Debt
Charles Spurgeon · John Ploughman's Talk; or, Plain Advice for Plain People
" The poor debtor was set free, like a bird let out of a cage." —
Page 98.
WHEN I was a very small boy, in pina-
fores, and went to a woman's school,
it so happened that I wanted a stick of slate
pencil, and had no money to buy it with.
(96)
DEBT, 97
I was afraid of being scolded for losing my
pencils so often, for I was a real careless
little fellow, and so did not dare to ask at
home ; what then was John to do ? There
was a little shop in the place, where nuts,
and tops, and cakes, and balls were sold by-
old Mrs. Dearson, and sometimes I had seen
boys and girls get trusted by the old lady. I
argued with myself that Christmas was com-
ing, and that somebody or other would be sure
to give me a penny then, and perhaps even a
whole silver sixpence. I would, therefore,
go into debt for a stick of slate pencil, and be
sure to pay at Christmas. I did not feel
easy about it, but still I screwed my courage
up and went into the shop. One farthing
was the amount, and as I had never owed
anything before, and my credit was good,
the pencil was handed over by the kind
dame, and / was in debt. It did not please
me much, and I felt as if I had done wrong,
but I little knew how soon I should smart
for it. How my father came to hear of this
little stroke of business I never knew, but
some little bird or other whistled it to him,
and he was very soon down upon me in
right earnest. God bless him for it ; he was
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98 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S TALK.
a sensible man, and none of your children
spoilers ; he did not intend to bring up his
children to speculate, and play at what big
rogues call financing, and therefore he
knocked my getting into debt on the head
at once, and no mistake. He gave me a
very powerful lecture upon getting into debt,
and how like it was to stealing, and upon
the way in which people were ruined by it ;
and how a boy who would owe a farthing,
might one day owe a hundred pounds, and
get into prison, and bring his family into
disgrace. It was a lecture, indeed ; I think
I can hear it now, and can feel my ears ting-
ling at the recollection of it. Then I was
marched off to the shop like a deserter
marched into barracks, crying bitterly all
down the street, and feeling dreadfully
ashamed, because I thought everybody knew
I was in debt. The farthing was paid amid
many solemn warnings, and the poor debtor
was set free, like a bird let out of a cage.
How sweet it felt to be out of debt ! How
did my little heart vow and declare that
nothing should ever tempt me into debt
again ! It was a fine lesson, and I have
never forgotten it. If all boys were inocu-
DEBT. 99
lated with the same doctrine when they were
young, it would be as good as a fortune to
them, and save them waggon-loads of
trouble in after life. God bless my father,
say I, and send a breed of such fathers into
old England to save her from being eaten
up with villainy, for what with companies
and schemes and paper-money, the nation
is getting to be as rotten as touchwood.
Ever since that early sickening I have
hated debt as Luther hated the Pope, and
if I say some fierce things about it, you
must not wonder. To keep debt, dirt, and
the devil out of my cottage has been my
greatest wish ever since I set up housekeep-
ing ; and although the last of the three has
sometimes got in by the door or the window,
for the old serpent will wriggle through the
smallest crack, yet, thanks to a good wife,
hard work, honesty, and scrubbing brushes,
the two others have not crossed the thresh-
old. Debt is so degrading, that if I owed a
man a penny I would walk twenty miles, in
the depth of winter, to pay him, sooner than
feel that I was under an obligation. I should
be as comfortable with peas in my shoes, or
a hedgehog in my bed, or a snake up my
ioo JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S TALK.
back, as with bills hanging over my head at
the grocer's, and the baker's, and the tailor's.
Poverty is hard, but debt is horrible ; a man
might as well have a smoky house and a
scolding wife, which are said to be the two
worst evils of our life. We may be poor,
and yet respectable, which John Ploughman
and wife hope they are and will be ; but a
man in debt cannot even respect himself,
and he is sure to be talked about by the
neighbors, and that talk will not be much to
his credit. Some persons appear to like to
be owing money ; but I would as soon be a
cat up a chimney with the fire alight, or a
fox with the hounds at my heels, or a hedge-
hog on a pitchfork, or a mouse under an
owl's claw. An honest man thinks a purse
full of other people's money to be worse
than an empty one ; he cannot bear to eat
other people's cheese, wear other people's
shirts, and walk about in other people's
shoes, neither will he be easy while his wife
is decked out in the milliner's bonnets, and
wears the draper's flannels. The jackdaw in
the peacock's feathers was soon plucked, and
borrowers will surely come to poverty — a
DEBT. 101
poverty of the bitterest sort, because there
is shame in it.
