{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_31196/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_31196","id":"gutenberg_31196","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/31196","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Sociology","Social sciences","Working class -- Great Britain"],"text":"Produced by Juliet Sutherland and the Online Distributed\nProofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n                       [Illustration: CONISTON\n                          FROM A PHOTOGRAPH]\n\n\n                           Library Edition\n\n                          THE COMPLETE WORKS\n                                  OF\n                             JOHN RUSKIN\n\n\n                         CROWN OF WILD OLIVE\n                            TIME AND TIDE\n                           QUEEN OF THE AIR\n                    LECTURES ON ART AND LANDSCAPE\n                           ARATRA PENTELICI\n\n\n                     NATIONAL LIBRARY ASSOCIATION\n                     NEW YORK             CHICAGO\n\n\n\n\n                            TIME AND TIDE\n\n                                  BY\n\n                            WEARE AND TYNE\n\n\n                         TWENTY-FIVE LETTERS\n                                  TO\n                     A WORKING MAN OF SUNDERLAND\n                                  ON\n                          THE LAWS OF WORK.\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS.\n\n\n                                                                PAGE\n      PREFACE                                                    ix\n\n  LETTER\n      I. CO-OPERATION                                              1\n          The two kinds of Co-operation.--In its highest\n          sense it is not yet thought of.\n\n     II. CONTENTMENT                                               4\n          Co-operation, as hitherto understood, is perhaps\n          not expedient.\n\n    III. LEGISLATION                                               7\n          Of True Legislation.--That every Man may be a Law\n          to himself.\n\n     IV. EXPENDITURE                                              11\n          The Expenses for Art and for War.\n\n      V. ENTERTAINMENT                                            13\n          The Corruption of Modern Pleasure.--(Covent Garden\n          Pantomime.)\n\n     VI. DEXTERITY                                                18\n          The Corruption of Modern Pleasure.--(The Japanese\n          Jugglers.)\n\n    VII. FESTIVITY                                                20\n          Of the Various Expressions of National Festivity.\n\n   VIII. THINGS WRITTEN                                           22\n          The Four Possible Theories respecting the\n          Authority of the Bible.\n\n     IX. THANKSGIVING                                             27\n          The Use of Music and Dancing under the Jewish\n          Theocracy, compared with their Use by the Modern\n          French.\n\n      X. WHEAT-SIFTING                                            32\n          The Meaning, and Actual Operation, of Satanic or\n          Demoniacal Influence.\n\n     XI. THE GOLDEN BOUGH                                         38\n          The Satanic Power is mainly Twofold: the Power of\n          causing Falsehood and the Power of causing Pain.\n          The Resistance is by Law of Honor and Law of\n          Delight.\n\n    XII. DICTATORSHIP                                             41\n          The Necessity of Imperative Law to the Prosperity\n          of States.\n\n   XIII. EPISCOPACY AND DUKEDOM                                   45\n          The Proper Offices of the Bishop and Duke; or,\n          \"Overseer\" and \"Leader.\"\n\n    XIV. TRADE-WARRANT                                            51\n          The First Group of Essential Laws.--Against Theft\n          by False Work, and by Bankruptcy.--Necessary\n          Publicity of Accounts.\n\n     XV. PER-CENTAGE                                              54\n          The Nature of Theft by Unjust Profits.--Crime can\n          finally be arrested only by Education.\n\n    XVI. EDUCATION                                                59\n          Of Public Education irrespective of Class\n          distinction. It consists essentially in giving\n          Habits of Mercy, and Habits of Truth. (_Gentleness\n          and Justice._)\n\n   XVII. DIFFICULTIES                                             66\n          The Relations of Education to Position in Life.\n\n  XVIII. HUMILITY                                                 68\n          The harmful Effects of Servile Employments. The\n          possible Practice and Exhibition of sincere\n          Humility by Religious Persons.\n\n    XIX. BROKEN REEDS                                             73\n          The General Pressure of Excessive and Improper\n          Work, in English Life.\n\n     XX. ROSE-GARDENS                                             78\n          Of Improvidence in Marriage in the Middle Classes;\n          and of the advisable Restrictions of it.\n\n    XXI. GENTILLESSE                                              83\n          Of the Dignity of the Four Fine Arts; and of the\n          Proper System of Retail Trade.\n\n   XXII. THE MASTER                                               88\n          Of the Normal Position and Duties of the Upper\n          Classes. General Statement of the Land Question.\n\n  XXIII. LANDMARKS                                                93\n          Of the Just Tenure of Lands; and the Proper\n          Functions of high Public Officers.\n\n   XXIV. THE ROD AND HONEYCOMB                                   101\n          The Office of the Soldier.\n\n    XXV. HYSSOP                                                  108\n          Of inevitable Distinction of Rank, and necessary\n          Submission to Authority. The Meaning of\n          Pure-Heartedness. Conclusion.\n\n\n\n\nAPPENDICES.\n\n\n  APPENDIX                                                      PAGE\n    I. Expenditure on Science and Art                            119\n   II. Legislation of Frederick the Great                        120\n  III. Effect of Modern Entertainments on the Mind of Youth      124\n   IV. Drunkenness as the Cause of Crime                         124\n    V. Abuse of Food                                             126\n   VI. Regulations of Trade                                      128\n  VII. Letter to the Editor of the _Pall Mall Gazette_           130\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE.\n\n\nThe following Letters were written to Mr. Thomas Dixon, a working\ncork-cutter of Sunderland, during the agitation for Reform in the\nspring of the present year. They contain, in the plainest terms I\ncould use, the substance of what I then desired to say to our English\nworkmen, which was briefly this:--\"The reform you desire may give you\nmore influence in Parliament; but your influence there will of course\nbe useless to you,--perhaps worse than useless, until you have wisely\nmade up your minds what you wish Parliament to do for you; and when\nyou _have_ made up your minds about that, you will find, not only that\nyou can do it for yourselves, without the intervention of Parliament;\nbut that eventually nobody _but_ yourselves can do it. And to help\nyou, as far as one of your old friends may, in so making up your\nminds, such and such things are what it seems to me you should ask\nfor, and, moreover, strive for with your heart and might.\"\n\nThe letters now published relate only to one division of the laws\nwhich I desired to recommend to the consideration of our\noperatives,--those, namely, bearing upon honesty of work, and honesty\nof exchange. I hope in the course of next year that I may be able to\ncomplete the second part of the series, [I could not; but 'Fors\nClavigera' is now (1872) answering the same end:] which will relate to\nthe possible comforts and wholesome laws, of familiar household life,\nand the share which a laboring nation may attain in the skill, and the\ntreasures, of the higher arts.\n\nThe letters are republished as they were written, with, here and\nthere, correction of a phrase, and omission of one or two passages of\nmerely personal or temporary interest; the headings only are added, in\norder to give the reader some clue to the general aim of necessarily\ndesultory discussion; and the portions of Mr. Dixon's letters in\nreply, referred to in the text, are added in the Appendix, and will be\nfound well deserving of attention.\n\n  DENMARK HILL,\n      _December 14, 1867._\n\n\n\n\nTIME AND TIDE,\n\nBY\n\nWEARE AND TYNE.\n\n\n\n\nLETTER I.\n\nTHE TWO KINDS OF CO-OPERATION.--IN ITS HIGHEST SENSE IT IS NOT YET\nTHOUGHT OF.