No people has been great by reason of material wealth. It would be going scarcely too far to say that certain peoples have been great in spit of possessing wealth. Scotland was never wealthy, yet greatness has not been denied Scotland. In this respect it is the same with nations as with individuals. Poverty and hardship have always been a spur to great deeds, wealth seldom if ever.
Wealth breeds extravagance and extravagance inevitably leads to deterioration.
We will have chairs of political economy and other sorts of economies, but I incline to think there is need, perhaps not for department or a chair, but for a policy to permeate the whole University and curriculum and faculty and student body, so that an influence will spread throughout the province in favor of the old-fashioned garden variety of economy. Gladstone, probably the greatest of England's Chancellors of the Exchequer, referring to himself in his later days as the sole survivor of the Peelites, declared that he always regarded economy as a main principle of his domestic policy. Few Governments in the present day are paying very strict adherence to Gladstone's principle. The greatness of neither Scotland nor England was made by wealth. Nobody will contend that Germany has become great by reason of her wealth.