Advice to a Young Man upon First Going to Oxford | Page 4

with this conviction thoroughly implanted on your mind.
To wish to live on the labour of others is, besides the folly of it, to
contemplate a fraud at the least, and, under certain circumstances, to
meditate oppression and robbery.
14. I suppose you in the middle rank of life. Happiness ought to be your
great object, and it is to be found only in independence. Turn your back
on Whitehall and on Somerset-House; leave the Customs and Excise to
the feeble and low-minded; look not for success to favour, to partiality,
to friendship, or to what is called _interest_: write it on your heart, that
you will depend solely on your own merit and your own exertions.
Think not, neither, of any of those situations where gaudy habiliments
and sounding titles poorly disguise from the eyes of good sense the
mortifications and the heart-ache of slaves. Answer me not by saying,
that these situations 'must be filled by _somebody_;' for, if I were to
admit the truth of the proposition, which I do not, it would remain for
you to show that they are conducive to happiness, the contrary of which
has been proved to me by the observation of a now pretty long life.
15. Indeed, reason tells us, that it must be thus: for that which a man
owes to favour or to partiality, that same favour or partiality is
constantly liable to take from him. He who lives upon anything except
his own labour, is incessantly surrounded by rivals: his grand resource
is that servility in which he is always liable to be surpassed. He is in
daily danger of being out-bidden; his very bread depends upon caprice;
and he lives in a state of uncertainty and never-ceasing fear. His is not,
indeed, the dog's life, 'hunger and idleness;' but it is worse; for it is
'idleness with slavery,' the latter being the just price of the former.
Slaves frequently are well fed and well _clad_; but slaves dare not
_speak_; they dare not be suspected to think differently from their
masters: hate his acts as much as they may; be he tyrant, be he drunkard,
be he fool, or be he all three at once, they must be silent, or, nine times
out of ten, affect approbation: though possessing a thousand times his
knowledge, they must feign a conviction of his superior understanding;
though knowing that it is they who, in fact, do all that he is paid for
doing, it is destruction to them to seem as if they thought any portion of
the service belonged to them! Far from me be the thought, that any
youth who shall read this page would not rather perish than submit to

live in a state like this! Such a state is fit only for the refuse of nature;
the halt, the half-blind, the unhappy creatures whom nature has marked
out for degradation.
16. And how comes it, then, that we see hale and even clever youths
voluntarily bending their necks to this slavery; nay, pressing forward in
eager rivalship to assume the yoke that ought to be insupportable? The
cause, and the only cause, is, that the deleterious fashion of the day has
created so many artificial wants, and has raised the minds of young
men so much above their real rank and state of life, that they look
scornfully on the employment, the fare, and the dress, that would
become them; and, in order to avoid that state in which they might live
free and happy, they become showy slaves.
17. The great source of independence, the French express in a precept
of three words, 'Vivre de peu,' which I have always very much admired.
'_To live upon little_' is the great security against slavery; and this
precept extends to dress and other things besides food and drink. When
DOCTOR JOHNSON wrote his Dictionary, he put in the word
pensioner thus: 'PENSIONER--A slave of state.' After this he himself
became a pensioner! And thus, agreeably to his own definition, he
lived and died 'a slave of state!' What must this man of great genius,
and of great industry too, have felt at receiving this pension! Could he
be so callous as not to feel a pang upon seeing his own name placed
before his own degrading definition? And what could induce him to
submit to this? His wants, his artificial wants, his habit of indulging in
the pleasures of the table; his disregard of the precept 'Vivre de peu.'
This was the cause; and, be it observed, that indulgences of this sort,
while they tend to make men poor and expose them to commit mean
acts, tend also to enfeeble the body, and more especially to cloud and to
weaken the mind.
18. When this celebrated author