In praise of money
Sir: By way of comment on John Rowan Wilson's very middle-class eulogy of money, here are a few things that the possession.of a. small fortune may, in certain circumstances, enable one to do: 1. To hire a private room in a hospital where the majority of patients share a common ward; to purchase individual medical at- tention.
2. To send one's children to a 'public' school, when the majority of children attend inferior state schools.
3. To take three months' holiday in the Bahamas, when the majority of one's coun- trymen are enduring an English winter.
4. If so placed, to buy one's way out from under an oppressive regime when the ma- jority of one's compatriots are in the hands of the oppressors.
5. Wholly or partially to cease to work to support oneself, and to live instead parasitically on the labour of others.
None of these representative 'wider op- tions' is in itself immoral, and each of them may seem, in certain circumstances, to be the sensible course of action. But each implies a removal of oneself from the rigours of the common lot into a position of privilege, and thus is manifestly unjust. (Agreed that perfect justice is unobtainable.) It is this whieh makes decent poor people uneasy. when they come into a bit of money—if they ever do. Privilege and a bad conscience inevitably go hand in hand, and I suspect that Dr Rowan Wilson's own conscience is not quite as easy as he would have us believe.
Here, by contrast, are a few things that possession of money cannot do: 1. Ensure good health, either physical or mental.
2. Make a stupid child into an intelligent one, or turn a philistine into a cultured person.
3. Give one the power to enjoy the holiday one can afford to take.
4. Make a brave man (pace Dr Rowan Wilson) out of a poltroon.
Finally, there is one use of money which Dr Rowan Wilson fails to mention, and which is too often the last possibility that oc- curs to us, though it is the most rewarding of all: one can use it to ease the hard lot of others.
D. S. Savage Ashfield House, Falmouth, Cornwall
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