LECTURE VII.

PENNY WISE AND POUND FOOLISH.

THERE is in the world a good deal of false economy, which turns out in the end to be great and ruinous extravagance. There are many people who believe that they are laying out time, and money, and effort to the best advantage, when in reality they are squandering them in the most wasteful manner possible. There are many old sayings which illustrate this mistake, and put us on our guard against it. For example: "To lose a sheep for a halfpenny worth of tar;" "To spare at the spigot, and let out at the bunghole;" "For want of a nail the shoe was lost, for want of a shoe the horse was lost, for want of a horse the rider was lost;" to which I add, as the shortest and most exact description of the error which we are about to discuss, the proverb, which I have chosen as the motto of this lecture, "Penny Wise and Pound Foolish." The conduct indicated by these proverbs is far from uncommon. There are some people who are both penny foolish and pound foolish, or rather, who are so foolish with their pennies, that they never have pounds to be foolish with at all; people who have no notion whatever of economy and thrift, who live from hand

to mouth, and, whenever they get money, spend it with the utmost possible despatch. For such folk this lecture is not intended; the penny foolish I must for the present leave in their folly. I wish to speak to the penny wise, and to guard them, if I can, against the mistake of becoming pound foolish; I wish to speak to those who really have some idea of saving and economical habits, but who very possibly mistake the cheap for the dear, and the dear for the cheap, and so lose all the benefits of their industry and their toil.

Sometimes we find "the penny wise and pound foolish" principle illustrated on a very large scale by Government. The "collective wisdom," hereditary and elected, often shows itself to be but a "penny wisdom," saving a little and losing much. For example: it makes something in the Excise department, by licensing such a multitude of beer-houses; but every man must be perfectly aware that the loss to the country, arising from the intemperance, the idleness, and the extravagance nurtured by the beer-house, is immeasurably greater than the entire amount which the Excise yields to the revenue. For while the money loss is great, this is the smallest item; there is a loss of comfort, there is a loss of industry, there is moral deterioration, there is ignorance, there is brutishness, there is crime-all encouraged, all to a great extent produced, by the beer-house system. Then think of the paper duty; I believe it returns to the Government a little more than a million, in hard cash; but it is a heavy tax upon the spread of knowledge, upon the communication of thought; it interferes with the mental and moral culture of the people; we put

down to its credit a million; if we could put to its credit ten millions, there would be a heavy balance against it, in the fact that it is a barrier to national enlightenment, and therefore most injurious to national morals—a most flagrant case of "penny wise and pound foolish," and one which it is to be hoped public opinion will soon compel Government to correct.

And now to come to another, but not unimportant, illustration of our motto. I would observe that many people are "penny wise and pound foolish" in the matter of educating their children. Very often boys are taken from school just at the time when they are really beginning to learn something, when they are capable of making progress, and when the rudimentary instruction of earlier years has prepared them to advance. At the age of twelve or thirteen they can earn a trifle of money, earn possibly enough to keep themselves in food and clothing. In some of the manufacturing districts they can be set to work much earlier; and I have seen little things of six or seven years cooped up in hot and dusty rooms, and kept there until seven or eight o'clock at night, to the ruin of their health, as well as the impoverishment of their minds. Of course there is a temptation, and, when parents are very poor, a strong temptation, to compel children to earn their own bread as soon as possible. But it is very false economy to do so; it places an almost insurmountable barrier in the way of a lad's advancement in the world. A wise parent therefore will, I think, do all in his power, and, if need be, make great sacrifices, to keep his

children at school be

yond the years of mere infancy. Out of school, that

boy of twelve could earn perhaps three shillings a-week; but don't suppose that in school he is earning nothing. There, if the school and the boy himself be good for anything, he is earning what is worth a great deal more than three shillings a-week; he is furnishing himself with that knowledge which must be his capital when he enters on the business of life. So much arithmetic learned every week, so much geography, so much history, so much geometry, algebra, natural philosophy, grammar-all this, earned every week, is worth a great deal more than the three shillings which he could get as an errand-boy. To deprive him of all this, is to make a terrible sacrifice, is certainly to act in the "penny wise and pound foolish" style. Therefore, if you can avoid it, do so; if, by means of any self-denial, you can keep your son at school until he reaches the age of fifteen, you will have no reason to regret the exercise of such self-denial, you will be amply repaid for it. Even if he should not live to profit by his education, or if, through his misconduct in after-life, he should disappoint all your hopes, still you will have the consciousness of having discharged your duty to him, of having done your best to make him a prosperous, useful, and respectable man.

Sometimes the "penny wise and pound foolish" principle is exhibited in the choice which people make of a place to dwell in. All our large towns, and this town certainly as much as any other, abound in houses-if houses they can be called-which are not fit to be the abodes of beasts, but are, nevertheless, densely inhabited by men, women, and children. The problem, How to crowd the largest number of human beings into the

smallest possible space, has been as triumphantly solved by our architects and builders, as by our grave-diggers. The narrow, dark, unventilated, undrained, unwholesome, dwellings of the poor are a reproach to us, a shame and a misery to behold; all that municipal authorities and boards of health can do is unavailing to make these wretched abodes as healthy as they ought to be; they are, and they must be, the haunts of pestilence and death. There are some whose unavoidable poverty leaves them no other resource than to shelter themselves in such abominable kennels; there are others whose intemperance prevents their obtaining better homes; there are many whose love of dirt leads them to prefer these tumble-down hovels. But an industrious man who can earn tolerably good wages need not imprison himself there; it is very false economy for him to do so; the cheap and nasty house is dear at any price. When a good commodious house in a healthy part of the town, or in the suburbs, is to be let, it is generally advertised in terms which set forth all its advantages, and in which the truth, and even a good deal more than the truth, is told respecting it. I should like to see an advertisement which should deal faithfully with another class of habitations. It would be to the following effect :-"To be let, immediately, a house, situated in the most insalubrious locality within a circuit of fifty miles; this most eligible dwelling forms a part of a court, exactly two yards and a half wide; it is so well sheltered that neither light nor air can reach it; it is destitute of all the conveniences. and decencies of life; in its construction the utmost care has been taken to render it in all respects as injurious