Unto This Last and Other Essays on Political Economy Part 20

[114] The pa.s.sage of Plato, referred to in note p. 280, in its context, respecting the slave who, well dressed and washed, aspires to the hand of his master's daughter, corresponds curiously to the attack of Caliban on Prospero's cell, and there is an undercurrent of meaning throughout, in the "Tempest" as well as in the "Merchant of Venice"; referring in this case to government, as in that to commerce. Miranda ("the wonderful," so addressed first by Ferdinand, "Oh, you wonder!") corresponds to Homer's Arete: Ariel and Caliban are respectively the spirits of freedom and mechanical labour. Prospero ("for hope"), a true governor, opposed to Sycorax, the mother of slavery, her name, "Swine-raven,"

indicating at once brutality and deathfulness; hence the line--"As wicked dew as e'er my mother brushed, with raven's feather,"--etc. For all dreams of Shakespeare, as those of true and strong men must be, are "[Greek: phantasmata theia, kai skiai ton onton]," phantasms of G.o.d, and shadows of things that are. We hardly tell our children, willingly, a fable with no purport in it; yet we think G.o.d sends His best messengers only to say fairy tales to us, all fondness and emptiness. The "Tempest" is just like a grotesque in a rich missal, "clasped where paynims pray." Ariel is the spirit of true liberty, in early stages of human society oppressed by ignorance and wild tyranny; venting groans as fast as mill-wheels strike; in shipwreck of states, fearful; so that "all but mariners plunge in the brine, and quit the vessel, then all afire with me," yet having in itself the will and sweetness of truest peace, whence that is especially called "Ariel's" song, "Come unto these yellow sands"--(fenceless, and countless--changing with the sweep of the sea--"vaga arena." Compare Horace's opposition of the sea-sand to the dust of the grave: "numero carentis"--"exigui;" and again compare "animo rotundum percurrisse" with "put a girdle round the earth")--"and then take hands: court'sied when you have, and kiss'd,--the wild waves whist:" (mind it is "courtesia," not "curtsey") and read "quiet" for "whist" if you want the full sense. Then may you indeed foot it featly, and sweet spirits bear the burden for you--with watch in the night, and call in early morning. The power of liberty in elemental transformation follows--"Full fathom five thy father lies, of his bones are coral made." Then, giving rest after labour, it "fetches dew from the still-vex'd Bermoothes, and, with a charm joined to their suffered labour, leaves men asleep." s.n.a.t.c.hing away the feast of the cruel, it seems to them as a harpy, followed by the utterly vile, who cannot see it in any shape, but to whom it is the picture of n.o.body, it still gives shrill harmony to their false and mocking catch, "Thought is free," but leads them into briars and foul places, and at last hollas the hounds upon them. Minister of fate against the great criminal, it joins itself with the "incensed seas and sh.o.r.es"--the sword that layeth at it cannot hold, and may, "with bemocked-at stabs as soon kill the still-closing waters, as diminish one dowle that's in my plume." As the guide and aid of true love, it is always called by Prospero "fine" (the French "fine"--not the English), or "delicate"--another long note would be needed to explain all the meaning in this word.

Lastly, its work done, and war, it resolves itself to the elements. The intense significance of the last song, "Where the bee sucks," I will examine in its due place. The types of slavery in Caliban are more palpable, and need not be dwelt on now: though I will notice them also, severally, in their proper places;--the heart of his slavery is in his worship: "That's a brave G.o.d, and bears celestial liquor."

But, in ill.u.s.tration of the sense in which the Latin "benignus" and "malignus," are to be coupled with Eleutheria and Douleia, not that Caliban's torment is always the physical reflection of his own nature--"cramps" and "side-st.i.tches that shall pen thy breath up"--"thou shalt be pinched as thick as honeycomb:" the whole nature of slavery being one cramp and cretinous contraction. Fancy this of Ariel! You may fetter him, but yet set no mark on him; you may put him to hard work and far journey, but you cannot give him a cramp.

