On the Want of Money

By Whitney Stone

Spending one’s life trying to gain wealth is no life at all.  This is the message that William Hazlitt conveys in his excerpt, “On the Want of Money”.  Even as early as the nineteenth-century, Hazlitt noticed that those on the road to wealth are not on a road to a plentiful life.  Those that do eventually succeed this dream are forgotten or punished by the public that once gave them fame.  There are many examples about the extent people must endure to achieve such hopes.  Within the excerpt, Hazlitt utilizes several rhetorical strategies to express his views on money and the lives of those who wish to obtain it.   

            The rhetorical strategy, parallelism, is used to its abundance to explain the consequences one must pay on their way to wealth.  Hazlitt continues with lists of high-rising jobs and the greed that accompanies them, “it is to be compelled to stand behind a counter, or to sit at a desk in some public office”.  These are certainly jobs one looks down upon in categories of enthusiasm or motivation.  Spending a lifetime in a job that lacks these categories leads to a lifetime with “little credit or pleasure”.  Then Hazlitt again repeats similar results to gaining fame and money including “to be assailed on every side with envy, back-biting, and falsehood, or to be a favorite with the public for awhile, and then thrown into the background”.  Fame and fortune only gain pubic approval for a short period of time, if even that.  In the end, those that were once favored are now in exile, watching the next new favorite person bask in his or her success. 

            Hazlitt concludes his excerpt with a reasonable paradox that ultimately concludes the life of greed.  The paradox is written after the explanation that once fame and fortune are obtained, one can expect to feel “plagued out of [their] life, to look about for a place to die in, and quit the world without any one’s asking after your will”.  Then once they are deceased, their graves will be paid at a high expense “and after a lapse of time, to commemorate your genius and your misfortunes!”  Obtaining genius, of course, is no problematic factor.  However, obtaining misfortunes comes at a more discerning height.  With that being the ending factor of the excerpt, Hazlitt could not have summarized it in any other way.  Although genius and misfortunes happen to be opposite outcomes, those in hope of wealth achieve them both.

            This nineteenth-century author justly labels the search for money to a lifelong journey of misery.  Though there may be a glimpse of fame in between, the ending result is grim and lonely.  Only after a monument is placed for the grave and time has passed will one be remembered for their persistence as being genius and their depressions as being misfortunes.  With Hazlitt’s advice, one can only be wise as to live a life not in search of money, but in search of pleasure and happiness.