p. 733 | Stimulus of Poverty

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Dec 3, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 46.

Stimulus of Poverty.

MEN are naturally indolent. They love to take their ease, and are therefore averse to active effort. It is not uncommon to find capacity for mental labor combined with reluctance to undertake it. An indolent, capable man finds it painful to set his mind in motion. His inertia must be overcome by a force outside of himself. Many men, afterward eminent lawyers, artists, inventors, and even preachers, were made to exert themselves, at the beginning of their careers, by the pressure of poverty.

The eloquent Erskine, after he had attained fame and fortune, often said he would have failed had he not felt his wife and children twitching at his gown. Sir Samuel Romilly, the greatest chancery lawyer of his day, worked up an income of fifty thousand dollars a year, equivalent to more than a hundred thousand dollars in these days.

When he began his professional life, he had a small fortune, and thought of buying with it the lucrative position of a clerk of the court. But his father, a jeweler, was in straitened circumstances, and the pious son turned the money over to him, and went to work. His subsequent success at the bar, as he himself wrote, arose out of the pecuniary difficulties and confined circumstances of his father.

When Lord Eldon began his practice at the Chancery bar as John Scott, Lord Chancellor Thurlow promised him a commissionership of bankruptcy. But the promise remained unfulfilled, for a reason which Lord Thurlow afterward gave thus:—

“Jack,” said he, “I withheld it as a favor to you. I saw that you had ability, but that you were naturally indolent, and that only want could make you industrious.”

Baron Tenterden, Lord Chief Justice of England, was a barber’s son, and used to go about the streets of Canterbury as an attendant of his father, when he went from house to house to serve his customers. One day, after the barber’s boy had become Chief Justice, he visited Canterbury Cathedral in company with a friend. The choir was singing, and the friend praised the voice of a certain chorister.

“Ah!” said the Chief Justice, “that is the only man I ever envied. When at school in this town, we were candidates for a chorister place, and he obtained it.”

The disappointed boy, who needed the small salary, was consoled by the gift of an Oxford scholarship. Poverty made him study, for he had his own way to make in the world. In due time he gained a fellowship, whose income supported him while studying law.

When he was called to the bar, he had to contend with a husky voice, leaden face, and a painful bashfulness. But poverty made him a diligent worker, and in a few years his fees amounted to forty thousand dollars a year.

Kenyon, another eminent English lawyer, was so poor when he began practice that he used to dine at a cheap eating-house, where dinners were supplied for fifteen cents. When he was Chief Justice, he gave this advice to a young lawyer:—

“Spend your own fortune, marry, and spend your wife’s, and then you will have some chance of succeeding in the law.”—Sel.