Of Shakespeare's names I will afterwards speak at more length: they are curiously--often barbarously--mixed out of various traditions and languages. Three of the clearest in meaning have been already noticed. Desdemona, "[Greek: dysdaimonia]," "miserable fortune," is also plain enough.

Oth.e.l.lo is, I believe, "the careful"; all the calamity of the tragedy arising from the single flaw and error in his magnificently collected strength. Ophelia, "serviceableness," the true lost wife of Hamlet, is marked as having a Greek name by that last word of her, where her gentle preciousness is opposed to the uselessness of the churlish clergy--"A ministering angel shall my sister be when thou liest howling." Hamlet is, I believe, connected in some way with "homely," the entire event of the tragedy turning on betrayal of home duty. Hermione ([Greek: herma]), "pillar-like" ([Greek: he eidos eche chryses Aphrodites]).

t.i.tania ([Greek: t.i.tene]), "the queen;" Benedict and Beatrice, "blessed and blessing;" Valentine and Proteus, enduring (or strong) (valens) and changeful. Iago and Iachimo have evidently the same root--probably the Spanish Iago, Jacob, "the supplanter." Leonatus, and other such names are interpreted, or played with, in the plays themselves. For the interpretation of Sycorax, and reference to her raven's feather, I am indebted to Mr. John R. Wise.

I should dwell, even in these prefatory papers, at somewhat more length on this matter, had not all I would say, been said (already in vain) by Carlyle, in the first of the "Latter-Day Pamphlets," which I commend to the reader's gravest reading: together with that as much neglected, and still more immediately needed, on model prisons, and with the great chapter on "Permanence" (fifth of the last section of "Past and Present"), which sums, what is known, and foreshadows,--or rather fore-lights, all that is to be learned, of National Discipline.

I have only here farther to examine the nature of one world-wide and everlasting form of slavery, wholesome in use, deadly in abuse--the service of the rich by the poor.

As in all previous discussions of our subject, we must study this relation in its simplest elements in order to reach its first principles. The simplest state of it is, then, this:[115] a wise and provident person works much, consumes little, and lays by store; an improvident person works little, consumes all the produce, and lays by no store. Accident interrupts the daily work, or renders it less productive; the idle person must then starve, or be supported by the provident one,--who, having him thus at his mercy, may either refuse to maintain him altogether, or, which will evidently be more to his own interest, say to him, "I will maintain you, indeed, but you shall now work hard, instead of indolently, and instead of being allowed to lay by what you save, as you might have done, had you remained independent, I will take all the surplus. You would not lay it up yourself; it is wholly your own fault that has thrown you into my power, and I will force you to work, or starve; yet you shall have no profit, only your daily bread." This mode of treatment has now become so universal that it is supposed the only natural--nay, the only possible one; and the market wages are calmly defined by economists as "the sum which will maintain the labourer."

[115] In the present general examination I concede so much to ordinary economists as to ignore all innocent poverty. I a.s.sume poverty to be always criminal; the conceivable exceptions we will examine afterwards.

The power of the provident person to do this is only checked by the correlative power of some neighbour of similarly frugal habits, who says to the labourer--"I will give you a little more than my provident friend:--come and work for me." The power of the provident over the improvident depends thus primarily on their relative numbers; secondarily, on the modes of agreement of the adverse parties with each other. The level of wages is a variable function of the number of provident and idle persons in the world, of the enmity between them as cla.s.ses, and of the agreement between those of the same cla.s.s. It depends, from beginning to end, on moral conditions.

