Self Help; with Illustrations of Conduct and PerseveranceSmiles, Samuel
Philosophy
Self Help; with Illustrations of Conduct and Perseverance
Smiles, Samuel
Conduct of life
Any class of men that lives from hand to mouth will ever be an inferior
class. They will necessarily remain impotent and helpless, hanging on to
the skirts of society, the sport of times and seasons. Having no respect
for themselves, they will fail in securing the respect of others. In
commercial crises, such men must inevitably go to the wall. Wanting that
husbanded power which a store of savings, no matter how small, invariably
gives them, they will be at every man’s mercy, and, if possessed of right
feelings, they cannot but regard with fear and trembling the future
possible fate of their wives and children. “The world,” once said Mr.
Cobden to the working men of Huddersfield, “has always been divided into
two classes,—those who have saved, and those who have spent—the thrifty
and the extravagant. The building of all the houses, the mills, the
bridges, and the ships, and the accomplishment of all other great works
which have rendered man civilized and happy, has been done by the savers,
the thrifty; and those who have wasted their resources have always been
their slaves. It has been the law of nature and of Providence that this
should be so; and I were an impostor if I promised any class that they
would advance themselves if they were improvident, thoughtless, and
idle.”
Equally sound was the advice given by Mr. Bright to an assembly of
working men at Rochdale, in 1847, when, after expressing his belief that,
“so far as honesty was concerned, it was to be found in pretty equal
amount among all classes,” he used the following words:—“There is only
one way that is safe for any man, or any number of men, by which they can
maintain their present position if it be a good one, or raise themselves
above it if it be a bad one,—that is, by the practice of the virtues of
industry, frugality, temperance, and honesty. There is no royal road by
which men can raise themselves from a position which they feel to be
uncomfortable and unsatisfactory, as regards their mental or physical
condition, except by the practice of those virtues by which they find
numbers amongst them are continually advancing and bettering themselves.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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