Unto This Last and Other Essays on Political Economy Part 5

2. Property necessary to life, but only producible by labour, and of which the possession is morally connected with labour, so that no person capable of doing the work necessary for its production has a right to it until he has done that work:--"he that will not work, neither should he eat." It consists of simple food, clothing, and habitation, with their seeds and materials, or instruments and machinery, and animals used for necessary draught or locomotion, etc.

It is to be observed of this kind of property, that its increase cannot usually be carried beyond a certain point, because it depends not on labour only, but on things of which the supply is limited by nature. The possible acc.u.mulation of corn depends on the quant.i.ty of corn-growing land possessed or commercially accessible; and that of steel, similarly, on the accessible quant.i.ty of coal and ironstone. It follows from this natural limitation of supply that the acc.u.mulation of property of this kind in large ma.s.ses at one point, or in one person's hands, commonly involves, more or less, the scarcity of it at another point and in other persons' hands; so that the accidents or energies which may enable one man to procure a great deal of it, may, and in all likelihood will partially prevent other men procuring a sufficiency of it, however willing they may be to work for it; therefore, the modes of its acc.u.mulation and distribution need to be in some degree regulated by law and by national treaties, in order to secure justice to all men.

Another point requiring notice respecting this sort of property is, that no work can be wasted in producing it, provided only the kind of it produced be preservable and distributable, since for every grain of such commodities we produce we are rendering so much more life possible on earth.[23] But though we are sure, thus, that we are employing people well, we cannot be sure we might not have employed them _better_; for it is possible to direct labour to the production of life, until little or none is left for that of the objects of life, and thus to increase population at the expense of civilization, learning, and morality: on the other hand, it is just as possible--and the error is one to which the world is, on the whole, more liable--to direct labour to the objects of life till too little is left for life, and thus to increase luxury or learning at the expense of population.

Right political economy holds its aim poised justly between the two extremes, desiring neither to crowd its dominions with a race of savages, nor to found courts and colleges in the midst of a desert.

[23] This point has sometimes been disputed; for instance, opening Mill's "Political Economy" the other day, I chanced on a pa.s.sage in which he says that a man who makes a coat, if the person who wears the coat does nothing useful while he wears it, has done no more good to society than the man who has only raised a pineapple. But this is a fallacy induced by endeavour after too much subtlety. None of us have a right to say that the life of a man is of no use to _him_, though it may be of no use to _us_; and the man who made the coat, and thereby prolonged another man's life, has done a gracious and useful work, whatever may come of the life so prolonged. We may say to the wearer of the coat, "You who are wearing coats, and doing nothing in them, are at present wasting your own life and other people's;" but we have no right to say that his existence, however wasted, is wasted _away_. It may be just dragging itself on, in its thin golden line, with nothing dependent upon it, to the point where it is to strengthen into good chain cable, and have thousands of other lives dependent on it. Meantime, the simple fact respecting the coat-maker is, that he has given so much life to the creature, the results of which he cannot calculate; they may be--in all probability will be--infinite results in some way. But the raiser of pines, who has only given a pleasant taste in the mouth to some one, may see with tolerable clearness to the end of the taste in the mouth, and of all conceivable results therefrom.

3. The third kind of property is that which conduces to bodily pleasures and conveniences, without directly tending to sustain life; perhaps sometimes indirectly tending to destroy it. All dainty (as distinguished from nourishing) food, and means of producing it; all scents not needed for health; substances valued only for their appearance and rarity (as gold and jewels); flowers of difficult culture; animals used for delight (as horses for racing), and such like, form property of this cla.s.s; to which the term "luxury, or luxuries," ought exclusively to belong.

Respecting which we have to note first, that all such property is of doubtful advantage even to its possessor. Furniture tempting to indolence, sweet odours, and luscious food, are more or less injurious to health: while jewels, liveries, and other such common belongings of wealthy people, certainly convey no pleasure to their owners proportionate to their cost.

Farther, such property, for the most part, perishes in the using.

Jewels form a great exception--but rich food, fine dresses, horses and carriages, are consumed by the owner's use. It ought much oftener to be brought to the notice of rich men what sums of interest of money they are paying towards the close of their lives, for luxuries consumed in the middle of them. It would be very interesting, for instance, to know the exact sum which the money spent in London for ices, at its desserts and b.a.l.l.s, during the last twenty years, had it been saved and put out at compound interest, would at this moment have furnished for useful purposes.

Also, in most cases, the enjoyment of such property is wholly selfish, and limited to its possessor. Splendid dress and equipage, however, when so arranged as to produce real beauty of effect, may often be rather a generous than a selfish channel of expenditure. They will, however, necessarily in such case involve some of the arts of design; and therefore take their place in a higher category than that of luxuries merely.

