year: for each man would labour no more than just enough for his immediate supply, and would also employ his labour less profitably than now, for want of a proper division of labour; and no one would attempt to lay by anything, because he would not be sure of being allowed to keep it. In consequence of all this, the whole produce of the land and the labour of the country would become much less than it is now; and we should soon be reduced to the same general wretchedness and distress which prevails in many halfsavage countries. The rich, indeed, would have become poor; but the poor, instead of improving their condition, would be much worse off than before. All would soon be as miserably poor as the most destitute beggars are now: indeed, so far worse, that there would be nobody to beg of.

It is best for all parties, the rich, the poor, the middling, that property should be secure, and that every one should be allowed to possess what is his own, to gain whatever he can by honest means, and keep it or spend it as he thinks fit;-provided he does no one any injury. Some rich men, indeed, make a much better use of their fortunes than others: but one who is ever so selfish in his disposition can hardly help spending it on his neighbours. If a man has an income of £5,000 a year, some people might think, at first sight, that if his estate were divided among one hundred poor families, which would give each of them £50 a-year, there would thus be, by such a division, one hundred poor families the more enabled to subsist in the country. But this is quite a mistake. Such would, indeed, be the case, if the rich man had been used to eat as much food as one hundred poor families, and to wear out as much clothes as all of them. But we know this is not the case. He pays away his income to servants,

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and labourers, and tradesmen, and manufacturers of different articles, who lay out the money in food and clothing for their families: so that in reality the same sort of division of it is made as if it had been taken away from him. He may, perhaps, if he be a selfish man, care nothing for the maintaining of all these families, but still he does maintain them; for if he should choose to spend £1,000 a-year in fine pictures, the painters who are employed in those pictures are as well maintained as if he had made them a present of the money, and left them to sit idle. The only dif ference is, that they feel they are honestly earning their living, instead of subsisting on charity; but the total quantity of food and clothing in the country is neither the greater nor the less in the one case than in the other. But if a rich man, instead of spending all his income, saves a great part of it, this saving will almost always be the means of maintaining a still greater number of industrious people: for a man who saves, hardly ever, in these days at least, hoards up gold and silver in a box, but lends it out on good security, that he may receive interest upon it. Suppose, instead of spending £1,000 a-year on paintings, he saves that sum every year. Then this money is generally borrowed by farmers, or manufacturers, or merchants, who can make a profit by it in the way of their business, over and above the interest they pay for the use of it. And in order to do this, they lay it out in employing labourers to till the ground, or to manufacture cloth and other articles, or te import foreign goods: by which means the corn, and cloth, and other commodities of the country, are increased.

The rich man, therefore, though he appears to have so much larger a share allotted to him, does not really consume it, but is only the channel

through which it flows to others. And it is by this means much better distributed than it could have been otherwise.

The mistake of which I have been speaking, of supposing that the rich cause the poor to be the worse off, was exposed long ago in the fable of the stomach and the limbs :

"Once on a time," says the fable, "all the other members of the body began to murmur against the stomach, for employing the labours of all the rest, and consuming all they had helped to provide, without doing anything in return. So they all agreed to strike work, and refused to wait upon this idle stomach any longer. The feet refused to carry it about; the hands resolved to put no food into the mouth for it; the nose refused to smell for it, and the eyes to look out in its service; and the ears declared they would not even listen to the dinner-bell; and so of all the rest. But after the stomach had been left empty for some time, all the members began to suffer. The legs and arms grew feeble; the eyes became dim, and all the body languid and exhausted.

"Oh, foolish members,' said the stomach, ‘you now perceive that what you used to supply to me, was in reality supplied to yourselves. I did not consume for myself the food that was put into me, but digested it, and prepared it for being changed into blood, which was sent through various channels as a supply for each of you. If you are occupied in feeding me, it is by me in turn, that the bloodvessels which nourish you are fed.'

You see then, that a rich man, even though he may care for no one but himself, can hardly avoid benefiting his neighbours. But this is no merit of his, if he himself has no desire or wish to benefit them. On the other hand, a rich man who seeks for deserving objects to relieve and assist, and is,

as the apostle expresses, "ready to give, and glad to distribute, is laying up in store for himself a good foundation for the time to come, that he may lay hold of eternal life." It is plain from this, and from many other such injunctions of the apostles, that they did not intend to destroy the security of property among Christians, which leads to the distinction between the rich and the poor; for their exhortations to the rich to be kind and charitable to the poor, would have been absurd if they had not allowed that any of their people should be rich; and there could be no such thing as charity in giving anything to the poor, if it were not left to each man's free choice to give or spend what is his own. Indeed, nothing can be called your own which you are not left free to dispose of as you will. The very nature of charity implies that it must be voluntary: for no one can be properly said to give anything that he has no power to withhold. The Apostle Paul, indeed, goes yet farther, when he desires each man give according as he is disposed in his heart, and not grudgingly," because "God loveth the cheerful giver."

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When men are thus left to their own inclinations to make use of their money, each as he is disposed in his heart, we must expect to find that some will choose to spend it merely on their own selfish enjoyments. Such men, although, as you have seen, they do contribute to maintain many industrious families without intending it, yet are themselves not the less selfish and odious. But still we are not the less forbidden to rob, or defraud, or annoy them. Scripture forbids us to "covet our neighbour's goods," not because he does not make a right use of them, but because they are his.

When you see a rich man who is proud and selfish, perhaps you are tempted to think how

much better a use you would make of wealth if you were as rich as he. I hope you would: but the best proof that you can give that you would behave well if you were in another's place, is by behaving well in your own. God has appointed to each his own trials, and his own duties; and He will judge you, not according to what you think you would have done in some different station, but according to what you have done in that station in which he has placed you.

LESSON V.

ON CAPITAL.

WE have seen that a rich man who spends on himself his income of £1,000 or £10,000 a-year, does not diminish the wealth of the whole country by so much, but only by what he actually eats and wears, or otherwise consumes, himself. The rest he hands over to those who work for him or wait on him; paying them either in food or clothes, or, what comes to the same thing, in money to buy what they want. And if he were to give to the same persons what he now pays, leaving them to continue idle, there would not be the more food or clothes in the country; only, these people would sit still, or lounge about and do nothing, instead of earning their bread.

But they are the happier and the better for being employed instead of being idle, even though their labour should be only in planting flowers, or building a palace to please their employer's fancy.

Most of the money that is spent, however, is laid out in employing labourers on some work that is profitable; that is, in doing something which brings back more than is spent on it, and thus