On the Old Road Volume Ii Part 33

"The question," says d.i.c.k, "is insidious and irrelevant."

Do not let it be supposed that I mean to a.s.sert any irregularity or impropriety in d.i.c.k's profession--I merely a.s.sert the necessity for Mr.

Greg's examination, if he would be master of his subject, of the manner of Gain in every case, as well as the manner of Expenditure. Such accounts must always be accurately rendered in a well-regulated society.

136. "Le lieutenant adressa la parole au capitaine, et lui dit qu'il venait d'enlever ces mannequins, remplis de sucre, de cannelle, d'amandes, et de raisins sees, a un epicier de Benavente.

Apres qu'il eut rendu compte de son expedition au bureau, les depouilles de l'epicier furent portees dans l'office. Alors il ne fut plus question que de se rejouir; je debutai par le buffet, que je parai de plusieurs bouteilles de ce bon vin que le Seigneur Rolando m'avoit vante."

Mr. Greg strictly confines himself to an examination of the benefits conferred on the public by this so agreeable festivity; but he must not be surprised or indignant that some inquiry should be made as to the resulting condition of the epicier de Benavente.

And it is all the more necessary that such inquiry be inst.i.tuted when the captain of the expedition is a minion, not of the moon, but of the sun; and dazzling, therefore, to all beholders. "It is heaven which dictates what I ought to do upon this occasion,"[115] says Henry of Navarre; "my retreat out of this city,[116] before I have made myself master of it, will be the retreat of my soul out of my body."

"Accordingly all the quarter which still held out, we forced," says M.

de Rosny, "after which the inhabitants, finding themselves no longer able to resist, laid down their arms, and the city was given up to plunder. My good fortune threw a small iron chest in my way, in which I found about four thousand gold crowns."

I cannot doubt that the Baron's expenditure of this sum would be in the highest degree advantageous to France and to the Protestant religion.

But complete economical science must study the effect of its abstraction on the immediate prosperity of the town of Cahors; and even beyond this--the mode of its former acquisition by the town itself, which perhaps, in the economies of the nether world, may have delegated some of its citizens to the seventh circle.[117]

137. And the most curious points in the partiality of modern economical science are that while it always waives this question of ways and means with respect to rich persons, it studiously pushes it in the case of poor ones; and while it a.s.serts the consumption of such an article of luxury as wine (to take that which Mr. Greg himself instances) to be economically expedient, when the wine is drunk by persons who are not thirsty, it a.s.serts the same consumption to be altogether inexpedient, when the privilege is extended to those who are. Thus Mr. Greg dismisses, in one place, with compa.s.sionate disdain, the extremely vulgar notion "that a man who drinks a bottle of champagne worth five shillings, while his neighbor is in want of actual food, is in some way wronging his neighbor"; and yet Mr. Greg himself, elsewhere,[118]

evidently remains under the equally vulgar impression that the twenty-four millions of such thirstier persons who spend fifteen per cent of their incomes in drink and tobacco, are wronging their neighbors by that expenditure.

138. It cannot, surely, be the difference in degree of refinement between malt liquor and champagne which causes Mr. Greg's undefined sensation of moral delinquency and economical error in the one case, and of none in the other; if that be all, I can relieve him from his embarra.s.sment by putting the cases in more parallel form. A clergyman writes to me, in distress of mind, because the able-bodied laborers who come begging to him in winter, drink port wine out of buckets in summer.

Of course Mr. Greg's logical mind will at once admit (as a consequence of his own very just _argumentum ad hominem_ in a previous page[119]) that the consumption of port wine out of buckets must be as much a benefit to society in general as the consumption of champagne out of bottles; and yet, curiously enough, I am certain he will feel my question, "Where does the drinker get the means for his drinking?" more relevant in the case of the imbibers of port than in that of the imbibers of champagne. And although Mr. Greg proceeds, with that lofty contempt for the dictates of nature and Christianity which radical economists cannot but feel, to observe that "while the natural man and the Christian would have the champagne drinker forego his bottle, and give the value of it to the famishing wretch beside him, the radical economist would condemn such behavior as distinctly criminal and pernicious," he would scarcely, I think, carry out with the same triumphant confidence the conclusions of the unnatural man and the anti-christian, with respect to the laborer as well as the idler; and declare that while the extremely simple persons who still believe in the laws of nature, and the mercy of G.o.d, would have the port-drinker forego his bucket, and give the value of it to the famishing wife and child beside him, "the radical economist would condemn such behavior as distinctly criminal and pernicious."

