Even men with a special genius for finance on a grand scale, may completely break down in the management of their own private affairs. Pitt managed the national finances during a period of unexampled difficulty, yet was himself always plunged in debt. Lord Carrington, the ex-banker, once or twice, at Mr. Pitt's request, examined his household accounts, and found the quantity of butcher's meat charged in the bills was one hundredweight a week. The charge for servants' wages, board wages, living, and household bills, exceeded £2,300 a year. At Pitt's death, the nation voted £40,000 to satisfy the demands of his creditors; yet his income had never been less than £6,000 a year; and at one time, with the Wardenship of the Cinque Ports, it was nearly £4,000 a year more. Macaulay truly says that "the character of Pitt would have stood higher if, with the disinterestedness of Pericles and De Witt, he had united their dignified frugality." But Pitt by no means stood alone. Lord Melville was as unthrifty in the management of his own affairs, as he was of the money of the public. Fox was an enormous ower, his financial maxim being that a man need never want money if he was willing to pay enough for it. Fox called the outer room at Almack's, where he borrowed on occasions from Jew lenders at exorbitant premiums, his "Jerusalem Chamber." Passion for play was his great vice, and at a very early age it involved him in debt to an enormous amount. It is stated by Gibbon that on one occasion Fox sat playing at hazard for twenty hours in succession, losing £11,000. But deep play was the vice of high life in those days, and cheating was not unknown. Selwyn, alluding to Fox's losses at play, called him Charles the Martyr. Sheridan was the hero of debt. He lived on it. Though he received large sums of money in one way or another, no one knew what became of it, for he paid nobody. It seemed to melt away in his hands like snow in summer. He spent his first wife's fortune of £1,600 in a six weeks' jaunt to Bath. Necessity drove him to literature, and perhaps to the stimulus of poverty we owe "The Rivals," and the dramas which succeeded it. With his second wife he obtained a fortune of £5,000, and with £15,000 which he realized by the sale of Drury Lane shares, he bought an estate in Surrey, from which he was driven by debt and duns. The remainder of his life was a series of shifts, sometimes brilliant, but oftener degrading, to raise money and evade creditors. Taylor, of the Opera-house, used to say that if he took off his hat to Sheridan in the street, it would cost him fifty pounds; but if he stopped to speak to him, it would cost a hundred.