country. The legislature has made a wise movement for this purpose lately. It has ordered the names of all the members of the firm composing a private bank, and those of all the shareholders in joint-stock banks, to be published in the newspapers of districts where business is carried on by them. The public can thus at any time satisfy themselves, if they exercise only proper caution, as to the responsibility of the parties to whom their money is committed.

CHAPTER V.

THE MORALS OF MONEY: THE FALLACIES AND
FAILINGS OF MONIED MEN

HITHERTO We have contemplated money from an exclusively secular point of view-we now proceed to view it under the higher aspect of its moral and spiritual relations. This is no arbitrary change of topic-no piece of finesse, adopted in order to surprise the reader into a sermon, but the ascent of a natural climax. Everything on earth points to eternity; every object, every pursuit, has its spiritual sidethat on which it adjoins the soul, and silently works itself into its immortal texture. God has attached to every condition in life its own set o influences. Everything we see or do, or think or say, has a moral power attached to it: our talents, opportunities, privileges, joys; our daily tasks, duties, trials; the hopes, anxieties, disappointments, and successes of business; the annoyances and irritations of the world, the temptations to sin and the incentives to holiness which surround our path; the advantages and disadvantages of our social position; our soberest

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reflections, our most mirthful sallies, our very fancies and day-dreams ;--all are laden with lasting results, all are silently exerting some influence on our everlasting state. Yes, ETERNITY is seen as a Divine handwriting on everything that meets the eye-on the exchange, the factory, and the warehouse, as well as the temple and the tomb.

Here is an article of faith of which most men need to be more heartily convinced. It is the chief point in the practical creed of life. The worldly principle in human nature loves to separate time from eternity-loves to view this world and the next as two entirely separate spheres, having no vital connexion with each other. We speak with horror, and justly so, of infidelity that which denies the Bible, looks upon the soul as mortal, or merely as a part of the Infinite, and questions the evidence of a personal Deity. Such sentiments are dark and sinful beyond measure, but it may be doubted whether they are more mischievous to the interest of Christianity than that poisonous scepticism which so many cherish without misgiving; that which practically denies the presence and claims of God in the business of daily life; which views wealth as exclusively of the individual's own getting, to be placed at the beck of selfishness or caprice, without a single remonstrance of conscience for the neglect of any obligation, whether to God or man. Such infidelity is truly a bane to the soul, a canker to the church, and a curse to the world.

If, as we have shown in previous pages, there is a very powerful tendency in society, according to its natural constitution as founded by the Creator, to become richer, we cannot imagine that riches are unavoidably and necessarily hostile to virtue. This would be to impeach the moral character of the Divine government. The evils of riches must therefore lie in the mode in which they are gained or used. Every tendency which is necessarily developed in social progress must be favourable to the spiritual interests of mankind. Poverty has often been lauded as the state which is most propitious to the moral excellence of individuals and communities; yet everybody shuns poverty, everybody is so constituted that he naturally wishes to escape it, and the direct effect of prudence, industry, and their kindred virtues, is to accumulate wealth. On this ground alone we might pronounce beforehand with the most absolute certainty, that poverty has no peculiar patent for goodness, and that growth in wealth does not necessarily involve a deterioration of the moral character. The great empires of antiquity are often adduced in supposed confirmation of an opposite view. We are told of the virtues which marked the infancy, as contrasted with the universal degeneracy of manners that characterized the meridian of the Roman empire. But the reference is useless. In the first place, it is questionable whether the Rome of Romulus could be taken as a higher exemplar of public virtue than the Rome

of Cæsar. Its vices were of a different kind, but they were vices still. If it is lawful to discern anything substantial among the shadows of Livy, we may find in the very earliest period of the Roman state innumerable traces of injustice, violence, and sensuality, which have no point of contrast, save that of coarseness, with those moral enormities which afterwards distinguished the capital of the world. But the vices of imperial Rome must not be ascribed to its wealth; they are due rather to the mode in which its wealth was acquired, and the depraved habits which were connected with it. Its wealth was the fruit of conquest; it was the spoiling of the nations, not the self-elaborated product of capital and industry. It was acquired in a way which developed the sensual and destructive passions, and thus excavated a mine beneath, which at length blew the empire into atoms. Wealth, when acquired by manufactures and commerce, always presupposes the actual exercise of a large amount of useful qualities; and the discipline which must be submitted to in its acquisition, especially when seconded by the influence of religion, affords, within certain limits, a guarantee for continued moral improvement. It may be almost affirmed that commercial affluence can neither be gained nor kept by a people socially corrupt. Empires which owed their greatness to conquest, often sank beneath their own weight; but there is, probably, no instance in which a great commercial state has fallen through the enervating