Mr. Greg has it indeed in his power to reply that it is proper to economize for the sake of one's own wife and children, but not for the sake of anybody else's. But since, according to another exponent of the principles of Radical Economy, in the _Cornhill Magazine_,[120] a well-conducted agricultural laborer must not marry till he is forty-five, his economies, if any, in early life, must be as offensive to Mr. Greg on the score of their abstract humanity, as those of the richest bachelor about town.

139. There is another short sentence in this same page, of which it is difficult to overrate the accidental significance.

"The superficial observer," says Mr. Greg, "recollects a text which he heard in his youth, but of which he never considered the precise applicability--'He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none.'"

The a.s.sumptions that no educated Englishman can ever have heard that text except in his youth, and that those who are old enough to remember having heard it, "never considered its precise applicability," are surely rash, in the treatment of a scientific subject. I can a.s.sure Mr.

Greg that a few gray-headed votaries of the creed of Christendom still read--though perhaps under their breath--the words which early a.s.sociations have made precious to them; and that in the bygone days, when that Sermon on the Mount was still listened to with respect by many not illiterate persons, its meaning was not only considered, but very deliberately acted upon. Even the readers of the _Contemporary Review_ may perhaps have some pleasure in retreating from the sunshine of contemporary science, for a few quiet moments, into the shadows of that of the past, and hearing in the following extracts from two letters of Scott's (the first describing the manner of life of his mother, whose death it announces to a friend, the second, antic.i.p.ating the verdict of the future on the management of his estate by a Scottish n.o.bleman) what relations between rich and poor were possible, when philosophers had not yet even lisped in the sweet numbers of Radical Sociology.

140. "She was a strict economist, which she said, enabled her to be liberal; out of her little income of about 300 a year she bestowed at least a third in well-chosen charities, and with the rest, lived like a gentlewoman, and even with hospitality more general than seemed to suit her age; yet I could never prevail on her to accept of any a.s.sistance.

You cannot conceive how affecting it was to me to see the little preparations of presents which she had a.s.sorted for the New Year, for she was a great observer of the old fashions of her period--and to think that the kind heart was cold which delighted in all these arts of kindly affection."

141. "The Duke is one of those retired and high-spirited men who will never be known until the world asks what became of the huge oak that grew on the brow of the hill, and sheltered such an extent of ground.

During the late distress, though his own immense rents remained in arrears, and though I know he was pinched for money, as all men were, but more especially the possessors of entailed estates, he absented himself from London in order to pay, with ease to himself, the laborers employed on his various estates. These amounted (for I have often seen the roll and helped to check it) to nine hundred and fifty men, working at day wages, each of whom on a moderate average might maintain three persons, since the single men have mothers, sisters, and aged or very young relations to protect and a.s.sist. Indeed it is wonderful how much even a small sum, comparatively, will do in supporting the Scottish laborer, who in his natural state is perhaps one of the best, most intelligent, and kind-hearted of human beings; and in truth I have limited my other habits of expense very much since I fell into the habit of employing mine honest people. I wish you could have seen about a hundred children, being almost entirely supported by their fathers' or brothers' labor, come down yesterday to dance to the pipes, and get a piece of cake and bannock, and pence apiece (no very deadly largess) in honor of hogmanay. I declare to you, my dear friend, that when I thought the poor fellows, who kept these children so neat, and well taught, and well behaved, were slaving the whole day for eighteen pence or twenty pence at most, I was ashamed of their grat.i.tude, and of their becks and bows. But after all, one does what one can, and it is better twenty families should be comfortable according to their wishes and habits, than that half that number should be raised above their situation."