4. The fourth kind of property is that which bestows intellectual or emotional pleasure, consisting of land set apart for purposes of delight more than for agriculture, of books, works of art, and objects of natural history.

It is, of course, impossible to fix an accurate limit between property of the last cla.s.s and of this cla.s.s, since things which are a mere luxury to one person are a means of intellectual occupation to another. Flowers in a London ball-room are a luxury; in a botanical garden, a delight of the intellect; and in their native fields, both; while the most n.o.ble works of art are continually made material of vulgar luxury or of criminal pride; but, when rightly used, property of this fourth cla.s.s is the only kind which deserves the name of _real_ property; it is the only kind which a man can truly be said to "possess." What a man eats, or drinks, or wears, so long as it is only what is needful for life, can no more be thought of as his possession than the air he breathes. The air is as needful to him as the food; but we do not talk of a man's wealth of air; and what food or clothing a man possesses more than he himself requires, must be for others to use (and, to him, therefore, not a real property in itself, but only a means of obtaining some real property in exchange for it). Whereas the things that give intellectual or emotional enjoyment may be acc.u.mulated and do not perish in using; but continually supply new pleasures and new powers of giving pleasures to others. And these, therefore, are the only things which can rightly be thought of as giving "wealth" or "well being." Food conduces only to "being," but these to "_well_ being." And there is not any broader general distinction between lower and higher orders of men than rests on their possession of this real property. The human race may be properly divided by zoologists into "men who have gardens, libraries, or works of art; and who have none;" and the former cla.s.s will include all n.o.ble persons, except only a few who make the world their garden or museum; while the people who have not, or, which is the same thing, do not care for gardens or libraries, but care for nothing but money or luxuries, will include none but ign.o.ble persons: only it is necessary to understand that I mean by the term "garden" as much the Carthusian's plot of ground fifteen feet square between his monastery b.u.t.tresses, as I do the grounds of Chatsworth or Kew; and I mean by the term "art" as much the old sailor's print of the Arethusa bearing up to engage the Belle Poule, as I do Raphael's "Disputa," and even rather more; for when abundant, beautiful possessions of this kind are almost always a.s.sociated with vulgar luxury, and become then anything but indicative of n.o.ble character in their possessors. The ideal of human life is a union of Spartan simplicity of manners with Athenian sensibility and imagination, but in actual results, we are continually mistaking ignorance for simplicity, and sensuality for refinement.

5. The fifth kind of property is representative property, consisting of doc.u.ments or money, or rather doc.u.ments only, for money itself is only a transferable doc.u.ment, current among societies of men, giving claim, at sight, to some definite benefit or advantage, most commonly to a certain share of real property existing in those societies. The money is only genuine when the property it gives claim to is real, or the advantages it gives claim to certain; otherwise, it is false money, and may be considered as much "forged" when issued by a government, or a bank, as when by an individual. Thus, if a dozen of men, cast ash.o.r.e on a desert island, pick up a number of stones, put a red spot on each stone, and pa.s.s a law that every stone marked with a red spot shall give claim to a peck of wheat;--so long as no wheat exists, or can exist, on the island, the stones are not money. But the moment as much wheat exists as shall render it possible for the society always to give a peck for every spotted stone, the spotted stones would become money, and might be exchanged by their possessors for whatever other commodities they chose, to the value of the peck of wheat which the stones represented. If more stones were issued than the quant.i.ty of wheat could answer the demand of, the value of the stone coinage would be depreciated, in proportion to its increase above the quant.i.ty needed to answer it.

Again, supposing a certain number of the men so cast ash.o.r.e were set aside by lot, or any other convention, to do the rougher labour necessary for the whole society, they themselves being maintained by the daily allotment of a certain quant.i.ty of food, clothing, etc.

Then, if it were agreed that the stones spotted with red should be signs of a Government order for the labour of these men; and that any person presenting a spotted stone at the office of the labourers, should be ent.i.tled to a man's work for a week or a day, the red stones would be money; and might--probably would--immediately pa.s.s current in the island for as much food, or clothing, or iron, or any other article as a man's work for the period secured by the stone was worth.

