He tries a money-lender;
and, if he succeeds, he is only out of the frying-pan into the fire. It
is easy to see what the end will be,--a life of mean shifts and
expedients, perhaps ending in the gaol or the workhouse.
Can a man keep out of debt? Is there a possibility of avoiding the moral
degradation which accompanies it? Could not debt be dispensed with
altogether, and man's independence preserved secure? There is only one
way of doing this; by "living within the means." Unhappily, this is too
little the practice in modern times. We incur debt, trusting to the
future for the opportunity of defraying it. We cannot resist the
temptation to spend money. One will have fine furniture and live in a
high-rented house; another will have wines and a box at the opera; a
third must give dinners and music-parties:--all good things in their
way, but not to be indulged in if they cannot be paid for. Is it not a
shabby thing to pretend to give dinners, if the real parties who provide
them are the butcher, the poulterer, and the wine-merchant, whom you are
in debt to, and cannot pay?
A man has no business to live in a style which his income cannot
support, or to mortgage his earnings of next week or of next year, in
order to live luxuriously to-day. The whole system of Debt, by means of
which we forestall and anticipate the future, is wrong.
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