An income of 1,000_l._ a year should be apportioned as follows:
£ _s._ _d._ House 100 0 0 Rates and taxes 33 0 0 Repairs, renewals, &c. 50 0 0 Two servants (rather better wages allowed) 100 0 0 Keep of self and wife 100 0 0 Wine, &c. 12 10 0 Clothes and pocket-money for wife 75 0 0 Clothes for husband 100 0 0 Coals 10 0 0 Insurance 50 0 0 Summer outing 30 0 0 Washing 26 0 0 Balance for incidentals 313 10 0 --------------- 1,000 0 0
And this larger balance would be drawn, upon for the extra expenses, such as entertaining and amusements, charities, and the thousand and one pleasant ways of spending money that are open to the possessor of the larger income, and are rigorously out of the reach of the owner of 500_l._ a year.
Then, too, there are all sorts and conditions of things to consider before laying down a law on the subject of apportioning the income; such for example as the consideration if the income dies with the husband, or if it may come from capital safely invested. In the former case the insurance ought to be very largely increased, as that is the only absolutely safe manner of saving one’s money. As a rule it costs about 27_l._ a year to insure the receipt of 1,000_l._ at death if the insurer is a young man, and I ask all intending bridegrooms to consider what this would mean if this be all the provision they can make for their brides, supposing they were to die and leave them with two or three little children and no other means. They could not live on 40_l._ a year, which is about all they would receive, and I therefore do trust all young men will seriously consider the matter before rushing into matrimony. At present a great many folk are like the ostrich, they bury their heads in the sands of present content and never consider the evil days that are before them. If they remain two, no one can blame them, but I do blame unendingly the selfish creatures who burden this overcrowded world with more genteel paupers. If people on small incomes insist on doing this, let them have the courage to bring up their daughters as upper servants and their boys to good honest trades; it is the genteel pauper, the girl who can paint a little, teach a little, and embroider a little, and the boy who, come what may, must wear a black coat or its equivalent in light tweeds, who have no right to be made to exist, and for whom the world has absolutely nothing to offer save a certain amount of snubs and a very large quantity of the unappetising dish known as the cold shoulder.