"As I was talking to your mother this morning on money matters it shot across my mind that you had desired me to send you a supply, which I had neglected to do. I am truly sorry for my inadvertency, and will send you the half of a £20 bank note which I happen to possess, the other half following of course to-morrow. Ask for what you want, and we will settle when you are here. It gives me real pleasure to believe that you are economical on principle, and it is only by being so that one can be duly liberal. Without self-denial every man, be his fortune what it may, will find himself unable to act as he ought in this particular, not that _giving_ is always the best charity, far from it; employing people is often a far preferable mode of serving them. To you I may say that if I have been able to be liberal not less before my marriage than after it, it was from denying myself many articles which persons in my own rank of life and pecuniary circumstances almost universally indulged in. Now when I find my income considerably decreased on the one hand, and my expenses (from my four sons) greatly increased on the other, economy must even be made parsimony, which, justly construed, does not in my meaning at all exclude generosity." This letter is here interrupted, he says, by "two young widows--both of whom had recently lost their husbands in India--with their four little children, all in deep mourning. Yet the two widows have the best of all supports in the assured persuasion that their husbands were truly pious, and in the hope that they themselves are so." It is easy to imagine the reception given to the "two young widows" by Wilberforce. He had not yet learned the lesson of "economy or even parsimony" as regarded his charities--even when he had to reduce his expenses he spent £3,000[52] in one year on charity. "_December 10, 1824._