Rensselaer Union and Jasper Republican, Volume 8, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 February 1876 — Genius and Debt. [ARTICLE]

Genius and Debt.

Men of genius are equally facile in running into debt. Genius has no necessary connection with prudence or selfrestraint/nor does itexercise any influence over the common rules of arithmetic, which are rigid and Inflexible. Men of genius are often superior to what Bacon calls “ the wisdom of business." Yet himself did hot Follow his own advice, but was rdined by his improvidence. He was in straits and difficulties when a youth and in still greater straits and difficulties when a man. His Life was splendid but his excessive expenditure involved him in debts which .created a perpetual craving for money. One day in passing out to his ante-chambers, where his followers Were awaiting his appearance, he said: “Beseated my master; your rise has been my fall.” To supply his wants Bacon took bribes, and was thereupon beset by his enemies, convicted, degraded and ruined. Even men with a special genius for finance on a grand scale may mentof their own private affairs. Pitt managed the national finances during a period of unexampled difficulty, yet was. himself always plunged in debt. Lord Oarrington, ex-banker, once or twice, at Mr. Pitt’S request, examined his household accounts, and found the quantity of butcher’* meat in the bills wa£,HviSSbSokl bilte exceeded £2,300 a yekr. St Pitt’s

death WM’WffitWHffMttWfjr the demands of his creditors; yet his income had never been less than £6,000 a year; and at one time, with Che Wardenship of the Cinqne Ports, It was nearly £4,000 a year more. Macaulay truly says that “tha character of Pitt would have stood higher if, with the disinterestedness of Pericles and DeWitt, he had united their dignified frugality.” But Pitt by no means stood alone. Lord Melville was as unthrifty in the management of his own aftairs as he was of the money of the public. Fox was an enormous ower. his financial maxim being that a man need never want money if he was willing to pay enough for ®' ox called the outer room at Almack’s, where he borrowed on occasions from Jew lenders at exorbitant premiums, his “Jerusalem Chamber.” Passion for play was his great vice, and at a very darly age it involved him in debt to an enormous amount. It is stated by Gibbon that on one occasion Fox sal playing at hazard for twenty hours in succession, losing £ll.000. But deep play was the vice of high life in those days, and cheating was not unknown. Belwyn, alluding to Fox’s losses at play, called him Charles the Martyr. Sheridan was the hero of debt. He lived on it. Though he received large sums of money in one way or another, no one knew what became of it, for he paid nobody. It seemed to melt away in his hands like snow in summer. He spent his first wife’s fortune of £1,600 in a six weeks’ jaunt to Bath. Necessity drove him to literature, and perhaps to the stimulus of poverty we owe “ The Rivals” and the drama which succeeded it With his second wife he obtained a fortune of £5,000, and with £15,000 which he realized hy the sale of Drury Lane shares he bought an estate in Surrey, from which ha wat driven by debt and duns. The remainder of his life * was a series of shifts, sometimes brilliant, but oftener degrading, to raise money and evade creditors. Taylor, of the OperaHouse, used to say that if he took off his hat to Sheridan in the street it would cost him fifty pounds; but if he stopped to speak to him it would cost a hundred. He was in debt all round—to his milkman, his grocer, his baker and his butcher. Sometimes Mrs. Sheridan would be kept waiting for an hour or more, while the servants were beating up the neighborhood for coffee, butter, eggs and rolls. While Sheridan was paymaster of the navy a butcher one day brought a leg of mutton to the kitchen. The cook took it and clapped it in the pot to boil, and went up-stairs for the money; but not returning, the butcher coolly removed the pot lid, took out the mutton, and walked away with it in his tray. Yet, while living in these straits, Sheridan, when invlted with his son into the country , usually went in chaises and sou in one, and his son Tam following in the other. The end of all was very sad. For some weeks before his death he was nearly destitute of the means of subsistence. His noble and royal friends had entirely deserted him. Executions for debt were in his house, and he passed his last days in the custody of Sheriff’s officers, who abstained from conveying him to prison merely because they were assured that to remove him would cause his immediate death. — Samuel Smiles.