142. I must pray Mr. Greg farther to observe, if he has condescended to glance at these remains of almost prehistoric thought, that although the modern philosopher will never have reason to blush for any man's grat.i.tude, and has totally abandoned the romantic idea of making even so much as one family comfortable according to their wishes and habits, the alternative suggested by Scott, that half "the number should be raised above their situation" may become a very inconvenient one if the doctrines of Modern Equality and compet.i.tion should render the other half desirous of parallel promotion.

143. It is now just sixteen years since Mr. Greg's present philosophy of Expenditure was expressed with great precision by the Common Councilmen of New York, in their report on the commercial crisis of 1857, in the following terms:--[121]

"Another erroneous idea is that luxurious living, extravagant dressing, splendid turn-outs and fine houses, are the cause of distress to a nation, No more erroneous impression could exist.

Every extravagance that the man of 100.000 or 1,000,000 dollars indulges in, adds to the means, the support, the wealth of ten or a hundred who had little or nothing else but their labor, their intellect, or their taste. If a man of 1,000,000 dollars spends princ.i.p.al and interest in ten years, and finds himself beggared at the end of that time, he has actually made a hundred who have catered to his extravagance, employers or employed, so much richer by the division of his wealth. He may be ruined, but the nation is better off and richer, for one hundred minds and hands, with 10,000 dollars apiece, are far more productive than one with the whole."

Now that is precisely the view also taken of the matter by a large number of Radical Economists in England as well as America; only they feel that the time, however short, which the rich gentleman takes to divide his property among them in his own way, is practically wasted; and even worse, because the methods which the gentleman himself is likely to adopt for the depression of his fortune will not, in all probability, be conducive to the elevation of his character. It appears, therefore, on moral as well as economical grounds, desirable that the division and distribution should at once be summarily effected; and the only point still open to discussion in the views of the Common Councilmen is to what degree of minuteness they would think it advisable to carry the subsequent subdivision.

144. I do not suppose, however, that this is the conclusion which Mr.

Greg is desirous that the general Anti-Christian public should adopt; and in that case, as I see by his paper in the last number of the _Contemporary_,[122] that he considers the Christian life itself virtually impossible, may I recommend his examination of the manners of the Pre-Christian? For I can certify him that this important subject, of which he has only himself imperfectly investigated one side, had been thoroughly investigated on all sides, at least seven hundred years before Christ; and from that day to this, all men of wit, sense, and feeling have held precisely the same views on the subjects of economy and charity, in all nations under the sun. It is of no consequence whether Mr. Greg chooses the experience of Boeotia, Lombardy, or Yorkshire, nor whether he studies the relation of work to-day or under Hesiod, Virgil, or Sydney Smith. But it is desirable that at least he should acquaint himself with the opinions of some such persons, as well as with those of the Common Councilmen of New York; for though a man of superior sagacity may be pardoned for thinking, with the friends of Job, that Wisdom will die with him, it can only be through neglect of the existing opportunities of general culture that he remains distinctly under the impression that she was born with him.

145. It may perhaps be well that in conclusion, I should state briefly the causes and terms of the economical crisis of our own day, which has been the subject of the debate between Mr. Goldwin Smith and Mr. Greg.

No man ever became, or can become, largely rich merely by labor and economy.[123] All large fortunes (putting treasure-trove and gambling out of consideration) are founded either on occupation of land, usury, or taxation of labor. Whether openly or occultly, the landlord, money-lender, and capitalist employer, gather into their possession a certain quant.i.ty of the means of existence which other people produce by the labor of their hands. The effect of this impost upon the condition of life of the tenant, borrower, and workman, is the first point to be studied;--the results, that is to say, of the mode in which Captain Roland fills his purse.

Secondly, we have to study the effects of the mode in which Captain Roland empties his purse. The landlord, usurer, or labor-master, does not, and cannot, himself consume all the means of life he collects. He gives them to other persons, whom he employs for his own behoof--growers of champagne, jockeys, footmen, jewelers, builders, painters, musicians, and the like. The division of the labor of these persons from the production of food to the production of articles of luxury is very frequently, and at the present day, very grievously the cause of famine.

But when the luxuries are produced, it becomes a quite separate question who is to have them, and whether the landlord and capitalist are entirely to monopolize the music, the painting, the architecture, the hand-service, the horse-service, and the sparkling champagne of the world.