\n\n\n                                   DENMARK HILL, _February 4, 1867._\n\nMY DEAR FRIEND,\n\n1. You have now everything I have yet published on political economy;\nbut there are several points in these books of mine which I intended\nto add notes to, and it seems little likely I shall get that soon\ndone. So I think the best way of making up for the want of these is to\nwrite you a few simple letters, which you can read to other people, or\nsend to be printed, if you like, in any of your journals where you\nthink they may be useful.\n\nI especially want you, for one thing, to understand the sense in which\nthe word \"co-operation\" is used in my books. You will find I am always\npleading for it; and yet I don't at all mean the co-operation of\npartnership (as opposed to the system of wages) which is now so\ngradually extending itself among our great firms. I am glad to see it\ndoing so, yet not altogether glad: for none of you who are engaged in\nthe immediate struggle between the system of co-operation and the\nsystem of mastership know how much the dispute involves; and none of\nus know the results to which it may finally lead. For the alternative\nis not, in reality, only between two modes of conducting business--it\nis between two different states of society. It is not the question\nwhether an amount of wages, no greater in the end than that at present\nreceived by the men, may be paid to them in a way which shall give\nthem share in the risks and interest in the prosperity of the\nbusiness. The question is, really, whether the profits which are at\npresent taken, as his own right, by the person whose capital, or\nenergy, or ingenuity, has made him head of the firm, are not in some\nproportion to be divided among the subordinates of it.\n\n2. I do not wish, for the moment, to enter into any inquiry as to the\njust claims of capital, or as to the proportions in which profits\nought to be, or are in actually existing firms, divided. I merely take\nthe one assured and essential condition, that a somewhat larger income\nwill be in co-operative firms secured to the subordinates, by the\ndiminution of the income of the chief. And the general tendency of\nsuch a system is to increase the facilities of advancement among the\nsubordinates; to stimulate their ambition; to enable them to lay by,\nif they are provident, more ample and more early provision for\ndeclining years; and to form in the end a vast class of persons wholly\ndifferent from the existing operative:--members of society, possessing\neach a moderate competence; able to procure, therefore, not indeed\nmany of the luxuries, but all the comforts of life; and to devote some\nleisure to the attainments of liberal education, and to the other\nobjects of free life. On the other hand, by the exact sum which is\ndivided among them, more than their present wages, the fortune of the\nman who, under the present system, takes all the profits of the\nbusiness, will be diminished; and the acquirement of large private\nfortune by regular means, and all the conditions of life belonging to\nsuch fortune, will be rendered impossible in the mercantile community.\n\n3. Now, the magnitude of the social change hereby involved, and the\nconsequent differences in the moral relations between individuals,\nhave not as yet been thought of,--much less estimated,--by any of your\nwriters on commercial subjects; and it is because I do not yet feel\nable to grapple with them that I have left untouched, in the books I\nsend you, the question of co-operative labor. When I use the word\n\"co-operation,\" it is not meant to refer to these new constitutions of\nfirms at all. I use the word in a far wider sense, as opposed, not to\nmasterhood, but to _competition_. I do not mean, for instance, by\nco-operation, that all the master bakers in a town are to give a share\nof their profits to the men who go out with the bread; but that the\nmasters are not to try to undersell each other, nor seek each to get\nthe other's business, but are all to form one society, selling to the\npublic under a common law of severe penalty for unjust dealing, and at\nan established price. I do not mean that all bankers' clerks should be\npartners in the bank; but I do mean that all bankers should be members\nof a great national body, answerable as a society for all deposits;\nand that the private business of speculating with other people's money\nshould take another name than that of \"banking.\" And, for final\ninstance, I mean by \"co-operation\" not only fellowships between\ntrading _firms_, but between trading _nations_; so that it shall no\nmore be thought (as it is now, with ludicrous and vain selfishness) an\nadvantage for one nation to undersell another; and take its occupation\naway from it; but that the primal and eternal law of vital commerce\nshall be of all men understood--namely, that every nation is fitted by\nits character, and the nature of its territories, for some particular\nemployments or manufactures; and that it is the true interest of every\nother nation to encourage it in such speciality, and by no means to\ninterfere with, but in all ways forward and protect, its efforts,\nceasing all rivalship with it, so soon as it is strong enough to\noccupy its proper place. You see, therefore, that the idea of\nco-operation, in the sense in which I employ it, has hardly yet\nentered into the minds of political inquirers; and I will not pursue\nit at present; but return to that system which is beginning to obtain\ncredence and practice among us. This, however, must be in a following\nletter.\n\n\n\n\nLETTER II.\n\nCO-OPERATION, AS HITHERTO UNDERSTOOD, IS PERHAPS NOT EXPEDIENT.\n\n\n                                                 _February 4, 1867._\n\n4. Limiting the inquiry, then, for the present, as proposed in the\nclose of my last letter, to the form of co-operation which is now upon\nits trial in practice, I would beg of you to observe that the points\nat issue, in the comparison of this system with that of mastership,\nare by no means hitherto frankly stated; still less can they as yet be\nfairly brought to test. For all mastership is not alike in principle;\nthere are just and unjust masterships; and while, on the one hand,\nthere can be no question but that co-operation is better than unjust\nand tyrannous mastership, there is very great room for doubt whether\nit be better than a just and benignant mastership.\n\n5. At present you--every one of you--speak, and act, as if there were\nonly one alternative; namely, between a system in which profits shall\nbe divided in due proportion among all; and the present one, in which\nthe workman is paid the least wages he will take, under the pressure\nof competition in the labor-market. But an intermediate method is\nconceivable; a method which appears to me more prudent, and in its\nultimate results more just, than the co-operative one. An arrangement\nmay be supposed, and I have good hope also may one day be effected, by\nwhich every subordinate shall be paid sufficient and regular wages,\naccording to his rank; by which due provision shall be made out of the\nprofits of the business for sick and superannuated workers; and by\nwhich the master, _being held responsible, as a minor king or\ngovernor, for the conduct as well as the comfort of all those under\nhis rule_, shall, on that condition, be permitted to retain to his own\nuse the surplus profits of the business which the fact of his being\nits master may be assumed to prove that he has organized by superior\nintellect and energy. And I think this principle of regular\nwage-paying, whether it be in the abstract more just, or not, is at\nall events the more prudent; for this reason mainly, that in spite of\nall the cant which is continually talked by cruel, foolish, or\ndesigning persons about \"the duty of remaining content in the position\nin which Providence has placed you,\" there is a root of the very\ndeepest and holiest truth in the saying, which gives to it such power\nas it still retains, even uttered by unkind and unwise lips, and\nreceived into doubtful and embittered hearts.\n\n6. If, indeed, no effort be made to discover, in the course of their\nearly training, for what services the youths of a nation are\nindividually qualified; nor any care taken to place those who have\nunquestionably proved their fitness for certain functions, in the\noffices they could best fulfil,--then, to call the confused wreck of\nsocial order and life brought about by malicious collision and\ncompetition, an arrangement of Providence, is quite one of the most\ninsolent and wicked ways in which it is possible to take the name of\nGod in vain. But if, at the proper time, some earnest effort be made\nto place youths, according to their capacities, in the occupations for\nwhich they are fitted, I think the system of organization will be\nfinally found the best, which gives the least encouragement to\nthoughts of any great future advance in social life.