Supposing the rich to be entirely selfish, it is always for their interest that the poor should be as numerous as they can employ and restrain. For, granting the entire population no larger than the ground can easily maintain,--that the cla.s.ses are stringently divided,--and that there is sense or strength of hand enough with the rich to secure obedience; then, if nine-tenths of a nation are poor, the remaining tenth have the service of nine persons each;[116] but, if eight-tenths are poor, only of four each; if seven-tenths are poor, of two and a third each; but, practically if the rich strive always to obtain more power over the poor, instead of to raise them,--and if, on the other hand, the poor become continually more vicious and numerous, through neglect and oppression--though the range of the power of the rich increases, its tenure becomes less secure; until, at last, the measure of iniquity being full, revolution, civil war, or the subjection of the state to a healthier or stronger one, closes the moral corruption and industrial disease.

[116] I say nothing yet of the quality of the servants, which, nevertheless, is the gist of the business. Will you have Paul Veronese to paint your ceiling, or the plumber from over the way? Both will work for the same money; Paul, if anything, a little cheaper of the two, if you keep him in good humour; only you have to discern him first, which will need eyes.

It is rare, however, that things come to this extremity. Kind persons among the rich, and wise among the poor, modify the connexion of the cla.s.ses: the efforts made to raise and relieve on the one side, and the success and honest toil on the other, bind and blend the orders of society into the confused tissue of half-felt obligation, sullenly-rendered obedience, and variously-directed, or mis-directed, toil, which form the warp of daily life. But this great law rules all the wild design of the weaving; that success (while society is guided by laws of compet.i.tion) signifies always so much victory over your neighbour as to obtain the direction of his work, and to take the profits of it. This is the real source of all great riches. No man can become largely rich by his personal toil.[117] The work of his own hands, wisely directed, will indeed always maintain himself and his family, and make fitting provision for his age. But it is only by the discovery of some method of taxing the labour of others that he can become opulent. Every increase of his capital enables him to extend this taxation more widely; that is, to invest larger funds in the maintenance of his labourers--to direct, accordingly, vaster and yet vaster ma.s.ses of labour; and to appropriate its profits. There is much confusion of idea on the subject of this appropriation. It is, of course, the interest of the employer to disguise it from the persons employed; and for his own comfort and complacency he often desires no less to disguise it from himself. And it is matter of much doubt with me, how far the foolish arguments used habitually on this subject are indeed the honest expressions of foolish convictions,--or rather (as I am sometimes forced to conclude from the irritation with which they are advanced) are resolutely dishonest, wilful sophisms, arranged so as to mask to the last moment the real state of economy, and future duties of men. By taking a simple example, and working it thoroughly out, the subject may be rescued from all but determined misconception.

[117] By his heart he may; but only when its produce, or the sight or hearing of it, becomes a subject of dispute, so as to enable the artist to tax the labour of mult.i.tudes highly, in exchange for his own.

Let us imagine a society of peasants, living on a river-sh.o.r.e, exposed to destructive inundation at somewhat extended intervals; and that each peasant possesses of this good, but imperilled ground, more than he needs to cultivate for immediate subsistence. We will a.s.sume farther (and with too great probability of justice) that the greater part of them indolently keep in tillage just as much land as supplies them with daily food;--that they leave their children idle and untaught; and take no precautions against the rise of the stream. But one of them (we will say only one, for the sake of greater clearness) cultivates carefully all the ground of his estate; makes his children work hard and healthily; uses his spare time and theirs in building a rampart against the river; and at the end of some years has in his storehouses large reserves of food and clothing, and in his stables a well-tended breed of cattle.

The torrent rises at last--sweeps away the harvests and many of the cottages of the careless peasantry, and leaves them dest.i.tute. They naturally come for help to the provident one, whose fields are unwasted and whose granaries are full. He has the right to refuse it them; no one disputes his right. But he will probably not refuse it; it is not his interest to do so, even were he entirely selfish and cruel. The only question with him will be on what terms his aid is to be granted.

