beyond
their own local circle; some were very poor creatures; very few were men
of distinction. All that one could say of them was, that they died rich
men.

"All the rich and all the covetous men in the world," said Jeremy
Taylor, "will perceive, and all the world will perceive for them, that
it is but an ill recompense for all their cares, that by this time all
that shall be left will be this, that the neighbours shall say, _He died
a rich man:_ and yet his wealth will not profit him in the grave, but
hugely swell the sad accounts of his doomsday."

"One of the chief causes," says Mrs. Gore, "which render the pursuit of
wealth a bitterer as well as more pardonable struggle in England than on
the Continent, is the unequal and capricious distribution of family
property.... Country gentlemen and professional men,--nay, men without
the pretension of being gentlemen,--are scarcely less smitten with the
mania of creating 'an eldest son' to the exclusion and degradation of
their younger children; and by the individuals thus defrauded by their
nearest and dearest, is the idolatry of Mammon pursued without the least
regard to self-respect, or the rights of their fellow-creatures.
Injured, they injure in their turn. Their days are devoted to a campaign
for the recovery of their birthright. Interested marriages, shabby
bargains, and political jobbery, may be traced to the vile system of
things which converts the elder son into a Dives, and makes a Lazarus of
his brother."

But democrats have quite as great a love for riches as aristocrats; and
many austere republicans are eager to be millionaires. Forms of
government do not influence the desire for wealth. The elder Cato was a
usurer. One of his means of making money was by buying young half-fed
slaves at a low price; then, by fattening them up, and training them to
work, he sold them at an enhanced price. Brutus, when in the Isle of
Cyprus, lent his money at forty-eight per cent. interest,[1] and no one
thought the worse of him for his Usury. Washington, the hero of American
freedom, bequeathed his slaves to his wife. It did not occur to him to
give them their liberty. Municipal jobbery is not unknown in New York;
and its influential citizens are said to be steeped to the lips in
political corruption. Mr. Mills says, that the people of the
North-Eastern States have ap