\n\n7. The healthy sense of progress, which is necessary to the strength\nand happiness of men, does not consist in the anxiety of a struggle to\nattain higher place, or rank, but in gradually perfecting the manner,\nand accomplishing the ends, of the life which we have chosen, or which\ncircumstances have determined for us. Thus, I think the object of a\nworkman's ambition should not be to become a master; but to attain\ndaily more subtle and exemplary skill in his own craft, to save from\nhis wages enough to enrich and complete his home gradually with more\ndelicate and substantial comforts; and to lay by such store as shall\nbe sufficient for the happy maintenance of his old age (rendering him\nindependent of the help provided for the sick and indigent by the\narrangement pre-supposed), and sufficient also for the starting of his\nchildren in a rank of life equal to his own. If his wages are not\nenough to enable him to do this, they are unjustly low; if they are\nonce raised to this adequate standard, I do not think that by the\npossible increase of his gains under contingencies of trade, or by\ndivisions of profits with his master, he should be enticed into\nfeverish hope of an entire change of condition; and as an almost\nnecessary consequence, pass his days in an anxious discontent with\nimmediate circumstances, and a comfortless scorn of his daily life,\nfor which no subsequent success could indemnify him. And I am the more\nconfident in this belief, because, even supposing a gradual rise in\nsocial rank possible for all well-conducted persons, my experience\ndoes not lead me to think the elevation itself, when attained, would\nbe conducive to their happiness.\n\n8. The grounds of this opinion I will give you in a future letter; in\nthe present one, I must pass to a more important point--namely, that\nif this stability of condition be indeed desirable for those in whom\nexisting circumstances might seem to justify discontent, much more\nmust it be good and desirable for those who already possess everything\nwhich can be conceived necessary to happiness. It is the merest\ninsolence of selfishness to preach contentment to a laborer who gets\nthirty shillings a week, while we suppose an active and plotting\ncovetousness to be meritorious in a man who has three thousand a year.\nIn this, as in all other points of mental discipline, it is the duty\nof the upper classes to set an example to the lower; and to recommend\nand justify the restraint of the ambition of their inferiors, chiefly\nby severe and timely limitation of their own. And, without at present\ninquiring into the greater or less convenience of the possible methods\nof accomplishing such an object, (every detail in suggestions of this\nkind necessarily furnishing separate matter of dispute,) I will merely\nstate my long-fixed conviction, that one of the most important\nconditions of a healthful system of social economy, would be the\nrestraint of the properties and incomes of the upper classes within\ncertain fixed limits. The temptation to use every energy in the\naccumulation of wealth being thus removed, another, and a higher ideal\nof the duties of advanced life would be necessarily created in the\nnational mind; by withdrawal of those who had attained the prescribed\nlimits of wealth from commercial competition, earlier worldly success,\nand earlier marriage, with all its beneficent moral results, would\nbecome possible to the young; while the older men of active intellect,\nwhose sagacity is now lost or warped in the furtherance of their own\nmeanest interests, would be induced unselfishly to occupy themselves\nin the superintendence of public institutions, or furtherance of\npublic advantage. And out of this class it would be found natural and\nprudent always to choose the members of the legislative body of the\nCommons; and to attach to the order also some peculiar honors, in the\npossession of which such complacency would be felt as would more than\nreplace the unworthy satisfaction of being supposed richer than\nothers, which to many men is the principal charm of their wealth. And\nalthough no law of this purport would ever be imposed on themselves by\nthe actual upper classes, there is no hindrance to its being gradually\nbrought into force from beneath, without any violent or impatient\nproceedings; and this I will endeavor to show you in my next letter.\n\n\n\n\nLETTER III.\n\nOF TRUE LEGISLATION. THAT EVERY MAN MAY BE A LAW TO HIMSELF.\n\n\n                                                _February 17, 1867._\n\n9. No, I have not been much worse in health; but I was asked by a\nfriend to look over some work in which you will all be deeply\ninterested one day, so that I could not write again till now. I was\nthe more sorry, because there were several things I wished to note in\nyour last letter; one especially leads me directly to what I in any\ncase was desirous of urging upon you. You say, \"In vol. 6th of\n'Frederick the Great' I find a great deal that I feel quite certain,\nif our Queen or Government could make law, thousands of our English\nworkmen would hail with a shout of joy and gladness.\" I do not\nremember to what you especially allude, but whatever the rules you\nspeak of may be, unless there be anything in them contrary to the\nrights of present English property, why should you care whether the\nGovernment makes them law or not? Can you not, you thousands of\nEnglish workmen, simply make them a law to yourselves, by practising\nthem?\n\nIt is now some five or six years since I first had occasion to speak\nto the members of the London Working Men's College on the subject of\nReform, and the substance of what I said to them was this: \"You are\nall agape, my friends, for this mighty privilege of having your\nopinions represented in Parliament. The concession might be\ndesirable,--at all events courteous,--if only it were quite certain\nyou had got any opinions to represent. But have you? Are you agreed on\nany single thing you systematically want? Less work and more wages, of\ncourse; but how much lessening of work do you suppose is possible? Do\nyou think the time will ever come for everybody to have _no_ work and\n_all_ wages? Or have you yet taken the trouble so much as to think out\nthe nature of the true connection between wages and work, and to\ndetermine, even approximately, the real quantity of the one, that can,\naccording to the laws of God and nature, be given for the other; for,\nrely on it, make what laws you like, that quantity only can you at\nlast get.\n\n10. \"Do you know how many mouths can be fed on an acre of land, or how\nfast those mouths multiply? and have you considered what is to be done\nfinally with unfeedable mouths? 'Send them to be fed elsewhere,' do\nyou say? Have you, then, formed any opinion as to the time at which\nemigration should begin, or the countries to which it should\npreferably take place, or the kind of population which should be left\nat home? Have you planned the permanent state which you would wish\nEngland to hold, emigrating over her edges, like a full well,\nconstantly? How full would you have her be of people, first? and of\nwhat sort of people? Do you want her to be nothing but a large\nworkshop and forge, so that the name of 'Englishman' shall be\nsynonymous with 'ironmonger,' all over the world? or would you like to\nkeep some of your lords and landed gentry still, and a few green\nfields and trees?\n\n11. \"You know well enough that there is not one of these questions, I\ndo not say which you can answer, but which you have ever _thought_ of\nanswering; and yet you want to have voices in Parliament! Your voices\nare not worth a rat's squeak, either in Parliament or out of it, till\nyou have some ideas to utter with them; and when you have the\nthoughts, you will not want to utter them, for you will see that your\nway to the fulfilling of them does not lie through speech. You think\nsuch matters need debating about? By all means debate about them; but\ndebate among yourselves, and with such honest helpers of your thoughts\nas you can find; if by that way you cannot get at the truth, do you\nsuppose you could get at it sooner in the House of Commons, where the\nonly aim of many of the members would be to refute every word uttered\nin your favor; and where the settlement of any question whatever\ndepends merely on the perturbations of the balance of conflicting\ninterests?\"\n\n12. That was, in main particulars, what I then said to the men of the\nWorking Men's College; and in this recurrent agitation about Reform,\nthat is what I would steadfastly say again. Do you think it is only\nunder the lacquered splendors of Westminster,--you working men of\nEngland,--that your affairs can be rationally talked over? You have\nperfect liberty and power to talk over, and establish for yourselves,\nwhatever laws you please; so long as you do not interfere with other\npeople's liberties or properties. Elect a parliament of your own.