THE MENTAL EFFECT OF PECUNIARY PRESSURE.

Otago Witness, Issue 1239, 28 August 1875, Page 3

THE MENTAL EFFECT OF PECUNIARY PRESSURE.

People realiso poverty, realise it thoroughly and painfully, and dread it, therefore, us they nover dread" very mucli worse evila. They know what it; is to have no money, and tlm prospect of having'none aflecta them ;is keenly as if they were already destitute. The man, therefore, who Sees destitution coining on, say, for twelve months, is therefore as far osf the strain on him is conoemod, a man who for twelve months has been destitute,. and has suffered all, and moro than all, that destitution imjilies. , . , There can scarcely be a doubt that pecuniary trouble is' of ull troubles the ons thafe most absorbs its victim, that most complctoly destroys hid fetrength, that most certainly evolves ihe despairing sense of loneliness which is tho precursor and cause of suicido. , . ■ . The man who ia gliding into poverty f.-om no fault of his own, or from a fault he does not perceive, is apt, unless a man of singularly well-balanced judgment, to feel himself oppressed by power which is resistless, without being 111 any tense divine ; he is compelled to fight, aa it were, without weapons, and as it is not open to him hi this world to decline the struaglc, he leave 3 the world behind. Pharaoh's order that bricks should be made without strawexcites a sort of horror in the minds of millions who do not know why straw was needed 3 and a little tradesman withouc capital, who toils like a slave, yet nil hi vain, constantly feds as the Jews did, as it he were fighting; against a power which could not he mollinen either by labour ot obedience, but returns for submission only a demand for tho impossible, and for labour only the sarcasm, " You are idle." No other form of misery, except, perhaps, religious persecution, produces quite this impression, or, when it is continuous, so destroys tli« spring jn niost men's minds. " Hopa springs eternal in the human breast,"— except the bankrupt's. — Special or.