Living beyond their incomes is the
ruin of many of my neighbors ; they can
hardly * afford to keep a rabbit, and must
needs drive a pony and chaise. I am afraid
extravagance is the common disease of the
times, and many professing Christians have
caught it, to their shame and sorrow. Good
cotton or stuff gowns are not good enough
nowadays ; girls must have silks and satins,
and then there's a bill at the dressmaker's
as long as a winter's night, and quite as
dismal. Show, and style, and smartness
run away with a man's means, keep the
family poor, and the father's nose down on
the grindstone. Frogs try to look as big as
bulls, and burst themselves. A pound
a-week apes five hundred a-year, and comes
to the county court. Men burn the candle
at both ends, and then say they are very
unfortunate — why don't they put the saddle
on the right horse, and say they are ex-
travagant ? Economy is half the battle in
life ; it is not so hard to earn money as to
spend it well. Hundreds would never have
known want if they had not first known
102 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S TALK.
waste. If all poor men's wives knew how
to cook, how far a little might go ! Our
minister says the French and the Germans
beat us hollow in nice cheap cookery, I
wish they would send missionaries over to
convert our gossiping women into good
managers ; this is a French fashion which
would be a deal more useful than those fine
pictures in Mrs. Frippery's window, with
ladies rigged out in a new style every month.
Dear me! some people are much too fine
nowadays to eat what their fathers were
thankful to see on the table, and so they
please their palates with costly feeding, come
to the workhouse, and expect everybody to
pity them. They turned up their noses at
bread and butter, and came to eat raw turnips
stolen out of the fields. They who live like
fighting cocks at other men's costs, will get
their combs cut, or perhaps get roasted for
it one of these days. If you have a great
store of peas, you may put the more in the
soup; but everybody should fare according
to his earnings. He is both a fool and a
knave who has a shilling coming in, and on
the strength of it spends a pound which
does not belong to him. Cut your coat
DEBT. 103
according to your cloth is sound advice;
but cutting other peopled cloth by running
into debt is as like thieving as fourpence is
like a groat. If I meant to be a rogue I
would deal in marine stores, or be a pettifog-
ging lawyer, or a priest, or open a loan office,
or go out picking pockets, but I would scorn
the dirty art of getting into debt without a
prospect of being able to pay.
Debtors can hardly help being liars, for
they promise to pay when they know they
cannot, and when they have made up a lot
of false excuses they promise again, and so
they lie as fast as a horse can trot.
" You have debts, and make debts still,
If you've not lied, lie you will. "
Now, if owing leads to lying, who shall
say that it is not a most evil thing ? Of
course, there are exceptions, and I do not
want to bear hard upon an honest man who
is brought down by sickness or heavy losses,
but take the rule as a rule, and you will find
debt to be a great dismal swamp, a huge mud-
hole, a dirty ditch : happy is the man who
gets out of it after once tumbling in, but
104 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S TALK,
happiest of all is he who has been by God's
goodness kept out of the mire altogether.
If you once ask the devil to dinner it will be
hard to get him out of the house again :
better to have nothing to do with him.
Where a hen has laid one egg she is very
likely to lay another; when a man is once
in debt, he is likely to get into it again ;
better keep clear of it from the first. He
who gets in for a penny will soon be in for
a pound, and when a man is over shoes, he
is very liable to be over boots. Never owe
a farthing, and you will never owe a guinea.
If you want to sleep soundly, buy a bed
of a man who is in debt; surely it must be
a very soft one, or he never could have
rested so easy on it. I suppose people get
hardened to it, as Smith's donkey did when
its master broke so many sticks across its
back. It seems to me that a real honest
man would sooner get as lean as a grey-
hound than feast on borrowed money, and
would choke up his throat with March dust
before he would let the landlord make chalks
against him behind the door for a beer score.
What pins and needles tradesmen's bills
must stick in a fellow's soul ! A pig on
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credit always grunts. Without debt, with-
out care ; out of debt, out of danger ; but
owing and borrowing are bramble bushes
full of thorns. If ever I borrow a spade of
my next door neighbor I never feel safe
with it for fear I should break it ; I never
can dig in peace as I do with my own ; but
if I had a spade at the shop and knew I
could not pay for it, I think I should set to
and dig my own grave out of shame. Script-
ure says, " Owe no man anything," which
does not mean pay your debts, but never
have any to pay ; and my opinion is, that
those who wilfully break this law ought to be
turned out of the Christian church, neck and
crop, as we say. Our laws are shamefully
full of encouragement to credit : nobody
need be a thief now ; he has only to open a
shop and make a fail of it, and it will pay/
him much better ; as the proverb is, " He
who never fails will never grow rich. " Why,
I know tradesmen who have failed five or
six times, and yet think they are on the
road to heaven ; the scoundrels, what would
they do if they got there ? They are a
deal more likely to go where they shall
never come out till they have paid the utter-
106 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S TALK.
most farthing. But people say, " How liberal
they are ! " Yes, with other people's money.