\nChoose the best men among you, the best at least you can find, by\nwhatever system of election you think likeliest to secure such\ndesirable result. Invite trustworthy persons of other classes to join\nyour council; appoint time and place for its stated sittings, and let\nthis parliament, chosen after your own hearts, deliberate upon the\npossible modes of the regulation of industry, and advisablest schemes\nfor helpful discipline of life; and so lay before you the best laws\nthey can devise, which such of you as were wise might submit to, and\nteach their children to obey. And if any of the laws thus determined\nappear to be inconsistent with the present circumstances or customs of\ntrade, do not make a noise about them, nor try to enforce them\nsuddenly on others, nor embroider them on flags, nor call meetings in\nparks about them, in spite of railings and police; but keep them in\nyour thoughts and sight, as objects of patient purpose and future\nachievement by peaceful strength.\n\n13. For you need not think that even if you obtained a majority of\nrepresentatives in the existing parliament, you could immediately\ncompel any system of business, broadly contrary to that now\nestablished by custom. If you could pass laws to-morrow, wholly\nfavorable to yourselves, as you might think, because unfavorable to\nyour masters, and to the upper classes of society,--the only result\nwould be that the riches of the country would at once leave it, and\nyou would perish in riot and famine. Be assured that no great change\nfor the better can ever be easily accomplished, or quickly; nor by\nimpulsive, ill-regulated effort, nor by bad men; nor even by good men,\nwithout much suffering. The suffering must, indeed, come, one way or\nanother, in all greatly critical periods; the only question, for us,\nis whether we will reach our ends (if we ever reach them) through a\nchain of involuntary miseries, many of them useless, and all ignoble;\nor whether we will know the worst at once, and deal with it by the\nwisely sharp methods of Godsped courage.\n\n14. This, I repeat to you, it is wholly in your own power to do, but\nit is in your power on one condition only, that of steadfast truth to\nyourselves, and to all men. If there is not, in the sum of it, honesty\nenough among you to teach you to frame, and strengthen you to obey,\n_just_ laws of trade, there is no hope left for you. No political\nconstitution can ennoble knaves; no privileges can assist them; no\npossessions enrich them. Their gains are occult curses; comfortless\nloss their truest blessing; failure and pain Nature's only mercy to\nthem. Look to it, therefore, first that you get some wholesome honesty\nfor the foundation of all things. Without the resolution in your\nhearts to do good work, so long as your right hands have motion in\nthem; and to do it whether the issue be that you die or live, no life\nworthy the name will ever be possible to you, while, in once forming\nthe resolution that your work is to be well done, life is really won,\nhere and for ever. And to make your children capable of such\nresolution, is the beginning of all true education, of which I have\nmore to say in a future letter.\n\n\n\n\nLETTER IV.\n\nTHE EXPENSES FOR ART AND FOR WAR.\n\n\n                                                _February 19, 1867._\n\n15. In the 'Pall Mall Gazette' of yesterday, second column of second\npage, you will find, close to each other, two sentences which bear\nclosely on matters in hand. The first of these is the statement, that\nin the debate on the grant for the Blacas collection, \"Mr. Bernal\nOsborne got an assenting cheer, when he said that 'whenever science\nand art were mentioned it was a sign to look after the national\npockets.'\" I want you to notice this fact, _i. e._, (the debate in\nquestion being on a _total_ grant of 164,000_l._, of which 48,000_l._\nonly were truly for art's sake, and the rest for shop's sake,) in\nillustration of a passage in my 'Sesame and Lilies' (pp. 69, 70 of the\nsmall edition, and pp. 46, 47 of Vol. I. of the Revised Series of the\nEntire Works),[A] to which I shall have again to refer you, with some\nfurther comments, in the sequel of these letters. The second passage\nis to the effect that \"The Trades' Union Bill was read a second time,\nafter a claim from Mr. Hadfield, Mr. Osborne, and Mr. Samuelson, to\nadmit working men into the commission; to which Mr. Watkin answered\n'that the working men's friend was too conspicuous in the body;' and\nMr. Roebuck, 'that when a butcher was tried for murder it was not\nnecessary to have butchers on the jury.'\"\n\n    [A] Appendix I.\n\n16. Note this second passage with respect to what I said in my last\nletter, as to the impossibility of the laws of work being investigated\nin the House of Commons. What admixture of elements, think you, would\navail to obtain so much as decent hearing (how should we then speak of\nimpartial judgment?) of the cause of working men, in an assembly which\npermits to one of its principal members this insolent discourtesy of\nlanguage, in dealing with a preliminary question of the highest\nimportance; and permits it as so far expressive of the whole color and\ntone of its own thoughts, that the sentence is quoted by one of the\nmost temperate and accurate of our daily journals, as representing the\ntotal answer of the opposite side in the debate? No! be assured you\ncan do nothing yet at Westminster. You must have your own parliament,\nand if you cannot detect enough honesty among you to constitute a\njustly minded one, for the present matters must take their course, and\nthat will be, yet awhile, to the worse.\n\n17. I meant to have continued this subject, but I see two other\nstatements in the 'Pall Mall Gazette' of to-day, with which, and a\nsingle remark upon them, I think it will be well to close my present\nletter.\n\n(1) \"The total sum asked for in the army estimates, published this\nmorning, is 14,752,200_l._, being an increase of 412,000_l._ over the\nprevious year.\"\n\n(2) \"Yesterday the annual account of the navy receipts and expenditure\nfor the year ending 31st March, 1866, was issued from the Admiralty.\nThe expenditure was 10,268,115_l._ 7_s._\"\n\nOmitting the seven shillings, and even the odd hundred-thousands of\npounds, the net annual expenditure for army and navy appears to be\ntwenty-four millions.\n\nThe \"grant in science and art,\" two-thirds of which was not in reality\nfor either, but for amusement and shop interests in the Paris\nExhibition--the grant which the House of Commons feels to be\nindicative of general danger to the national pockets--is, as above\nstated, 164,000_l._ Now, I believe the three additional ciphers which\nturn thousands into millions produce on the intelligent English mind\nusually the effect of--three ciphers. But calculate the proportion of\nthese two sums, and then imagine to yourself the beautiful state of\nrationality of any private gentleman, who, having regretfully spent\n164_l._ on pictures for his walls, paid willingly 24,000_l._ annually\nto the policeman who looked after his shutters! You practical\nEnglish!--will you ever unbar the shutters of your brains, and hang\na picture or two in those state-chambers?\n\n\n\n\nLETTER V.\n\nTHE CORRUPTION OF MODERN PLEASURE.--(COVENT GARDEN PANTOMIME.)\n\n\n                                                _February 25, 1867._\n\n18. There is this great advantage in the writing real letters, that\nthe direct correspondence is a sufficient reason for saying, in or out\nof order, everything that the chances of the day bring into one's\nhead, in connection with the matter in hand; and as such things very\nusually go out of one's head again, after they get tired of their\nlodging, they would otherwise never get said at all. And thus to-day,\nquite out of order, but in very close connection with another part of\nour subject, I am going to tell you what I was thinking on Friday\nevening last, in Covent Garden Theater, as I was looking, and not\nlaughing, at the pantomime of 'Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.'\n\nWhen you begin seriously to consider the question referred to in my\nsecond letter, of the essential, and in the outcome inviolable,\nconnection between quantity of wages, and quantity of work, you will\nsee that \"wages\" in the full sense don't mean \"pay\" merely, but the\nreward, whatever it may be, of pleasure as well as profit, and of\nvarious other advantages, which a man is meant by Providence to get\nduring life, for work well done. Even limiting the idea to \"pay,\" the\nquestion is not so much what quantity of coin you get, as--what you\ncan get for it when you have it. Whether a shilling a day be good pay\nor not, depends wholly on what a \"shilling's worth\" is; that is to\nsay, what quantity of the things you want may be had for a shilling.\nAnd that again depends, and a great deal more than that depends, on\nwhat you _do_ want. If only drink, and foul clothes, such and such pay\nmay be enough for you; if you want good meat and good clothes, you\nmust have larger wage; if clean rooms and fresh air, larger still, and\nso on. You say, perhaps, \"every one wants these better things.\" So far\nfrom that, a wholesome taste for cleanliness and fresh air is one of\nthe final attainments of humanity. There are now not many European\ngentlemen, even in the highest classes, who have a pure and right love\nof fresh air. They would put the filth of tobacco even into the first\nbreeze of a May morning.