MAMMON.

Thames Guardian and Mining Record, Volume I, Issue 92, 25 January 1872, Page 3

MAMMON.

(From the Australasian.) “ There are few ways,” said Sam Johnson, “ in which a man can be more innocently or usefully employed than in the earning of money.” This, adds liis obsequious biographer, is one of his sayings of which our meditation augments our approval. Let us analyse that which purports to be so profitable to us.

The emphatic word is “ earning,” or producing an equivalent. The creating or combining of something that palpably adds to human life, and whose acknowledged value is represented by the remuneration it commands. The time and labour devoted to this is presumably innocent and useful, for the worker has before his mind the approval of the employer. The money is earned. But, the agreement of two or more persons to commit the ownership of a sum of money to the hazard of a die, to the relative length of a straw, or to the turning up of a card (whether innocent or otherwise), cannot be called “ earning money.” There is no production, either actual or sought. The hunter, the trapper, the fisherman, fill the opposite pole. “It is men’s lives you arc buying.” The toil is not only dignified by its perils, but suggestive of remuneration hearing adequate encouragement. “ A salmon,” says Franklin, “is a piece of silver taken out of the sea.” But the sensations of the whaler, in his rapid whirl through two walls of sea-green, his breathless consciousness that retreat is imposs'ble, must partake of awe that even excitement and cupidity cannot wholly repress. It was not however of such perils that our moralist was thinking, but of the graduated and continuous employments of the city artisan, securely diligent, and in time peaceably rich. Money is the quickest, the simplest, and most compact representative of our labour’s worth, lie who boasts indifference to it, but deceives himself—most pernicious of all deceptions! For money, or for money’s worth, all labour, from the monarch to the sweep. You are pleased with ribbon, cross, or title, be it so. They give you ton , consideration, prestige, rank. They smooth your path to a wealthy alliance. Good health, and a title, are fair equivalents for a wealthy marriage. “My face, sir,” said a shrewd girl, “is my fortune.” “My wealth is in my brain,” said Oausidicus. He who despises money, despises life and humanity, for other levers are cumbrous and antiquated. Gratitude is not the virtue of superior minds, for they take all that is offered as their inherent right. Love is precarious, and short-lived friendship dies when unfed by frequent doses of pleasure and esteem. Admiration wanes when its object needs our aid, and pity, sympathy and sensibility are painfully but well described by the poet—

The sluggard pity's vision-weaving tribe

AVlio talk of wretchedness, yet shun the wretched. Aud weep o’er miseries they shrink to aid. - ’

A shrewd observer was the pithy-speak-ing Quaker. “ Thou sympathised, friend, with this poor widow. That promised well. Yet it is somewhat hazy and indefinite. Now look!

do sympathise with her also, les;, friend, than thee, yet slightly. Lo 1 Here is my cheque for £ls, and I will bestir me anent the young boy. Friend ! Here is a good pen ! Let me see on this paper the amount of thy sympathy !” I should like to have been present, and enjoyed the dismay of Mr Skindeep. Cash payment is the shortest, the simplest, the most agreeable, and the cheapest way of getting any object of your earnest requirement. “ Cash,” says my young saucy friend, Vivian Sparkler, “ cash is the soul’s supreme desire, uttered or unexpressed.” It concentrates at one central point the entire weight of the lever. An obligation diffused over a life-time must become a very tedious burden. Yet, as the light of the sun, so great a blessing when diffused by the atmosphere—to man and animals a bath of electricity, no less than a source of light, affording a mysterious nourishment to the nerves and healthy brain as well as a revelation of nature’s glories, can become, when concentrated in the burning lens, or directly flashed from the polished mirror, a source of torture, perhaps of rapid destruction, so the sense of money’s importance and the pursuit of wealth diffused, apportioned and graduated through its proper channels of art, enterprise, and commerce serves to reveal the treasures of nature and to freshen while it stimulates the powers of man ; but, fcverously concentrated in the gaming-table, the sharemarket, the race-

course, &c., can wither and dry up every noble and kindly source of virtue, can completely destroy the nobler part of man, aye, as effectually as the telescope of Lord Kosse is said to have burned out the eye, b'rain, and life of the rash son of ignorance who tried to look through it at the sun in his meridian strength and splendour. There arc few ways in which a man can be employed less innocently, less usefully, than in the effort to gain unearned money. The gambler is worse than unproductive; he spoils his own character. For some reason (by the writer undiscovered) the gambler always hides, and but superficially hides, beneath a thin veneer of politeness and a feminine temperance, the ferocity of a tiger. The tradesman will bear with calmness the loss of earnings that represent the increasing labour of lustrums; the philosophic physician, on hearing of the failure of his banker, can coolly say, “ ’Tis but ascending 1,500 more staircases;” the ruined noble has patiently shaved clowns for twopence, and MarmontcTs King of the Vandals *• resuming his spade” after a lofty interchange of mind with Bellisarius, is true to nature, and may. be seen daily by the observant. But, woe to him who trifles w'