Clearly not on terms of mere charity. To maintain his neighbours in idleness would be his ruin and theirs. He will require work from them in exchange for their maintenance; and whether in kindness or cruelty, all the work they can give. Not now the three or four hours they were wont to spend on their own land, but the eight or ten hours they ought to have spent. But how will he apply this labour? The men are now his slaves--nothing less. On pain of starvation, he can force them to work in the manner and to the end he chooses. And it is by his wisdom in this choice that the worthiness of his mastership is proved, or its unworthiness. Evidently he must first set them to bank out the water in some temporary way, and to get their ground cleansed and resown; else, in any case, their continued maintenance will be impossible.

That done, and while he has still to feed them, suppose he makes them raise a secure rampart for their own ground against all future flood, and rebuild their houses in safer places, with the best material they can find; being allowed time out of their working hours to fetch such material from a distance. And for the food and clothing advanced, he takes security in land that as much shall be returned at a convenient period.

At the end of a few years, we may conceive this security redeemed, and the debt paid. The prudent peasant has sustained no loss; but is no richer than he was, and has had all his trouble for nothing. But he has enriched his neighbours materially; bettered their houses, secured their land, and rendered them, in worldly matters, equal to himself.

In all true and final sense, he has been throughout their lord and king.

We will next trace his probable line of conduct, presuming his object to be exclusively the increase of his own fortune. After roughly recovering and cleansing the ground, he allows the ruined peasantry only to build huts upon it, such as he thinks protective enough from the weather to keep them in working health. The rest of their time he occupies first in pulling down and rebuilding on a magnificent scale his own house, and in adding large dependencies to it. This done, he follows the example of the first great Hebrew financier, and in exchange for his continued supply of corn, buys as much of his neighbours! land, as he thinks he can superintend the management of; and makes the former owners securely embank and protect the ceded portion. By this arrangement he leaves to a certain number of the peasantry only as much ground as will just maintain them in their existing numbers: as the population increases, he takes the extra hands, who cannot be maintained on the narrow estates, for his own servants; employs some to cultivate the ground he has bought, giving them of its produce merely enough for subsistence; with the surplus, which, under his energetic and careful superintendence, will be large, he supports a train of servants for state, and a body of workmen, whom he educates in ornamental arts. He now can splendidly decorate his house, lay out its grounds magnificently, and richly supply his table, and that of his household and retinue. And thus, without any abuse of right, we should find established all the phenomena of poverty and riches, which (it is supposed necessarily) accompany modern civilization. In one part of the district, we should have unhealthy land, miserable dwellings and half-starved poor; in another, a well-ordered estate, well-fed servants, and refined conditions of highly-educated and luxurious life.

I have put the two cases in simplicity, and to some extremity. But though in more complex and qualified operation, all the relations of society are but the expansion of these two typical sequences of conduct and result. I do not say, observe, that the first procedure is entirely right; still less, that the second is wholly wrong. Servants and artists, and splendour of habitation and retinue, have all their use, propriety and office. I only wish the reader to understand clearly what they cost; that the condition of having them is the subjection to you of a certain number of imprudent or unfortunate persons (or, it may be, more fortunate than their master), over whose destinies you exercise a boundless control. "Riches" mean eternally and essentially this; and may heaven send at last a time when those words of our best-reputed economist shall be true, and we shall indeed "all know what it is to be rich;" that is to be slave-master over farthest earth, and over all ways and thoughts of men. Every operative you employ is your true servant: distant or near, subject to your immediate orders, or ministering to your widely-communicated caprice--for the pay he stipulates, or the price he tempts,--all are alike under this great dominion of the gold. The milliner who makes the dress is as much a servant (more so, in that she uses more intelligence in the service) as the maid who puts it on; the carpenter who smoothes the door, as the footman who opens it; the tradesmen who supply the table, as the labourers and sailors who supply the tradesmen. Why speak of these lower services? Painters and singers (whether of note or rhyme), jesters and story-tellers, moralists, historians, priests--so far as these, in any degree, paint, or sing, or tell their tale, or charm their charm, or "perform" their rite, for pay, in so far they are all slaves; abject utterly, if the service be for pay only; abject less and less in proportion to the degrees of love and wisdom which enter into their duty, or can enter into it, according as their function is to do the bidding and the work of a man;--or to amuse, tempt, and deceive a child.