But if the Government issued so many spotted stones that it was impossible for the body of men they employed to comply with the orders; as, suppose, if they only employed twelve men, and issued eighteen spotted stones daily, ordering a day's work each, then the six extra stones would be forged or false money; and the effect of this forgery would be the depreciation of the value of the whole coinage by one-third, that being the period of shortcoming which would, on the average, necessarily ensue in the execution of each order. Much occasional work may be done in a state or society, by help of an issue of false money (or false promises) by way of stimulants; and the fruit of this work, if it comes into the promiser's hands, may sometimes enable the false promises at last to be fulfilled: hence the frequent issue of false money by governments and banks, and the not unfrequent escapes from the natural and proper consequences of such false issues, so as to cause a confused conception in most people's minds of what money really is. I am not sure whether some quant.i.ty of such false issue may not really be permissible in a nation, accurately proportioned to the minimum average produce of the labour it excites; but all such procedures are more or less unsound; and the notion of unlimited issue of currency is simply one of the absurdest and most monstrous that ever came into disjointed human wits.

The use of objects of real or supposed value for currency, as gold, jewellery, etc., is barbarous; and it always expresses either the measure of the distrust in the society of its own government, or the proportion of distrustful or barbarous nations with whom it has to deal. A metal not easily corroded or imitated, is a desirable medium of currency for the sake of cleanliness and convenience, but were it possible to prevent forgery, the more worthless the metal itself, the better. The use of worthless media, unrestrained by the use of valuable media, has always. .h.i.therto involved, and is therefore supposed to involve necessarily, unlimited, or at least improperly extended, issue; but we might as well suppose that a man must necessarily issue unlimited promises because his words cost nothing.

Intercourse with foreign nations must, indeed, for ages yet to come, at the world's present rate of progress, be carried on by valuable currencies; but such transactions are nothing more than forms of barter. The gold used at present as a currency is not, in point of fact, currency at all, but the real property[24] which the currency gives claim to, stamped to measure its quant.i.ty, and mingling with the real currency occasionally by barter.

[24] Or rather, equivalent, to such real property, because everybody has been accustomed to look upon it as valuable: and therefore everybody is willing to give labour or goods for it. But real property does ultimately consist only in things that nourish body or mind; gold would be useless to us if we could not get mutton or books for it. Ultimately all commercial mistakes and embarra.s.sments result from people expecting to get goods without working for them, or wasting them after they have got them. A nation which labours, and takes care of the fruits of labour, would be rich and happy; though there were no gold in the universe. A nation which is idle, and wastes the produce of what work it does, would be poor and miserable, though all its mountains were of gold, and had glens filled with diamonds instead of glacier.

The evils necessarily resulting from the use of baseless currencies have been terribly ill.u.s.trated while these sheets have been pa.s.sing through the press; I have not had time to examine the various conditions of dishonest or absurd trading which have led to the late "panic" in America and England; this only I know, that no merchant deserving the name ought to be more liable to "panic" than a soldier should; for his name should never be on more paper than he can at any instant meet the call of, happen what will. I do not say this without feeling at the same time how difficult it is to mark, in existing commerce, the just limits between the spirit of enterprise and of speculation. Something of the same temper which makes the English soldier do always all that is possible, and attempt more than is possible, joins its influence with that of mere avarice in tempting the English merchant into risks which he cannot justify, and efforts which he cannot sustain; and the same pa.s.sion for adventure which our travellers gratify every summer on perilous snow wreaths, and cloud-encompa.s.sed precipices, surrounds with a romantic fascination the glittering of a hollow investment, and gilds the clouds that curl round gulfs of ruin. Nay, a higher and a more serious feeling frequently mingles in the motley temptation; and men apply themselves to the task of growing rich, as to a labour of providential appointment, from which they cannot pause without culpability, nor retire without dishonour. Our large trading cities bear to me very nearly the aspect of monastic establishments in which the roar of the mill-wheel and the crane takes the place of other devotional music; and in which the worship of Mammon or Moloch is conducted with a tender reverence and an exact propriety; the merchant rising to his Mammon matins with the self-denial of an anchorite, and expiating the frivolities into which he may be beguiled, in the course of the day by late attendance at Mammon vespers. But, with every allowance that can be made for these conscientious and romantic persons, the fact remains the same, that by far the greater number of the transactions which lead to these times of commercial embarra.s.sment may be ranged simply under two great heads,--gambling and stealing; and both of these in their most culpable form, namely, gambling with money which is not ours, and stealing from those who trust us. I have sometimes thought a day might come, when the nation would perceive that a well-educated man who steals a hundred thousand pounds, involving the entire means of subsistence of a hundred families, deserves, on the whole, as severe a punishment as an ill-educated man who steals a purse from a pocket, or a mug from a pantry. But without hoping for this excess of clearsightedness, we may at least labour for a system of greater honesty and kindness in the minor commerce of our daily life; since the great dishonesty of the great buyers and sellers is nothing more than the natural growth and outcome from the little dishonesty of the little buyers and sellers. Every person who tries to buy an article for less than its proper value, or who tries to sell it at more than its proper value--every consumer who keeps a tradesman waiting for his money, and every tradesman who bribes a consumer to extravagance by credit, is helping forward, according to his own measure of power, a system of baseless and dishonourable commerce, and forcing his country down into poverty and shame. And people of moderate means and average powers of mind would do far more real good by merely carrying out stern principles of justice and honesty in common matters of trade, than by the most ingenious schemes of extended philanthropy, or vociferous declarations of theological doctrine. There are three weighty matters of the law--justice, mercy, and truth; and of these the Teacher puts truth last, because that cannot be known but by a course of acts of justice and love. But men put, in all their efforts, truth first, because they mean by it their own opinions; and thus, while the world has many people who would suffer martyrdom in the cause of what they call truth, it has few who will suffer even a little inconvenience, in that of justice and mercy.