ith the gambler! The sons of refinement will seize each other by the throat, and I devoutly believe the representative story of the secreted king of trumps

impaled by the carving - fork driven [ through the tendons of the- gambler’s band by his enraged opponent at ecartc. “ Sir, if you have not the king under your palm, 1 humbly beg your pardon, and proffer (lie satisfaction of a gentleman I Alitcr, vonl" But why waste words in proving or illustrating that which the reader lias acknowledged already by liis “ stilled smile of stern vindictive joy,” in which the writer participates. Were it for no other reason than this savage ferocity, no wise philosopher would spare any pains to hinder his son from becoming a gambler. And some fatality seems ever at hand to scatter (like fairy-gifts) money rapidly and recklessly gained. To enumerate the various forms of gambling would exact more knowledge, more patience, and more keenness of perception than the writer can command. Eagerness for rapid acquisition of wealth is at the root of very many crimes and sorrows. Our laziness brings its own fearful punishment. We judge by a man, not by what he is, hut by what ho has, or reputed to have. What wonder, then, the enterprising and energetic adventurer, who honestly desires to stand well with his fellow-men, should reason after this manner, “ To what purpose toil to store my mind ? Men say not, lo ! here is a man of knowledge and eloquence! they pass by the scholar, and worship the occupant of a carriage. Like Vespasian, they say, non oht. His wealth was gained by stock yard and slaughter-house, his talk is of bullocks. Perhaps lie is rich by means less aesthetic. The alehouse borrowed the allurements of the bordello. He knows no enjoyment hut the glass (or rather the pot), his soul is embruted. Yet Beauty smiles on him, and rank adulates him. Let me have wealth ; then will men give me human treatment. What avail my conversational powers, my garnered information ? They see but the worn garment, the hollow eye. Come, then, sharemarket, come piracy, come human traffic, como insolent contempt for my fellowman of darker hue. Who heeds or inquires touching the kidnapper, or the worse than murder, —the perfidy that entails reprisal, soul-thrilling, but natural and pardonable ? Ah ! thoughtless wealth-worshipper, you must bear your share of the blame of this fearful stigma. Who fostered this adoration of mere wealth, irrespective of the mode of its acquisition ? Who told the enterprising—by their conduct more tlu\n by their words—that wealth, however acquired, could gain that social sympathy denied by all to learning, to genius, to merit, to virtue ? I aver with boldness that to mammon-worship on the part of those who give the tone to enterprise, and have the power to ratify the rewards of energetic ambition, is indirectly attributable the morbid mania for rapidlyacquired wealth, that drowned the voice of conscience in the kidnappers, the deceivers, the pirates, whose perfidies, whose outrages, whose inhumanities have made the untutored savage regard every white man as a foo and a curse, and to vent the wild justice of revenge on the son of beneficence of culture, of benignity, and of unselfish ambition to raise and ennoble his fellowmen by offices of love and by precepts of piety. When one single virtue is impaired in the heart, the entire character suffers. When a community smarts beneath palpable wrong, the blow falls not always on the [guilty. But, what heart can view with indifference ambition perverted that might have been an instrument, of good—energy and enterprise vented on a reckless scattering of the seeds of future crime ? Whose fruit was the murder of the noble and beneficent Patleson by the innocent and the oppressed—aud all this the result of our base and slothful sensuality in bowing down the knee to Mammon, and thus stifling every honest ambition to excel in genius, talent, or virtue ? He is rich. True, but how ? Is this question ever asked ? No. Wealth, however acquired, is a passport to every man’s homage, and too often to every woman’s, and they who lessen the dignity, damp the ardour, and discourage the efforts of those who honestly seek excellence by honourable industry, are guilty of high treason against God aud Nature.

Wealth needs no cockering. It will ever assert itself. Its proves its own standing, and will be sure of commanding a certain amount of homage from the com-mon-place, the sensual, and the unreflecting. But let not the refined, the cultured and the brave longer bow the knee where the heart and reason must recoil from the uncouth image. Think, oh daughter of Beauty, oh child of Rank, of sensibility and of influence, that every homage paid by you to unrefined wealth, ignobly acquired, is a sanction, an encouragement, and an increase to the horrible traffic in human flesh by which the kidnapper impressed on the wronged Melanesian the duty and the necessity of destroying the destroyer, which culminated in the untimely death of one whose unselfish devotion, culture, justice, and love are more easily mourned, or even appreciated, than replaced, or even emulated. To destroy is eas)' —Who cau reconstruct ? And the indirect fosterers of the base motives that provoked the natural and almost guiltless liomicido are the real and responsible agents ot the destruction they profess to mourn.