There may be thus, and, to a certain extent, there always is, a government of the rich by the poor, as of the poor by the rich; but the latter is the prevailing and necessary one, and it consists, observe, of two distinct functions,--the collection of the profits of labour from those who would have misused them, and the administration of those profits for the service either of the same person in future, or of others; or, as is more frequently the case in modern times, for the service of the collector himself.

The examination of these various modes of collection and use of riches will form the third branch of our future inquiries; but the key to the whole subject lies in the clear understanding of the difference between selfish and unselfish expenditure. It is not easy, by any course of reasoning, to enforce this on the generally unwilling hearer; yet the definition of unselfish expenditure is brief and simple. It is expenditure which if you are a capitalist, does not pay you, but pays somebody else; and if you are a consumer, does not please you, but pleases somebody else. Take one special instance, in further ill.u.s.tration of the general type given above. I did not invent that type, but spoke of a real river, and of real peasantry, the languid and sickly race which inhabits, or haunts--for they are often more like spectres than living men--the th.o.r.n.y desolation on the banks of the Arve. Some years ago, a society formed at Geneva offered to embank the river, for the ground which would have been recovered by the operation; but the offer was refused by the (then Sardinian) government. The capitalists saw that this expenditure would have "paid," if the ground saved from the river was to be theirs. But if when the offer that had this aspect of profit was refused, they had nevertheless persisted in the plan and, merely taking security for the return of their outlay, lent the funds for the work, and thus saved a whole race of human souls from perishing in a pestiferous fen (as, I presume, some among them would, at personal risk, have dragged any one drowning creature out of the current of the stream, and not expected payment therefor), such expenditure would have precisely corresponded to the use of his power made, in the first instance, by our supposed richest peasant--it would have been the king's, of grace, instead of the usurer's, for gain.

"Impossible, absurd, Utopian!" exclaim nine-tenths of the few readers whom these words may find. No, good reader, this is not Utopian: but I will tell you what would have seemed, if we had not seen it, Utopian on the side of evil instead of good: that ever men should have come to value their money so much more than their lives, that if you call upon them to become soldiers, and take chance of bullet, for their pride's sake, they will do it gaily, without thinking twice; but if you ask them for their country's sake to spend a hundred pounds without security of getting back a hundred-and-five[118] they will laugh in your face.

[118] I have not hitherto touched on the subject of interest of money; it is too complex; and must be reserved for its proper place in the body of the work. (I should be glad if a writer, who sent me some valuable notes on this subject, and asked me to return a letter which I still keep at his service, would send me his address.) The definition of interest (apart from compensation for risk) is, "the exponent of the comfort of accomplished labour, separated from its power;" the power being what is lent: and the French economists who have maintained the entire illegality of interest are wrong; yet by no means so curiously or wildly wrong as the English and French ones opposed to them, whose opinions have been collected by Dr. Whewell at page 41 of his Lectures; it never seeming to occur to the mind of the compiler any more than to the writers whom he quotes, that it is quite possible, and even (according to Jewish proverb) prudent, for men to h.o.a.rd, as ants and mice do, for use, not usury; and lay by something for winter nights, in the expectation of rather sharing than lending the sc.r.a.pings. My Savoyard squirrels would pa.s.s a pleasant time of it under the snow-laden pine-branches, if they always declined to economize because no one would pay them interest on nuts.