UNTO THIS LAST:

FOUR ESSAYS ON THE FIRST PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL ECONOMY.

"FRIEND, I DO THEE NO WRONG. DID'ST NOT THOU AGREE WITH ME FOR A PENNY? TAKE THAT THINE IS, AND GO THY WAY. I WILL GIVE UNTO THIS LAST EVEN AS UNTO THEE."

"IF YE THINK GOOD, GIVE ME MY PRICE; AND IF NOT, FORBEAR. SO THEY WEIGHED FOR MY PRICE THIRTY PIECES OF SILVER."

PREFACE.

The four following essays were published eighteen months ago in the _Cornhill Magazine_, and were reprobated in a violent manner, as far as I could hear, by most of the readers they met with.

Not a whit the less, I believe them to be the best, that is to say, the truest, rightest-worded, and most serviceable things I have ever written; and the last of them, having had especial pains spent on it, is probably the best I shall ever write.

"This," the reader may reply, "it might be, yet not therefore well written." Which, in no mock humility, admitting, I yet rest satisfied with the work, though with nothing else that I have done; and purposing shortly to follow out the subjects opened in these papers, as I may find leisure, I wish the introductory statements to be within the reach of any one who may care to refer to them. So I republish the essays as they appeared. One word only is changed, correcting the estimate of a weight; and no word is added.

Although, however, I find nothing to modify in these papers, it is a matter of regret to me that the most startling of all the statements in them--that respecting the necessity of the organization of labour, with fixed wages,--should have found its way into the first essay; it being quite one of the least important, though by no means the least certain, of the positions to be defended. The real gist of these papers, their central meaning and aim, is to give, as I believe for the first time in plain English--it has often been incidentally given in good Greek by Plato and Xenophon, and good Latin by Cicero and Horace,--a logical definition of WEALTH: such definition being absolutely needed for a basis of economical science. The most reputed essay on that subject which has appeared in modern times, after opening with the statement that "writers on political economy profess to teach, or to investigate,[25] the nature of wealth," thus follows up the declaration of its thesis--"Every one has a notion, sufficiently correct for common purposes, of what is meant by wealth." ... "It is no part of the design of this treatise to aim at metaphysical nicety of definition."[26]

[25] Which? for where investigation is necessary, teaching is impossible.

[26] "Principles of Political Economy." By J. S. Mill.

Preliminary remarks, p. 2.

Metaphysical nicety, we a.s.suredly do not need; but physical nicety, and logical accuracy, with respect to a physical subject, we as a.s.suredly do.

Suppose the subject of inquiry, instead of being House-law (_Oikonomia_), had been Star-law (_Astronomia_), and that, ignoring distinction between stars fixed and wandering, as here between wealth radiant and wealth reflective, the writer had begun thus: "Every one has a notion, sufficiently correct for common purposes, of what is meant by stars. Metaphysical nicety in the definition of a star is not the object of this treatise;"--the essay so opened might yet have been far more true in its final statements, and a thousand-fold more serviceable to the navigator, than any treatise on wealth, which founds its conclusions on the popular conception of wealth, can ever become to the economist.

It was, therefore, the first object of these following papers to give an accurate and stable definition of wealth. Their second object was to show that the acquisition of wealth was finally possible only under certain moral conditions of society, of which quite the first was a belief in the existence and even, for practical purposes, in the attainability of honesty.

Without venturing to p.r.o.nounce--since on such a matter human judgment is by no means conclusive--what is, or is not, the n.o.blest of G.o.d's works, we may yet admit so much of Pope's a.s.sertion as that an honest man is among His best works presently visible, and, as things stand, a somewhat rare one; but not an incredible or miraculous work; still less an abnormal one. Honesty is not a disturbing force, which deranges the orbits of economy; but a consistent and commanding force, by obedience to which--and by no other obedience--those orbits can continue clear of chaos.

