A man of my profession never counterfeits, till he lays hold upon a
  debtor and says he rests him:  for then he brings him to all
  manner of unrest.—­The Bailiff, in ’Every Man in his Humour.’

Run not into debt, either for wares sold or money borrowed; be content to want things that are not of absolute necessity, rather than to run up the score:  such a man pays at the latter a third part more than the principal comes to, and is in perpetual servitude to his creditors; lives uncomfortably; is necessitated to increase his debts to stop his creditors’ mouths; and many times falls into desperate courses.

  Sir M. Hale.

“The greatest of all distinctions in civil life,” says Steele, “is that of debtor and creditor;” although no kind of slavery is so easily endured, as that of being in debt.  Luxury and expensive habits, which are commonly thought to enlarge our liberty by increasing our enjoyments, are thus the means of its infringement; whilst, in nine cases out of ten, the lessons taught by this rigid experience lead to the bending and breaking of our spirits, and the unfitting of us for the rational pleasures of life.  All ranks of mankind seem to fall into this fatal error, from the voluptuous Cleopatra to the needy philosopher, who doles out a mealsworth of morality for his fellow-creatures, and who would fain live according to his own precepts, had he not exhausted his means in the acquisition of his experience.

I blush to confess, that I have often thought the habit of debt to be our national inheritance—­from that bugbear of out-of-place men, the Sinking Fund, to the parish-clerk, who mortgages his fees at the chandler’s; and that my countrymen seem to have resolved to increase their own enjoyments at the expense of posterity, with whose provision, even Swift thinks we have no concern.  Again; I have thought that we are apt to over-rate our national advancement, by supposing the present race to be wiser than the previous one, without once looking into our individual contributions to this state of enlightenment.  Proud as we are of this distinction in the social scale, we can record few instances of contemporary genius, and we are bound to confess that men are not a whit the better in the present than in the previous generation.  Thus we hoodwink each other till social outrages become every-day occurrences, and every thing but sheer violence is protected by its frequency; and in this manner we consent to compromise our happiness, and then affect to be astonished at its scarcity.  In the later ages of the world, men have learned to temporize with principles, and to sacrifice, at the shrine of passing interest, as much real virtue as would bear them harmless throughout life.  Hence, of what more avail is the virtue of the Roman fathers, or are the amiable friendships of Scipio and Lelius, than as so many amusing fictions to exercise the imaginations of schoolmen in drawing