Not but that also this game of life-giving-and-taking is, in the end, somewhat more costly than other forms of play might be. Rifle practice is, indeed, a not unhealthy pastime, and a feather on the top of the head is a pleasing appendage; but while learning the stops and fingering of the sweet instrument, does no one ever calculate the cost of an overture? What melody does t.i.tyrus meditate on his tenderly spiral pipe? The leaden seed of it, broad cast, true conical "Dents de Lion" seed--needing leas allowance for the wind than is usual with that kind of herb--what crop are you likely to have of it? Suppose, instead of this volunteer marching and countermarching, you were to do a little volunteer ploughing and counterploughing? It is more difficult to do it straight: the dust of the earth, so disturbed, is more grateful than for merely rhythmic footsteps. Golden cups, also, given for good ploughing would be more suitable in colour (ruby gla.s.s, for the wine which "giveth his colour" on the ground, as well as in the cup, might be fitter for the rifle prize in the ladies' hands); or, conceive a little volunteer exercise with the spade, other than such as is needed for moat and breastwork, or even for the burial of the fruit of the leaden avena-seed, subject to the shrill Lemures'

criticism--

"Wer hat das Haus so schlecht gebaut?"

If you were to embank Lincolnshire now,--more stoutly against the sea?

or strip the peat of Solway, or plant Plinlimmon moors with larch--then, in due hour of year, some amateur reaping and threshing?

"Nay, we reap and thresh by steam in these advanced days."

I know it, my wise and economical friends. The stout arms G.o.d gave you to win your bread by, you would fain shoot your neighbours--and G.o.d's sweet singers--with;[119] then you invoke the friends to your farm-service, and--

"When young and old come forth to play On a sulphurous holiday, Tell how the darling goblin sweat (His feast of cinders duly set), And belching night, where breathed the morn.

His shadowy flail hath threshed the corn That ten day-labourers could not end."

But we will press the example closer. On a green knoll above that plain of the Arve, between Cluses and Bonneville, there was, in the year 1860, a cottage, inhabited by a well-doing family--man and wife, three children, and the grandmother. I call it a cottage but, in truth, it was a large chimney on the ground, wide at the bottom (so that the family might live round the fire), with one broken window in it, and an unclosing door. The family, I say, was "well-doing," at least, it was hopeful and cheerful; the wife healthy, the children, for Savoyards, pretty and active, but the husband threatened with decline, from exposure under the cliffs of the Mont Vergi by day, and to draughts between every plank of his chimney in the frosty nights.

"Why could he not plaster the c.h.i.n.ks?" asks the practical reader. For the same reason that your child cannot wash its face and hands till you have washed them many a day for it, and will not wash them when it can, till you force it.

[119] Compare Chaucer's feeling respecting birds (from Canace's falcon, to the nightingale, singing "Domine l.a.b.i.a "--to the Lord of Love) with the usual modern British sentiments on this subject. Or even Cowley's:--

"What prince's choir of music can excel That which within this shade does dwell.

To which we nothing pay, or give, They, like all other poets, live Without reward, or thanks for their obliging pains!

'Tis well if they became not prey."

Yes; it is better than well; particularly since the seed sown by the wayside has been protected by the peculiar appropriation of part of the church rates in our country parishes. See the remonstrance from a "Country Parson," in the _Times_ of June 4th (or 5th; the letter is dated June 3rd, 1862):--"I have heard at a vestry meeting a good deal of higgling over a few shillings' outlay in cleaning the church; but I have never heard any dissatisfaction expressed on account of the part of the rate which is invested in fifty or 100 dozens of birds' heads."

I pa.s.sed this cottage often in my walks, had its window and door mended, sometimes mended also a little the meal of sour bread and broth, and generally got kind greeting and smile from the face of young or old; which greeting, this year, narrowed itself into the half-recognizing stare of the elder child and the old woman's tears; for the father and mother were both dead,--one of sickness, the other of sorrow. It happened that I pa.s.sed not alone, but with a companion, a practised English joiner, who, while these people were dying of cold, had been employed from six in the morning to six of the evening for two months, in fitting the panels without nails, of a single door in a large house in London. Three days of his work taken, at the right time, from the oak panels, and applied to the larch timbers, would have saved these Savoyards' lives. He would have been maintained equally (I suppose him equally paid for his work by the owner of the greater house, only the work not consumed selfishly on his own walls;) and the two peasants, and eventually, probably their children, saved.

