WORSHIP OF WEALTH

Waipawa Mail, Volume I, Issue 30, 25 December 1878, Page 3

WORSHIP OF WEALTH

Another point brought out by the Bagot case is the slavish adulation accorded now-a-day to mere wealth. A man must no doubt have something in him if with out fraud he can acquire by his own exertions an altogether disproportionate share of that which is more or less the goal of everybody’s ambition, and for which the competition is so keen. But the singleness of purpose which has enabled him to attain signal success in one direction may have rendered him indifferent to that acquirement of all other qualities fitting him for the society of those to whom level, in point of pecuniary position, he had raised himself ; and the possession of wealth, whether earned or accuired, is by no means inconsistent with offensive vulgarity of taste or habits. If, however, a man attains to tlie dignity of a “Nugget” his roughness is pardoned, or landed as absence of affectation ; his vulgarity treated as naturalness or eccentricity ; and his vices slurred over, or attributed to desective education. If he has a good house, and gives good dinners, he can get plenty of people to go and eat them, even if they aggravate their meanest* by laughing at him behind his back. \V< have set up a golden calf in London, and worship it as assiduously as ever did the Israelites theirs in lioreb ; while as yet there are no signs of any Moses descending from the Mount to smash our fetish.— “ {Saturday Review.”