I hate to see a man steal a goose and then
give religion the giblets. Piety by all means,
but pay your way as part of it. Honesty
first, then generosity. But how often re-
ligion is a cloak for deceiving! There's
Mrs. Scamp as fine as a peacock, all the
girls out at boarding-school, learning French
and the piano, the boys swelling about in
kid gloves, and G. B. Scamp, Esq., driving
a fast-trotting mare, and taking the chair at
public meetings, while his poor creditors
cannot get more than enough to live from
hand to mouth. It is shameful and beyond
endurance to see how genteel swindling is
winked at by many in this country. I'd off
with their white waistcoats, and kid gloves,
and patent leather boots, if I had my way,
and give them the county crop, and the
prison livery for six months ; gentlemen or
not, I'd let them see that big rogues could
dance on the treadmill to the same tune as
little ones. I'd make the land too hot to
hold such scamping gentry if I were a mem-
ber of Parliament, or a prime minister : as I've
no such power, I can at least write against
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the fellows, and let off the steam of my
wrath in that way.
My motto is, pay as you go, and keep
from small scores. Short reckonings are
soon cleared. Pay what you owe, and what
you're worth you'll know. Let the clock
tick, but no " tick " for me. Better go to
bed without your supper than get up in debt.
Sins and debts are always more than we
think them to be. Little by little a man
gets over head and ears. It is the petty ex-
penses that empty the purse. Money is
round, and rolls away easily. Tom Thrift-
less buys what he does not want because it
is a great bargain, and so is soon brought
to sell what he does want, and find it a very
little bargain ; he cannot say " No " to his
friend who wants him to be security ; he
gives grand dinners, makes many holidays,
keeps a fat table, lets his wife dress fine,
never looks after his servants, and by-and-
by he is quite surprised to find that quarter-
days come round so very fast, and that
creditors bark so loud. He has sowed his
money in the fields of thoughtlessness, and
now he wonders that he has to reap the
harvest of poverty. Still he hopes for
108 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S TALK.
something to turn up to help him out of
difficulty, and so muddles himself into more
troubles, forgetting that hope and expecta-
tion are a fool's income. Being hard up, he
goes to market with empty pockets, and
buys at whatever prices tradesmen like to
charge him, and so he pays more than
double and gets deeper and deeper into the
mire. This leads him to scheming, and try-
ing little tricks and mean dodges, for it is
hard for an empty sack to stand upright.
This is sure not to answer, for schemes are
like spiders' webs, which never catch any-
thing better than flies, and are soon swept
away. As well attempt to mend your shoes
with brown paper, or stop a broken window
with a sheet of ice, as try to patch up a
falling business with manceuvering and
scheming. When the schemer is found out,
he is like a dog in church, whom everybody
kicks at, and like a barrel of powder, which
nobody wants for a neighbor.
They say poverty is a sixth sense, and it
had need be, for many debtors seem to have
lost the other five, or were born without
common sense, for they appear to fancy
that you not only make debts, but pay them
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by borrowing. A man pays Peter with
what he has borrowed of Paul, and thinks
he is getting out of his difficulties, when
he is only putting one foot into the mud to
pull his other foot out. It is hard to shave
an egg, or pull hairs out of a bald pate, but
they are both easier than paying debts out
of an empty pocket. Samson was a strong
man, but he could not pay debts without
money, and he is a fool who thinks he can
do it by scheming. As to borrowing money
of loan societies, it's like a drowning man
catching at razors ; both Jews and Gentiles,
when they lend money, generally pluck the
geese as long as they have any feathers. A
man must cut down his outgoings and save
his incomings if he wants to clear himself;
you can't spend your penny and pay debts
with it too. Stint the kitchen if the purse
is bare. Don't believe in any way of wiping
out debts except by paying hard cash.
Promises make debts, and debts make
promises, but promises never pay debts ;
promising is one thing, and performing is
quite another. A good man's word should
be as binding as an oath, and he should
never promise to pay unless he has a clear
no JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S TALK.
prospect of doing so in due time ; those who
stave off payment by false promises, deserve
no mercy. It is all very well to say " I'm
very sorry, " but —
" A hundred years of regret
Pay not a farthing of debt."
Now I'm afraid all this sound advice
might as well have been given to my master's
cocks and hens as to those who have got
into the way of spending what is not their
own, for advice to such people goes in at
one ear and out at the other ; well, those
who won't listen will have to feel, and those
who refuse cheap advice will have to buy
dear repentance; but to young people
beginning life, a word may be worth a world,
and this shall be John Ploughman's short
sermon, with three heads to it — always live
a little below your means, never get into
debt, and remember —
" He who goes a borrowing
Goes a sorrowing."