If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free. If our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed.
Burke isn't simply warning against greed or excess—he's describing a reversal of agency that happens so quietly we rarely notice it. When money becomes our master, we don't necessarily live lavishly; often we live anxiously, chasing salary increases and fretting over losses until our choices narrow to whatever preserves the next payment. A software engineer who stays in a soul-crushing job for fifteen years because the stock options have grown too substantial to walk away from is, by Burke's measure, poor—despite the six-figure account balance. True wealth, he suggests, is the freedom that comes from having enough and knowing you do, a psychological state far more elusive than prosperity itself.