It is true, I have sometimes heard Pope condemned for the lowness, instead of the height, of his standard:--"Honesty is indeed a respectable virtue; but how much higher may men attain! Shall nothing more be asked of us than that we be honest?"

For the present, good friends, nothing. It seems that in our aspirations to be more than that, we have to some extent lost sight of the propriety of being so much as that. What else we may have lost faith in, there shall be here no question; but a.s.suredly we have lost faith in common honesty, and in the working power of it. And this faith, with the facts on which it may rest, it is quite our first business to recover and keep: not only believing, but even by experience a.s.suring ourselves, that there are yet in the world men who can be restrained from fraud otherwise than by the fear of losing employment;[27] nay that it is even accurately in proportion to the number of such men in any State, that the said State does or can prolong its existence.

[27] "The effectual discipline which is exercised over a workman is not that of his corporation, but of his customers. It is the fear of losing their employment which restrains his frauds, and corrects his negligence" (_Wealth of Nations_, Book I. chap. 10).

To these two points, then, the following essays are mainly directed.

The subject of the organization of labour is only casually touched upon; because, if we once can get a sufficient quant.i.ty of honesty in our captains, the organization of labour is easy, and will develop itself without quarrel or difficulty; but if we cannot get honesty in our captains, the organization of labour is for evermore impossible.

The several conditions of its possibility I purpose to examine at length in the sequel. Yet, lest the reader should be alarmed by the hints thrown out during the following investigation of first principles, as if they were leading him into unexpectedly dangerous ground, I will, for his better a.s.surance, state at once the worst of the political creed at which I wish him to arrive.

1. First,--that there should be training schools for youth established, at Government cost,[28] and under Government discipline, over the whole country; that every child born in the country should, at the parent's wish, be permitted (and, in certain cases, be under penalty required) to pa.s.s through them; and that, in these schools, the child should (with other minor pieces of knowledge hereafter to be considered) imperatively be taught, with the best skill of teaching that the country could produce, the following three things:--

(_a_) the laws of health, and the exercises enjoined by them; (_b_) habits of gentleness and justice; and (_c_) the calling by which he is to live.

[28] It will probably be inquired by near-sighted persons, out of what funds such schools could be supported. The expedient modes of direct provision for them I will examine hereafter; indirectly, they would be far more than self-supporting. The economy in crime alone (quite one of the most costly articles of luxury in the modern European market), which such schools would induce, would suffice to support them ten times over. Their economy of labour would be pure gain, and that too large to be presently calculable.

2. Secondly,--that, in connection with these training schools, there should be established, also entirely under Government regulation, manufactories and workshops, for the production and sale of every necessary of life, and for the exercise of every useful art. And that, interfering no whit with private enterprise, nor setting any restraints or tax on private trade, but leaving both to do their best, and beat the Government if they could,--there should, at these Government manufactories and shops, be authoritatively good and exemplary work done, and pure and true substance sold; so that a man could be sure, if he chose to pay the Government price, that he got for his money bread that was bread, ale that was ale, and work that was work.

3. Thirdly,--that any man, or woman, or boy, or girl, out of employment, should be at once received at the nearest Government school, and set to such work as it appeared, on trial, they were fit for, at a fixed rate of wages determinable every year:--that, being found incapable of work through ignorance, they should be taught, or being found incapable of work through sickness, should be tended; but that being found objecting to work, they should be set, under compulsion of the strictest nature, to the more painful and degrading forms of necessary toil, especially to that in mines and other places of danger (such danger being, however, diminished to the utmost by careful regulation and discipline) and the due wages of such work be retained--cost of compulsion first abstracted--to be at the workman's command, so soon as he has come to sounder mind respecting the laws of employment.

4. Lastly,--that for the old and dest.i.tute, comfort and home should be provided; which provision, when misfortune had been by the working of such a system sifted from guilt, would be honourable instead of disgraceful to the receiver. For (I repeat this pa.s.sage out of my _Political Economy of Art_, to which the reader is referred for farther detail[29]) "a labourer serves his country with his spade, just as a man in the middle ranks of life serves it with sword, pen, or lancet: if the service is less, and, therefore the wages during health less, then the reward, when health is broken, may be less, but not, therefore, less honourable; and it ought to be quite as natural and straightforward a matter for a labourer to take his pension from his parish, because he has deserved well of his parish, as for a man in higher rank to take his pension from his country, because he has deserved well of his country."

[29] "The Political Economy of Art:" Addenda, p. 93.