HOW TO USE GREAT WEALTH.

Westport Times, Volume V, Issue 811, 11 May 1871, Page 3

HOW TO USE GREAT WEALTH.

In the interesting lecture delivered by Mr Thomas Hughes, just before his return to England from his tour to the United States, he made some remarks on the different policy adopted by the very rich Americans, and the very rich English in the use of their wealth, when it is once obtained, which require at least some guarding before they can be full accepted here. Mr Hughes observes that in England, directly a man has made a considerable fortune, his object, in an aristocratic society like ours, not unnaturally is to found a family. For this purpose he must buy an estate and make a " place," must live after a fashion to which he has been by no means used, and devote himself to pursuits quite foreign to his tastes, in the hope of getting into country society, which ia very exclusive, and leaving to his son a recognised social position, with perhaps a baronetcy or peerage to support it. To this end the original for-tune-maker must usually make himself very miserable, sacrifice himself in fact to his children, and probably in his own person hardly succeed after all. A great part of his wealth is sunk in land, a great part in the expenditure necessary to keep up the state of a large landed proprietor, and for great public objects he has very little indeed left. The wealth, in short, goes to paving the way for his children from the society of the bourgeoisie to the society of the aristocracy, a considerable part being sunk in agriculture, and in buying power over rural districts. In democratic America, on the other hand, where the founding of a family is never heard of, and a man is well content to leave but moderate fortunes to his children, if he has any, the great ambition of men of wealth is to distinguish themselves by some public benefaction for which the State or municipality will be grateful—benefactions such as the building of the Cornell University, the founding of new hospitals, the gift of a great hall to any city for political and social meeting, and other munificence of the same kind. Mr Hughes vastly prefers this mode of spending great wealth to that which hoards it to sink in great estates, and believes the rich men of America get a great deal more real enjoyment out of their gigantic fortunes than the rich men of England.