There are, therefore, let me finally enforce and leave with the reader this broad conclusion,--three things to be considered in employing any poor person. It is not enough to give him employment. You must employ him first to produce useful things; secondly, of the several (suppose equally useful) things he can equally well produce, you must set him to make that which will cause him to lead the healthiest life; lastly, of the things produced, it remains a question of wisdom and conscience how much you are to take yourself, and how much to leave to others. A large quant.i.ty, remember, unless you destroy it, must always be so left at one time or another; the only questions you have to decide are, not what you will give, and what you will keep, but when, and how, and to whom, you will give. The natural law of human life is, of course, that in youth a man shall labour and lay by store for his old age, and when age comes, should use what he has laid by, gradually slackening his toil, and allowing himself more frank use of his store, taking care always to leave himself as much as will surely suffice for him beyond any possible length of life. What he has gained, or by tranquil and unanxious toil, continues to gain, more than is enough for his own need, he ought so to administer, while he yet lives, as to see the good of it again beginning in other hands; for thus he has himself the greatest sum of pleasure from it, and faithfully uses his sagacity in its control. Whereas most men, it appears, dislike the sight of their fortunes going out into service again, and say to themselves,--"I can indeed nowise prevent this money from falling at last into the hands of others, nor hinder the good of it, such as it is, from becoming theirs, not mine; but at least let a merciful death save me from being a witness of their satisfaction; and may G.o.d so far be gracious to me as to let no good come of any of this money of mine before my eyes." Supposing this feeling unconquerable, the safest way of rationally indulging it would be for the capitalist at once to spend all his fortune on himself, which might actually, in many cases, be quite the rightest as well as the pleasantest thing to do, if he had just tastes and worthy pa.s.sions. But, whether for himself only, or through the hands and for the sake of others also, the law of wise life is, that the maker of the money should also be the spender of it, and spend it, approximately, all, before he dies; so that his true ambition as an economist should be, to die, not as rich, but as poor, as possible, calculating the ebb tide of possession in true and calm proportion to the ebb tide of life. Which law, checking the wing of acc.u.mulative desire in the mid-volley,[120] and leading to peace of possession and fulness of fruition in old age, is also wholesome in that by the freedom of gift, together with present help and counsel, it at once endears and dignifies age in the sight of youth, which then no longer strips the bodies of the dead, but receives the grace of the living. Its chief use would (or will be, for men are indeed capable of attaining to this much use for their reason), that some temperance and measure will be put to the acquisitiveness of commerce.[121] For as things stand, a man holds it his duty to be temperate in his food, and of his body, but for no duty to be temperate in his riches, and of his mind. He sees that he ought not to waste his youth and his flesh for luxury; but he will waste his age, and his soul, for money, and think it no wrong, nor the delirium tremens of the intellect any evil. But the law of life is, that a man should fix the sum he desires to make annually, as the food he desires to eat daily; and stay when he has reached the limit, refusing increase of business, and leaving it to others, so obtaining due freedom of time for better thoughts. How the gluttony of business is punished, a bill of health for the princ.i.p.als of the richest city houses, issued annually, would show in a sufficiently impressive manner.

[120] [Greek: kai penian hegoumenous heinai me to ten ousian elatto poiein, alla to ten aplestian pleio.]--"Laws," v. 8.

Read the context and compare. "He who spends for all that is n.o.ble, and gains by nothing but what is just, will hardly be notably wealthy, or distressfully poor."--"Laws," v. 42.

[121] The fury of modern trade arises chiefly out of the possibility of making sudden fortune by largeness of transaction, and accident of discovery or contrivance.