\n\n19. But there are better things even than these, which one may want.\nGrant that one has good food, clothes, lodging, and breathing, is that\nall the pay one ought to have for one's work? Wholesome means of\nexistence and nothing more? Enough, perhaps, you think, if everybody\ncould get these. It may be so; I will not, at this moment, dispute it;\nnevertheless, I will boldly say that you should sometimes want more\nthan these; and for one of many things more, you should want\noccasionally to be amused!\n\nYou know, the upper classes, most of them, want to be amused all day\nlong. They think\n\n  \"One moment _un_amused a misery\n  Not made for feeble men.\"\n\nPerhaps you have been in the habit of despising them for this; and\nthinking how much worthier and nobler it was to work all day, and care\nat night only for food and rest, than to do no useful thing all day,\neat unearned food, and spend the evening, as the morning, in \"change\nof follies and relays of joy.\" No, my good friend, that is one of the\nfatalest deceptions. It is not a noble thing, in sum and issue of it,\nnot to care to be amused. It is indeed a far higher _moral_ state, but\nis a much lower _creature_ state, than that of the upper classes.\n\n20. Yonder poor horse, calm slave in daily chains at the railroad\nsiding, who drags the detached rear of the train to the front again,\nand slips aside so deftly as the buffers meet; and, within eighteen\ninches of death every ten minutes, fulfils his changeless duty all day\nlong, content, for eternal reward, with his night's rest, and his\nchamped mouthful of hay;--anything more earnestly moral and beautiful\none cannot image--I never see the creature without a kind of worship.\nAnd yonder musician, who used the greatest power which (in the art he\nknew) the Father of spirits ever yet breathed into the clay of this\nworld;--who used it, I say, to follow and fit with perfect sound the\nwords of the 'Zauberfloete' and of 'Don Giovanni'--foolishest and most\nmonstrous of conceivable human words and subjects of thought--for the\nfuture \"amusement\" of his race!--No such spectacle of unconscious (and\nin that unconsciousness all the more fearful) moral degradation of the\nhighest faculty to the lowest purpose can be found in history. But\nMozart is nevertheless a nobler creature than the horse at the siding;\nnor would it be the least nearer the purpose of his Maker that he, and\nall his frivolous audiences, should evade the degradation of the\nprofitless piping, only by living, like horses, in daily physical\nlabor for daily bread.\n\n21. There are three things to which man is born[A]--labor, and sorrow,\nand joy. Each of these three things has its baseness and its\nnobleness. There is base labor, and noble labor. There is base sorrow,\nand noble sorrow. There is base joy, and noble joy. But you must not\nthink to avoid the corruption of these things by doing without the\nthings themselves. Nor can any life be right that has not all three.\nLabor without joy is base. Labor without sorrow is base. Sorrow\nwithout labor is base. Joy without labor is base.\n\n    [A] I ask the reader's thoughtful attention to this\n    paragraph, on which much of what else I have to say depends.\n\n22. I dare say you think I am a long time in coming to the pantomime;\nI am not ready to come to it yet in due course, for we ought to go and\nsee the Japanese jugglers first, in order to let me fully explain to\nyou what I mean. But I can't write much more to-day; so I shall merely\ntell you what part of the play set me thinking of all this, and leave\nyou to consider of it yourself, till I can send you another letter.\nThe pantomime was, as I said, 'Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.' The\nforty thieves were girls. The forty thieves had forty companions, who\nwere girls. The forty thieves and their forty companions were in some\nway mixed up with about four hundred and forty fairies, who were\ngirls. There was an Oxford and Cambridge boat-race, in which the\nOxford and Cambridge men were girls. There was a transformation scene,\nwith a forest, in which the flowers were girls, and a chandelier, in\nwhich the lamps were girls, and a great rainbow which was all of\ngirls.\n\n23. Mingled incongruously with these seraphic, and, as far as my\nboyish experience extends, novel, elements of pantomime, there were\nyet some of its old and fast-expiring elements. There were, in\nspeciality, two thoroughly good pantomime actors--Mr. W. H. Payne and\nMr. Frederick Payne. All that these two did, was done admirably. There\nwere two subordinate actors, who played, subordinately well, the fore\nand hind legs of a donkey. And there was a little actress of whom I\nhave chiefly to speak, who played exquisitely the little part she had\nto play. The scene in which she appeared was the only one in the whole\npantomime in which there was any dramatic effort, or, with a few rare\nexceptions, any dramatic possibility. It was the home scene, in which\nAli Baba's wife, on washing day, is called upon by butcher, baker,\nand milkman, with unpaid bills; and in the extremity of her distress\nhears her husband's knock at the door, and opens it for him to drive\nin his donkey, laden with gold. The children who have been beaten\ninstead of getting breakfast, presently share in the raptures of their\nfather and mother; and the little lady I spoke of, eight or nine years\nold,--dances a _pas-de-deux_ with the donkey.\n\n24. She did it beautifully and simply, as a child ought to dance. She\nwas not an infant prodigy; there was no evidence, in the finish or\nstrength of her motion, that she had been put to continual torture\nthrough half her eight or nine years. She did nothing more than any\nchild well taught, but painlessly, might easily do. She caricatured no\nolder person,--attempted no curious or fantastic skill. She was\ndressed decently,--she moved decently,--she looked and behaved\ninnocently,--and she danced her joyful dance with perfect grace,\nspirit, sweetness, and self-forgetfulness. And through all the vast\ntheater, full of English fathers and mothers and children, there was\nnot one hand lifted to give her sign of praise but mine.\n\nPresently after this, came on the forty thieves, who, as I told you,\nwere girls; and, there being no thieving to be presently done, and\ntime hanging heavy on their hands, arms, and legs, the forty\nthief-girls proceeded to light forty cigars. Whereupon the British\npublic gave them a round of applause. Whereupon I fell a thinking; and\nsaw little more of the piece, except as an ugly and disturbing dream.\n\n\n\n\nLETTER VI.\n\nTHE CORRUPTION OF MODERN PLEASURE.--(THE JAPANESE JUGGLERS.)\n\n\n                                                _February 28, 1867._\n\n25. I have your pleasant letter with references to Frederick. I will\nlook at them carefully.[A] Mr. Carlyle himself will be pleased to hear\nthis letter when he comes home. I heard from him last week at Mentone.\nHe is well, and glad of the light and calm of Italy. I must get back\nto the evil light and uncalm, of the places I was taking you through.\n\n    [A] Appendix 2.\n\n(Parenthetically, did you see the article in the 'Times' of yesterday\non bribery, and the conclusion of the commission--\"No one sold any\nopinions, for no one had any opinions to sell\"?)\n\nBoth on Thursday and Friday last I had been tormented by many things,\nand wanted to disturb my course of thought any way I could. I have\ntold you what entertainment I got on Friday, first, for it was then\nthat I began meditating over these letters; let me tell you now what\nentertainment I found on Thursday.\n\n26. You may have heard that a company of Japanese jugglers has come\nover to exhibit in London. There has long been an increasing interest\nin Japanese art, which has been very harmful to many of our own\npainters, and I greatly desired to see what these people were, and\nwhat they did. Well, I have seen Blondin, and various English and\nFrench circus work, but never yet anything that surprised me so much\nas one of these men's exercises on a suspended pole. Its special\ncharacter was a close approximation to the action and power of the\nmonkey; even to the prehensile power in the foot; so that I asked a\nsculptor-friend who sat in front of me, whether he thought such a\ngrasp could be acquired by practice, or indicated difference in race.\nHe said he thought it might be got by practice. There was also much\ninconceivably dexterous work in spinning of tops,--making them pass in\nbalanced motion along the edge of a sword, and along a level string,\nand the like;--the father performing in the presence of his two\nchildren, who encouraged him continually with short, sharp cries, like\nthose of animals. Then there was some fairly good sleight-of-hand\njuggling of little interest; ending with a dance by the juggler, first\nas an animal, and then as a goblin, Now, there was this great\ndifference between the Japanese masks used in this dance and our\ncommon pantomime masks for beasts and demons,--that our English masks\nare only stupidly and loathsomely ugly, by exaggeration of feature, or\nof defect of feature. But the Japanese masks (like the frequent\nmonsters of Japanese art) were inventively frightful, like fearful\ndreams; and whatever power it is that acts on human minds, enabling\nthem to invent such, appears to me not only to deserve the term\n\"demoniacal,\" as the only word expressive of its character; but to be\nlogically capable of no other definition.