“My answer,” he says, “is, first, that the pursuit of wealth, that is, the endeavour to accumulate the means of future subsistence and enjoyment, is, to the mass of mankind, the great source of _moral_ improvement.” Now observe, Gentlemen, how exactly this bears out what I have been saying. It is just so far true, as to be able to instil what is false, far as the author was from any such design. I grant, then, that, ordinarily, beggary is not the means of moral improvement; and that the orderly habits which attend upon the hot pursuit of gain, not only may effect an external decency, but may at least shelter the soul from the temptations of vice. Moreover, these habits of good order guarantee regularity in a family or household, and thus are accidentally the means of good; moreover, they lead to the education of its younger branches, and they thus accidentally provide the rising generation with a virtue or a truth which the present has not: but without going into these considerations, further than to allow them generally, and under circumstances, let us rather contemplate what the author’s direct assertion is. He says, “the endeavour to _accumulate_,” the words should be weighed, and for what? “for _enjoyment_;”—“to accumulate the means of future subsistence and enjoyment, is, to the mass of mankind, _the great_ source,” not merely _a_ source, but _the great_ source, and of what? of social and political progress?—such an answer would have been more within the limits of his art,—no, but of something individual and personal, “of _moral improvement_.” The soul, in the case of “the mass of mankind,” improves in moral excellence from this more than any thing else, viz., from heaping up the means of enjoying this world in time to come! I really should on every account be sorry, Gentlemen, to exaggerate, but indeed one is taken by surprise, one is startled, on meeting with so very categorical a contradiction of our Lord, St. Paul, St. Chrysostom, St. Leo, and all Saints. “No institution,” he continues, “could be more beneficial to the morals of the lower orders, that is, to at least nine-tenths of the whole body of any people, than one which should increase their power and their wish to accumulate; none more mischievous than one which should diminish their motives and means to save.” No institution more beneficial than one which should increase the _wish to accumulate_! then Christianity is not one of such beneficial institutions, for it expressly says, “_Lay not up to_ yourselves _treasures_ on earth … for where thy treasure is, there is thy heart also;”—no institution more mischievous than one which should diminish the _motives to save_! then Christianity is one of such mischiefs, for the inspired text proceeds, “Lay up to yourselves treasures _in heaven, where_ neither the rust nor the moth doth consume, and where thieves do not dig through, nor steal.”