I have no doubt that the final interest of every nation is to check the action of these commercial lotteries. But speculation absolute, unconnected with commercial effort, is an unmitigated evil in a state, and the root of countless evils beside.

I know, of course, that these statements will be received by the modern merchant, as an active Border rider of the sixteenth century would have heard of its being proper for men of the Marches to get their living by the spade instead of the spur. But my business is only to state veracities and necessities; I neither look for the acceptance of the one, nor promise anything for the nearness of the other. Near or distant, the day will a.s.suredly come when the merchants of a state shall be its true "ministers of exchange," its porters, in the double sense of carriers and gate-keepers, bringing all lands into frank and faithful communication, and knowing for their master of guild, Hermes the herald, instead of Mercury the gain-guarder.

And now, finally, for immediate rule to whom it concerns.

The distress of any population means that they need food, houseroom, clothes, and fuel. You can never, therefore, be wrong in employing any labourer to produce food, houseroom, clothes, or fuel: but you are always wrong if you employ him to produce nothing (for then some other labourer must be worked double time to feed him); and you are generally wrong, at present, if you employ him (unless he can do nothing else) to produce works of art, or luxuries; because modern art is mostly on a false basis, and modern luxury is criminally great.[122]

[122] It is especially necessary that the reader should keep his mind fixed on the methods of consumption and destruction, as the true sources of national poverty. Men are apt to watch rather the exchanges in a state than its damages; but the exchanges are only of importance so far as they bring about these last. A large number of the purchases made by the richer cla.s.ses are mere forms of interchange of unused property, wholly without effect on national prosperity. It matters nothing to the state, whether if a china pipkin be rated as worth a hundred pounds, A has the pipkin, and B the pounds, or A the pounds and B the pipkin. But if the pipkin is pretty, and A or B breaks it, there is national loss; not otherwise. So again, when the loss has really taken place, no shifting of the shoulders that bear it will do away with the fact of it. There is an intensely ludicrous notion in the public mind respecting the abolishment of debt by denying it. When a debt is denied, the lender loses instead of the borrower, that is all; the loss is precisely, accurately, everlastingly the same. The Americans borrow money to spend in blowing up their own houses. They deny their debt; by one third already, gold being at fifty premium; and will probably deny it wholly. That merely means that the holders of the notes are to be the losers instead of the issuers. The quant.i.ty of loss is precisely equal, and irrevocable; it is the quant.i.ty of human industry spent in explosion, plus the quant.i.ty of goods exploded. Honour only decides who shall pay the sum lost, not whether it is to be paid or not. Paid it must be and to the uttermost farthing.

The way to produce more food is mainly to bring in fresh ground, and increase facilities of carriage;--to break rock, exchange earth, drain the moist, and water the dry, to mend roads, and build harbours of refuge. Taxation thus spent will annihilate taxation, but spent in war, it annihilates revenue.

The way to produce houseroom is to apply your force first to the humbler dwellings. When your bricklayers are out of employ, do not build splendid new streets, but better the old ones: send your paviours and slaters to the poorest villages, and see that your poor are healthily lodged before you try your hand on stately architecture.

You will find its stateliness rise better under the trowel afterwards; and we do not yet build so well as that we need hasten to display our skill to future ages. Had the labour which has decorated the Houses of Parliament filled, instead, rents in walls and roofs throughout the county of Middles.e.x; and our deputies met to talk within ma.s.sive walls that would have needed no stucco for five hundred years,--the decoration might have been better afterwards, and the talk now. And touching even our highly conscientious church building, it may be well to remember that in the best days of church plans, their masons called themselves "logeurs du bon Dieu;" and that since, according to the most trusted reports, G.o.d spends a good deal of His time in cottages as well as in churches, He might perhaps like to be a little better lodged there also.

The way to get more clothes is,--not necessarily, to get more cotton.

There were words written twenty years ago which would have saved many of us some shivering had they been minded in time. Shall we read them?