\n\n27. The impression, therefore, produced upon me by the whole scene,\nwas that of being in the presence of human creatures of a partially\ninferior race, but not without great human gentleness, domestic\naffection, and ingenious intellect; who were, nevertheless, as a\nnation, afflicted by an evil spirit, and driven by it to recreate\nthemselves in achieving, or beholding the achievement, through years\nof patience, of a certain correspondence with the nature of the lower\nanimals.\n\n28. These, then, were the two forms of diversion or recreation of my\nmind possible to me, in two days, when I needed such help, in this\nmetropolis of England. I might, as a rich man, have had better music,\nif I had so chosen, though, even so, not rational or helpful; but a\npoor man could only have these, or worse than these, if he cared for\nany manner of spectacle. (I am not at present, observe, speaking of\npure acting, which is a study, and recreative only as a noble book is;\nbut of means of _mere_ amusement.)\n\nNow, lastly, in illustration of the effect of these and other such\n\"amusements,\" and of the desire to obtain them, on the minds of our\nyouth, read the 'Times' correspondent's letter from Paris, in the\ntenth page of the paper, to-day;[A] and that will be quite enough for\nyou to read, for the present, I believe.\n\n    [A] Appendix 3.\n\n\n\n\nLETTER VII.\n\nOF THE VARIOUS EXPRESSIONS OF NATIONAL FESTIVITY.\n\n\n                                                    _March 4, 1867._\n\n29. The subject which I want to bring before you is now branched, and\nworse than branched, reticulated, in so many directions, that I hardly\nknow which shoot of it to trace, or which knot to lay hold of first.\n\nI had intended to return to those Japanese jugglers, after a visit to\na theater in Paris; but I had better, perhaps, at once tell you the\npiece of the performance which, in connection with the scene in the\nEnglish pantomime, bears most on matters in hand.\n\nIt was also a dance by a little girl--though one older than Ali Baba's\ndaughter, (I suppose a girl of twelve or fourteen). A dance, so\ncalled, which consisted only in a series of short, sharp contractions\nand jerks of the body and limbs, resulting in attitudes of distorted\nand quaint ugliness, such as might be produced in a puppet by sharp\ntwitching of strings at its joints: these movements being made to the\nsound of two instruments, which between them accomplished only a quick\nvibratory beating and strumming, in nearly the time of a\nhearth-cricket's song, but much harsher, and of course louder, and\nwithout any sweetness; only in the monotony and unintended aimless\nconstruction of it, reminding one of various other insect and reptile\ncries or warnings: partly of the cicala's hiss; partly of the little\nmelancholy German frog which says \"Mu, mu, mu,\" all summer-day long,\nwith its nose out of the pools by Dresden and Leipsic; and partly of\nthe deadened quivering and intense continuousness of the alarm of the\nrattlesnake.\n\nWhile this was going on, there was a Bible text repeating itself over\nand over again in my head, whether I would or no:--\"And Miriam the\nprophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in her hand, and all\nthe women went out after her with timbrels and with dances.\" To which\ntext and some others, I shall ask your attention presently; but I must\ngo to Paris first.\n\n30. Not at once, however, to the theater, but to a bookseller's shop,\nNo. 4, Rue Voltaire, where, in the year 1858, was published the fifth\nedition of Balzac's 'Contes Drolatiques,' illustrated by 425 designs\nby Gustave Dore.\n\nBoth text and illustrations are as powerful as it is ever in the\nnature of evil things to be (there is no _final_ strength but in\nrightness). Nothing more witty, nor more inventively horrible, has yet\nbeen produced in the evil literature, or by the evil art, of man: nor\ncan I conceive it possible to go beyond either in their specialities\nof corruption. The text is full of blasphemies, subtle, tremendous,\nhideous in shamelessness, some put into the mouths of priests; the\nillustrations are, in a word, one continuous revelry in the most\nloathsome and monstrous aspects of death and sin, enlarged into\nfantastic ghastliness of caricature, as if seen through the distortion\nand trembling of the hot smoke of the mouth of hell. Take this\nfollowing for a general type of what they seek in death: one of the\nmost labored designs is of a man cut in two, downwards, by the sweep\nof a sword--one half of him falls toward the spectator; the other half\nis elaborately drawn in its section--giving the profile of the divided\nnose and lips; cleft jaw--breast--and entrails; and this is done with\nfarther pollution and horror of intent in the circumstances, which I\ndo not choose to describe--still less some other of the designs which\nseek for fantastic extreme of sin, as this for the utmost horror of\ndeath. But of all the 425, there is not one, which does not violate\nevery instinct of decency and law of virtue or life, written in the\nhuman soul.\n\n31. Now, my friend, among the many \"Signs of the Times\" the production\nof a book like this is a significant one: but it becomes more\nsignificant still when connected with the farther fact, that M.\nGustave Dore, the designer of this series of plates, has just been\nreceived with loud acclaim by the British Evangelical Public, as the\nfittest and most able person whom they could at present find to\nillustrate, to their minds, and recommend with grace of sacred art,\ntheir hitherto unadorned Bible for them.\n\nOf which Bible, and of the use we at present make of it in England,\nhaving a grave word or two to say in my next letter (preparatory to\nthe examination of that verse which haunted me through the Japanese\njuggling, and of some others also), I leave you first this sign of the\npublic esteem of it to consider at your leisure.\n\n\n\n\nLETTER VIII.\n\nTHE FOUR POSSIBLE THEORIES RESPECTING THE AUTHORITY OF THE BIBLE.\n\n\n                                                    _March 7, 1867._\n\n32. I have your yesterday's letter, but must not allow myself to be\ndiverted from the business in hand for this once, for it is the most\nimportant of which I have to write to you.\n\nYou must have seen long ago that the essential difference between the\npolitical economy I am trying to teach, and the popular science, is,\nthat mine is based on _presumably attainable honesty_ in men, and\nconceivable respect in them for the interests of others, while the\npopular science founds itself wholly on their supposed constant regard\nfor their own, and on their honesty only so far as thereby likely to\nbe secured.\n\nIt becomes, therefore, for me, and for all who believe anything I say,\na great primal question on what this presumably attainable honesty is\nto be based.\n\n33. \"Is it to be based on religion?\" you may ask. \"Are we to be\nhonest for fear of losing heaven if we are dishonest, or (to put it as\ngenerously as we may) for fear of displeasing God? Or, are we to be\nhonest on speculation, because honesty is the best policy; and to\ninvest in virtue as in an undepreciable stock?\"\n\nAnd my answer is--not in any hesitating or diffident way (and you\nknow, my friend, that whatever people may say of me, I often do speak\ndiffidently; though, when I am diffident of things, I like to avoid\nspeaking of them, if it may be; but here I say with no shadow of\ndoubt)--your honesty is _not_ to be based either on religion or\npolicy. Both your religion and policy must be based on _it_. Your\nhonesty must be based, as the sun is, in vacant heaven; poised, as the\nlights in the firmament, which have rule over the day and over the\nnight. If you ask why you are to be honest--you are, in the question\nitself, dishonored. \"Because you are a man,\" is the only answer; and\ntherefore I said in a former letter that to make your children\n_capable of honesty_ is the beginning of education. Make them men\nfirst, and religious men afterwards, and all will be sound; but a\nknave's religion is always the rottenest thing about him.\n\n34. It is not, therefore, because I am endeavoring to lay down a\nfoundation of religious concrete, on which to build piers of policy,\nthat you so often find me quoting Bible texts in defense of this or\nthat principle or assertion. But the fact that such references are an\noffense, as I know them to be, to many of the readers of these\npolitical essays, is one among many others, which I would desire you\nto reflect upon (whether you are yourself one of the offended or not),\nas expressive of the singular position which the mind of the British\npublic has at present taken with respect to its worshiped Book. The\npositions, honestly tenable, before I use any more of its texts, I\nmust try to define for you.