For although, without
doubt, the purest pleasures it can procure are not selfish, it is only
as a means of personal gratification that it will be desired by a large
majority of workers; and it would be no less false ethics than false
policy to check their energy by any forms of public opinion which bore
hardly against the wanton expenditure of honestly got wealth. It would
be hard if a man who has passed the greater part of his life at the desk
or counter could not at last innocently gratify a caprice; and all the
best and most sacred ends of almsgiving would be at once disappointed,
if the idea of a moral claim took the place of affectionate gratitude in
the mind of the receiver.

143. Some distinction is made by us naturally in this respect between
earned and inherited wealth; that which is inherited appearing to
involve the most definite responsibilities, especially when consisting
in revenues derived from the soil. The form of taxation which
constitutes rental of lands places annually a certain portion of the
national wealth in the hands of the nobles, or other proprietors of the
soil, under conditions peculiarly calculated to induce them to give
their best care to its efficient administration. The want of
instruction in even the simplest principles of commerce and economy,
which hitherto has disgraced our schools and universities, has indeed
been the cause of ruin or total inutility of life to multitudes of our
men of estate; but this deficiency in our public education cannot exist
much longer, and it appears to be highly advantageous for the State that
a certain number of persons distinguished by race should be permitted to
set examples of wise expenditure, whether in the advancement of science,
or in patronage of art and literature; only they must see to it that
they take their right standing more firmly than they have done hitherto,
for the position of a rich man in relation to those around him is, in
our present real life, and is also contemplated generally by political
economists as being, precisely the reverse of what it ought to be. A
rich man ought to be continually examining how he may spend his money
for the advantage of others: at present, others are continually plotting
how they may beguile him into spending it apparently for his own. The
aspect which he presents to the eyes of the world is generally that of
a person holding a bag of money with a staunch grasp, and resolved to
part with none of it un