146. And it is gradually, in these days, becoming manifest to the tenants, borrowers, and laborers, that instead of paying these large sums into the hands of the landlords, lenders, and employers, for them to purchase music, painting, etc., with, the tenants, borrowers, and workers had better buy a little music and painting for themselves. That, for instance, instead of the capitalist-employer paying three hundred pounds for a full-length portrait of himself, in the att.i.tude of investing his capital, the united workmen had better themselves pay the three hundred pounds into the hands of the ingenious artist, for a painting in the antiquated manner of Leonardo or Raphael, of some subject more religiously or historically interesting to them; and placed where they can always see it. And again instead of paying three hundred pounds to the obliging landlord, for him to buy a box at the opera with, whence to study the refinements of music and dancing, the tenants are beginning to think that they may as well keep their rents to themselves, and therewith pay some Wandering Willie to fiddle at their own doors, or bid some gray-haired minstrel

"Tune, to please a peasant's ear, The harp a king had loved to hear."

And similarly the dwellers in the hut of the field and garret of the city are beginning to think that instead of paying half a crown for the loan of half a fire-place, they had better keep their half-crown in their pockets till they can buy for themselves a whole one.

147. These are the views which are gaining ground among the poor; and it is entirely vain to endeavor to repress them by equivocations. They are founded on eternal laws; and although their recognition will long be refused, and their promulgation, resisted as it will be, partly by force, partly by falsehood, can only be through incalculable confusion and misery, recognized they must be eventually; and with these three ultimate results:--that the usurer's trade will be abolished utterly,--that the employer will be paid justly for his superintendence of labor, but not for his capital, and the landlord paid for his superintendence of the cultivation of land, when he is able to direct it wisely: that both he, and the employer of mechanical labor, will be recognized as beloved masters, if they deserve love, and as n.o.ble guides when they are capable of giving discreet guidance; but neither will be permitted to establish themselves any more as senseless conduits through which the strength and riches of their native land are to be poured into the cup of the fornication of its capital.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 111: _Contemporary Review_, May 1873.]

[Footnote 112: These were, first, Mr. Herbert Spencer's "Bias of Patriotism," being the ninth chapter of his "Study of Sociology," first published in the _Contemporary Review_; and, secondly, Mr. W. R. Greg's "What is culpable luxury?" See below, p. 303, - 135.--ED.]

[Footnote 113: I take due note that Mr. Spencer partly means by his adverbial sentence that Patriotism is individual Egoism, expecting its own central benefit through the Nation's circ.u.mferent benefit, as through a funnel: but, throughout, Mr. Spencer confuses this sentiment, which he calls "reflex egoism," with the action of "corporate conscience."]

[Footnote 114: See the letters on "How the Rich Spend their Money"

(reprinted from the _Pall Mall_) in "Arrows of the Chace," vol. ii., where the origin of the discussion is explained.--ED.]

[Footnote 115: I use the current English of Mrs. Lennox's translation, but Henry's real saying was (see the first--green leaf--edition of Sully), "It is written above what is to happen to me on every occasion."

"Toute occasion" becomes "cette occasion" in the subsequent editions, and finally "what is to happen to me" (ce que doit etre fait de moi) becomes "what I ought to do" in the English.]

[Footnote 116: Cahors. See the "Memoirs of the Duke of Sully," Book 1.

(Bohn's 1856 Edition, vol. i., pp. 118-9.)--ED.]

[Footnote 117: Where violence and brutality are punished. See Dante's "Inferno," Canto xii.--ED.]

[Footnote 118: See the _Contemporary Review_ at pp. 618 and 624.--ED.]

[Footnote 119: Viz.:--That if the expenditure of an income of 30,000 a year upon luxuries is to rob the poor, so _pro tanto_ is the expenditure of so much of an income of 300 as is spent on anything beyond "the simplest necessaries of life."--ED.]

[Footnote 120: Referring to two anonymous articles on "The Agricultural Laborer," in the _Cornhill Magazine_, vol. 27, Jan. and June 1873, pp.

215 and 307.--ED.]

[Footnote 121: See the Times of November 23rd of that year.]

[Footnote 122: "Is a Christian life feasible in these days?"--ED.]