\n\n35. All the theories possible to theological disputants respecting the\nBible are resolvable into four, and four only.\n\n(1.) The first is that of the illiterate modern religious world, that\nevery word of the book known to them as \"The Bible\" was dictated by\nthe Supreme Being, and is in every syllable of it His \"Word.\"\n\nThis theory is of course tenable by no ordinarily well-educated\nperson.\n\n(2.) The second theory is, that, although admitting verbal error, the\nsubstance of the whole collection of books called the Bible is\nabsolutely true, and furnished to man by Divine inspiration of the\nspeakers and writers of it; and that every one who honestly and\nprayerfully seeks for such truth in it as is necessary for his\nsalvation, will infallibly find it there.\n\nThis theory is that held by most of our good and upright clergymen,\nand the better class of the professedly religious laity.\n\n(3.) The third theory is that the group of books which we call the\nBible were neither written nor collected under any Divine guidance,\nsecuring them from substantial error; and that they contain, like all\nother human writings, false statements mixed with true, and erring\nthoughts mixed with just thoughts; but that they nevertheless relate,\non the whole, faithfully, the dealings of the one God with the first\nraces of man, and His dealings with them in aftertime through Christ:\nthat they record true miracles, and bear true witness to the\nresurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.\n\nThis is a theory held by many of the active leaders of modern thought.\n\n(4.) The fourth, and last possible, theory is that the mass of\nreligious Scripture contains merely the best efforts which we hitherto\nknow to have been made by any of the races of men towards the\ndiscovery of some relations with the spiritual world; that they are\nonly trustworthy as expressions of the enthusiastic visions or beliefs\nof earnest men oppressed by the world's darkness, and have no more\nauthoritative claim on our faith than the religious speculations and\nhistories of the Egyptians, Greeks, Persians, and Indians; but are, in\ncommon with all these, to be reverently studied, as containing a\nportion, divinely appointed, of the best wisdom which human\nintellect, earnestly seeking for help from God, has hitherto been able\nto gather between birth and death.\n\nThis has been, for the last half-century, the theory of the soundest\nscholars and thinkers of Europe.\n\n36. There is yet indeed one farther condition of incredulity\nattainable, and sorrowfully attained, by many men of powerful\nintellect--the incredulity, namely, of inspiration in any sense, or of\nhelp given by any Divine power to the thoughts of men. But this form\nof infidelity merely indicates a natural incapacity for receiving\ncertain emotions; though many honest and good men belong to this\ninsentient class.\n\n37. The educated men, therefore, who may be seriously appealed to, in\nthese days, on questions of moral responsibility, as modified by\nScripture, are broadly divisible into three classes, severally holding\nthe last three theories above stated.\n\nNow, whatever power a passage from the statedly authoritative portions\nof the Bible may have over the mind of a person holding the fourth\ntheory, it will have a proportionately greater over that of persons\nholding the third or the second. I, therefore, always imagine myself\nspeaking to the fourth class of theorists. If I can persuade or\ninfluence _them_, I am logically sure of the others. I say\n\"logically,\" for the actual fact, strange as it may seem, is that no\npersons are so little likely to submit to a passage of Scripture not\nto their fancy, as those who are most positive on the subject of its\ngeneral inspiration.\n\n38. Addressing, then, this fourth class of thinkers, I would say to\nthem, when asking them to enter on any subject of importance to\nnational morals, or conduct, \"This book, which has been the accepted\nguide of the moral intelligence of Europe for some fifteen hundred\nyears, enforces certain simple laws of human conduct which you know\nhave also been agreed upon, in every main point, by all the religious,\nand by all the greatest profane writers, of every age and country.\nThis book primarily forbids pride, lasciviousness, and covetousness;\nand you know that all great thinkers, in every nation of mankind,\nhave similarly forbidden these mortal vices. This book enjoins truth,\ntemperance, charity, and equity; and you know that every great\nEgyptian, Greek, and Indian, enjoins these also. You know besides,\nthat through all the mysteries of human fate and history, this one\ngreat law of fate is written on the walls of cities, or in their dust;\nwritten in letters of light, and letters of blood,--that where truth,\ntemperance, and equity have been preserved, all strength, and peace,\nand joy have been preserved also;--that where lying, lasciviousness,\nand covetousness have been practised, there has followed an\ninfallible, and, for centuries, irrecoverable ruin. And you know,\nlastly, that the observance of this common law of righteousness,\ncommending itself to all the pure instincts of men, and fruitful in\ntheir temporal good, is by the religious writers of every nation, and\nchiefly in this venerated Scripture of ours, connected with some\ndistinct hope of better life, and righteousness, to come.\n\n39. \"Let it not then offend you if, deducing principles of action\nfirst from the laws and facts of nature, I nevertheless fortify them\nalso by appliance of the precepts, or suggestive and probable\nteachings of this Book, of which the authority is over many around\nyou, more distinctly than over you, and which, confessing to be\ndivine, _they_, at least, can only disobey at their moral peril.\"\n\nOn these grounds, and in this temper, I am in the habit of appealing\nto passages of Scripture in my writings on political economy; and in\nthis temper I will ask you to consider with me some conclusions which\nappear to me derivable from that text about Miriam, which haunted me\nthrough the jugglery; and from certain others.\n\n\n\n\nLETTER IX.\n\nTHE USE OF MUSIC AND DANCING UNDER THE JEWISH THEOCRACY, COMPARED WITH\nTHEIR USE BY THE MODERN FRENCH.\n\n\n                                                   _March 10, 1867._\n\n40. Having, I hope, made you now clearly understand with what feeling\nI would use the authority of the book which the British public,\nprofessing to consider sacred, have lately adorned for themselves with\nthe work of the boldest violator of the instincts of human honor and\ndecency known yet in art-history, I will pursue by the help of that\nverse about Miriam, and some others, the subject which occupied my\nmind at both theaters, and to which, though in so apparently desultory\nmanner, I have been nevertheless very earnestly endeavoring to lead\nyou.\n\n41. The going forth of the women of Israel after Miriam with timbrels\nand with dances, was, as you doubtless remember, their expression of\npassionate triumph and thankfulness, after the full accomplishment of\ntheir deliverance from the Egyptians. That deliverance had been by the\nutter death of their enemies, and accompanied by stupendous miracle;\nno human creatures could in an hour of triumph be surrounded by\ncircumstances more solemn. I am not going to try to excite your\nfeelings about them. Consider only for yourself what that seeing of\nthe Egyptians \"dead upon the sea-shore\" meant to every soul that saw\nit. And then reflect that these intense emotions of mingled horror,\ntriumph, and gratitude were expressed, in the visible presence of the\nDeity, by music and dancing. If you answer that you do not believe the\nEgyptians so perished, or that God ever appeared in a pillar of cloud,\nI reply, \"Be it so--believe or disbelieve, as you choose;--This is yet\nassuredly the fact, that the author of the poem or fable of the Exodus\nsupposed that, under such circumstances of Divine interposition as he\nhad invented, the triumph of the Israelitish women would have been,\nand ought to have been, under the direction of a prophetess,\nexpressed by music and dancing.\"\n\n42. Nor was it possible that he should think otherwise, at whatever\nperiod he wrote; both music and dancing being, among all great ancient\nnations, an appointed and very principal part of the worship of the\ngods.\n\nAnd that very theatrical entertainment at which I sate thinking over\nthese things for you--that pantomime, which depended throughout for\nits success on an appeal to the vices of the lower London populace,\nwas, in itself, nothing but a corrupt remnant of the religious\nceremonies which guided the most serious faiths of the Greek mind, and\nlaid the foundation of their gravest moral and didactic--more forcibly\nso because at the same time dramatic--literature.