Page:Life of William Shelburne (vol 2).djvu/374

338 bad heart and be a bad calculator, or else be a drowning man, who naturally catches at every twig, even at another man, though he is sure to drown him. It may serve as a warning to my own family to be told, that I have lost nearly £40,000 by being bond for other men, a great part of which I was obliged to borrow rather than put myself in the power of others, or ask others to be bound for me. If any one will take the trouble of computing this at the rate of compound interest, which in fact every man pays who borrows out of his natural line of receipts and expenditure, it will be seen to what a frightful sum it amounts, though it gives a faint idea of the embarrassments and disadvantages it occasioned to me, far exceeding the pecuniary consideration; and all the return I had was treachery, and a great deal of unjust public abuse.

"The second essential rule is, to see with your own eyes. This is the more difficult, as it is the interest of every body about you to prevent it. Men bred to business and to struggle, who know the world, and are broke to mankind, and whose livelihood depends upon making the most which they honestly can of their respective situations, such are the men who contend with a proprietor. On the other hand the proprietor is most commonly ignorant of the world or at least of business, has been taught everything but order or right economy, his fortune is in general made, and he is either diffident, mild, and unused to look anybody in the face, especially upon money matters, or else vicious, dissipated, and extravagant,—or to say the best which can happen,—of an elevated mind, turned either to ambition or some liberal pursuit, or to splendour, or ease. He forgets or does not sufficiently comprehend that money is the grand foundation of the whole, and the general instrument, however sordid and contemptible the pursuit of it may be, if suffered to exceed due bounds, viz.: the purposes of order, and particularly if it becomes a sole passion;