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Show Abuse of Wealth. (From a lecture on "Religion and Good Government" by Max Pam at Notre Dame university.) Nobody can object to wealth wisely used. Its beneficent influences, its power for the development of a country, coun-try, its means for enriching the masses through a Avise distribution all make it the one great essential for the world's progress. . . . The abuse of wealth, either in its use or in its display, will work immeasurably greater injury to a country and its people than the proper use of it can benefit them. This abuse may be classified under two heads: First, the direct improper use of it in the oppression of others; its unjust accretion ac-cretion at the expense of others; its use for corrupting individuals or officials of-ficials and fostering licentious habits and practices. . . . Another abuse which, in my judgment is as hurtful as, if not more so than those already mentioned. Is that display of wealth, vulgar and demonstrative, demon-strative, which so largely contributes to the unhappiness of the common people, peo-ple, and so much excites the envy and jealousy of less fortunate persons. Human nature at best is weak, prone to error, readily led, and is most easily influenced by that which appeals to the indulgence of the senses. Therefore, when a person of great wealth vulgarly and lavishly displays it he is making a bid for the envy of those who are less fortunate. Again, in a country where so large a proportion of the populace is composed of people earning their bread by toil, whether of brain or of brawn, and where, each feels perhaps that, if given a better opportunity, greater fortune might have been his reward, to flaunt in the faces of those honest though less fortunate people the vulgar display of luxury and ease creates a state of bitterness and discontent and 'sows the seed of unhappiness. When the great majority of the people in any community commun-ity are unhappy, its impress upon the whole is indelible; and where the people peo-ple are unhappy, the nation is unhappy. Where the people are discontented, the country is fast approaching a precipice. Where bitterness is biting into the souls of men under any form of government, then its stability and its permanency are indeed imperiled. Non of these conditions that so make for the unhappiness unhap-piness of a people can be remedied by any law, whether written in the statutes or made by Judicial pronouncement. It is conscience born of religion, duly mindful of the sensibilities of men and women, duly mindful of decency and modesty in the enjoyment of surplus wealth not vulgarly exposing it to others, oth-ers, but using it with taste and refinement, refine-ment, which can prevent the untoward consequences it otherwise Invites. |