Men of genius are equally facile in running into debt.  Genius has no necessary connection with prudence or self-restraint, nor does it exercise 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 Bacon himself did not follow his own advice, but was ruined 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 antechambers, where his followers waited for his appearance, he said, “Be seated, my masters; 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 completely break down in the management of their own private affairs.  Pitt managed the national finances during a period of unexampled difficulty, yet was himself always plunged in debt.  Lord Carrington, the ex-banker, once or twice, at Mr. Pitt’s request, examined his household accounts, and found the quantity of butcher’s meat charged in the bills was one hundredweight a week.  The charge for servants’ wages, board wages, living, and household bills, exceeded L2,300 a year.  At Pitt’s death, the nation voted L40,000 to satisfy the demands of his creditors; yet his income had never been less than L6,000 a year; and at one time, with the Wardenship of the Cinque Ports, it was nearly L4,000 a year more.  Macaulay truly says that “the character of Pitt would have stood higher if, with the disinterestedness of Pericles and De Witt, he had united their dignified frugality.”

But Pitt by no means stood alone.  Lord Melville was as unthrifty in the management of his own affairs, 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 it.  Fox 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 early age it involved him in debt to an enormous amount.  It is stated by Gibbon that on one occasion Fox sat playing at hazard for twenty hours in succession, losing L11,000.  But deep play was the vice of high life in those days, and cheating was not unknown.  Selwyn, alluding to Fox’s losses at play, called him Charles the Martyr.