Self Help | Page 8

on almost every sea, and holds commercial

relations with nearly every country on the globe.
Among like men of the same class may be ranked the late Richard
Cobden, whose start in life was equally humble. The son of a small
farmer at Midhurst in Sussex, he was sent at an early age to London
and employed as a boy in a warehouse in the City. He was diligent,
well conducted, and eager for information. His master, a man of the old
school, warned him against too much reading; but the boy went on in
his own course, storing his mind with the wealth found in books. He
was promoted from one position of trust to another-- became a traveller
for his house--secured a large connection, and eventually started in
business as a calico printer at Manchester. Taking an interest in public
questions, more especially in popular education, his attention was
gradually drawn to the subject of the Corn Laws, to the repeal of which
he may be said to have devoted his fortune and his life. It may be
mentioned as a curious fact that the first speech he delivered in public
was a total failure. But he had great perseverance, application, and
energy; and with persistency and practice, he became at length one of
the most persuasive and effective of public speakers, extorting the
disinterested eulogy of even Sir Robert Peel himself. M. Drouyn de
Lhuys, the French Ambassador, has eloquently said of Mr. Cobden,
that he was "a living proof of what merit, perseverance, and labour can
accomplish; one of the most complete examples of those men who,
sprung from the humblest ranks of society, raise themselves to the
highest rank in public estimation by the effect of their own worth and
of their personal services; finally, one of the rarest examples of the
solid qualities inherent in the English character."
In all these cases, strenuous individual application was the price paid
for distinction; excellence of any sort being invariably placed beyond
the reach of indolence. It is the diligent hand and head alone that
maketh rich--in self-culture, growth in wisdom, and in business. Even
when men are born to wealth and high social position, any solid
reputation which they may individually achieve can only be attained by
energetic application; for though an inheritance of acres may be
bequeathed, an inheritance of knowledge and wisdom cannot. The
wealthy man may pay others for doing his work for him, but it is

impossible to get his thinking done for him by another, or to purchase
any kind of self-culture. Indeed, the doctrine that excellence in any
pursuit is only to be achieved by laborious application, holds as true in
the case of the man of wealth as in that of Drew and Gifford, whose
only school was a cobbler's stall, or Hugh Miller, whose only college
was a Cromarty stone quarry.
Riches and ease, it is perfectly clear, are not necessary for man's
highest culture, else had not the world been so largely indebted in all
times to those who have sprung from the humbler ranks. An easy and
luxurious existence does not train men to effort or encounter with
difficulty; nor does it awaken that consciousness of power which is so
necessary for energetic and effective action in life. Indeed, so far from
poverty being a misfortune, it may, by vigorous self-help, be converted
even into a blessing; rousing a man to that struggle with the world in
which, though some may purchase ease by degradation, the
right-minded and true-hearted find strength, confidence, and triumph.
Bacon says, "Men seem neither to understand their riches nor their
strength: of the former they believe greater things than they should; of
the latter much less. Self-reliance and self-denial will teach a man to
drink out of his own cistern, and eat his own sweet bread, and to learn
and labour truly to get his living, and carefully to expend the good
things committed to his trust."
Riches are so great a temptation to ease and self-indulgence, to which
men are by nature prone, that the glory is all the greater of those who,
born to ample fortunes, nevertheless take an active part in the work of
their generation--who "scorn delights and live laborious days." It is to
the honour of the wealthier ranks in this country that they are not idlers;
for they do their fair share of the work of the state, and usually take
more than their fair share of its dangers. It was a fine thing said of a
subaltern officer in the Peninsular campaigns, observed trudging alone
through mud and mire by the side of his regiment, "There goes 15,000l.
a year!" and in our own day, the bleak slopes of Sebastopol and the
burning soil of India