William Cobbett

Advice to Young Men William Cobbett

Book Excerpt: ...f 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 al.