\n\n43. Returning to the Jewish history, you find soon afterwards this\nenthusiastic religious dance and song employed, in their more common\nand habitual manner, in the idolatries under Sinai; but beautifully\nagain and tenderly, after the triumph of Jephthah, \"And behold his\ndaughter came out to meet him with timbrels and with dances.\" Again,\nstill more notably, at the triumph of David with Saul, \"the women came\nout of all the cities of Israel singing and dancing to meet King Saul\nwith tabrets, with joy, and with instruments of music.\" And you have\nthis joyful song and dance of the virgins of Israel not only\nincidentally alluded to in the most solemn passages of Hebrew\nreligious poetry (as in Psalm lxviii. 24, 25, and Psalm cxlix. 2, 3),\nbut approved, and the restoration of it promised as a sign of God's\nperfect blessing, most earnestly by the saddest of the Hebrew\nprophets, and in one of the most beautiful of all his sayings.\n\n\"The Lord hath appeared of old unto me, saying, 'Yea, I have loved\nthee with an everlasting love. Therefore, with loving-kindness have I\ndrawn thee.--I will build thee, and thou shalt be built, O Virgin of\nIsrael; thou shalt again be adorned with thy tabrets, and thou shalt\ngo forth in dances with them that make merry,'\" (Jer. xxxi. 3, 4; and\ncompare v. 13). And finally, you have in two of quite the most\nimportant passages in the whole series of Scripture (one in the Old\nTestament, one in the New), the rejoicing in the repentance from, and\nremission of, sins, expressed by means of music and dancing, namely,\nin the rapturous dancing of David before the returning ark; and in the\njoy of the father's household at the repentance of the prodigal son.\n\n44. I could put all this much better, and more convincingly, before\nyou, if I were able to take any pains in writing at present; but I am\nnot, as I told you; being weary and ill; neither do I much care now to\nuse what, in the very truth, are but tricks of literary art, in\ndealing with this so grave subject. You see I write you my letter\nstraightforward, and let you see all my scratchings out and puttings\nin; and if the way I say things shocks you, or any other reader of\nthese letters, I cannot help it; this only I know, that what I tell\nyou is true, and written more earnestly than anything I ever wrote\nwith my best literary care; and that you will find it useful to think\nupon, however it be said. Now, therefore, to draw towards our\nconclusion. Supposing the Bible inspired, in any of the senses above\ndefined, you have in these passages a positively Divine authority for\nthe use of song and dance, as a means of religious service, and\nexpression of national thanksgiving. Supposing it not inspired, you\nhave (taking the passages for as slightly authoritative as you choose)\nrecord in them, nevertheless, of a state of mind in a great nation,\nproducing the most beautiful religious poetry and perfect moral law\nhitherto known to us, yet only expressible by them, to the fulfilment\nof their joyful passion, by means of professional dance and choral\nsong.\n\n45. Now I want you to contrast this state of religious rapture with\nsome of our modern phases of mind in parallel circumstances. You see\nthat the promise of Jeremiah's, \"Thou shalt go forth in the dances of\nthem that make merry,\" is immediately followed by this, \"Thou shalt\nyet _plant vines_ upon the mountains of Samaria.\" And again, at the\nyearly feast to the Lord in Shiloh, the dancing of the virgins was in\nthe midst of the vineyards (Judges xxi. 21), the feast of the vintage\nbeing in the south, as our harvest home in the north, a peculiar\noccasion of joy and thanksgiving. I happened to pass the autumn of\n1863 in one of the great vine districts of Switzerland, under the\nslopes of the outlying branch of the Jura which limits the arable\nplain of the Canton Zurich, some fifteen miles north of Zurich itself.\nThat city has always been a renowned, stronghold of Swiss\nProtestantism, next in importance only to Geneva; and its evangelical\nzeal for the conversion of the Catholics of Uri, and endeavors to\nbring about that spiritual result by stopping the supplies of salt\nthey needed to make their cheeses with, brought on (the Uri men\nreading their Matt. v. 13, in a different sense) the battle of Keppel,\nand the death of the reformer Zwinglius. The town itself shows the\nmost gratifying signs of progress in all the modern arts and sciences\nof life. It is nearly as black as Newcastle--has a railroad station\nlarger than the London terminus of the Chatham and Dover--fouls the\nstream of the Limmat as soon as it issues from the lake, so that you\nmight even venture to compare the formerly simple and innocent Swiss\nriver (I remember it thirty years ago--a current of pale green\ncrystal) with the highly educated English streams of Weare or Tyne;\nand, finally, has as many French prints of dissolute tendency in its\nprincipal shop windows as if they had the privilege of opening on the\nParisian Boulevards.\n\n46. I was somewhat anxious to see what species of thanksgiving or\nexultation would be expressed at _their_ vintage, by the peasantry in\nthe neighborhood of this much enlightened, evangelical, and commercial\nsociety. It consisted in two ceremonies only. During the day, the\nservants of the farms where the grapes had been gathered, collected in\nknots about the vineyards, and slowly fired horse-pistols, from\nmorning to evening. At night they got drunk, and staggered up and down\nthe hill paths, uttering, at short intervals, yells and shrieks,\ndiffering only from the howling of wild animals by a certain intended\nand insolent discordance, only attainable by the malignity of debased\nhuman creatures.\n\n47. I must not do the injustice to the Zurich peasantry of implying\nthat this manner of festivity is peculiar to them. A year before, in\n1862, I had formed the intention of living some years in the\nneighborhood of Geneva, and had established myself experimentally on\nthe eastern slope of the Mont Saleve; but I was forced to abandon my\npurpose at last, because I could not endure the rabid howling, on\nSunday evenings, of the holiday-makers who came out from Geneva to get\ndrunk in the mountain village. By the way, your last letter, with its\nextracts about our traffic in gin, is very valuable. I will come to\nthat part of the business in a little while. Meantime, my friend, note\nthis, respecting what I have told you, that in the very center of\nEurope, in a country which is visited for their chief pleasure by the\nmost refined and thoughtful persons among all Christian nations--a\ncountry made by God's hand the most beautiful in the temperate regions\nof the earth, and inhabited by a race once capable of the sternest\npatriotism and simplest purity of life, your modern religion, in the\nvery stronghold of it, has reduced the song and dance of ancient\nvirginal thanksgiving to the howlings and staggerings of men\nbetraying, in intoxication, a nature sunk more than half-way towards\nthe beasts; and you will begin to understand why the Bible should have\nbeen \"illustrated\" by Gustave Dore.\n\n48. One word more is needful, though this letter is long already. The\npeculiar ghastliness of this Swiss mode of festivity is in its utter\nfailure of joy; the paralysis and helplessness of a vice in which\nthere is neither pleasure, nor art. But we are not, throughout Europe,\nwholly thus. There is such a thing, yet, as rapturous song and dance\namong us, though not indicative, by any means, of joy over repentant\nsinners. You must come back to Paris with me again. I had an evening\nto spare there, last summer, for investigation of theaters; and as\nthere was nothing at any of them that I cared much about seeing, I\nasked a valet-de-place at Meurice's what people were generally going\nto. He said, \"All the English went to see the _Lanterne Magique_.\" I\ndo not care to tell you what general entertainment I received in\nfollowing, for once, the lead of my countrymen; but it closed with\nthe representation of the characteristic dancing of all ages of the\nworld; and the dance given as characteristic of modern time was the\nCancan, which you will see alluded to in the extract given in the note\nat page 80 of 'Sesame and Lilies' (the small edition; and page 54 of\nVol. I. of the Revised Series of the Entire Works). \"The ball\nterminated with a Devilish Chain and a Cancan of Hell, at seven in the\nmorning.\" It was led by four principal dancers (who have since\nappeared in London in the _Huguenot Captain_), and it is many years\nsince I have seen such perfect dancing, as far as finish and accuracy\nof art and fulness of animal power and fire are concerned. Nothing\ncould be better done, in its own evil way, the object of the dance\nthroughout being to express, in every gesture, the wildest fury of\ninsolence and vicious passions possible to human creatures. So that\nyou see, though, for the present, we find ourselves utterly incapable\nof a rapture of gladness or thanksgiving, the dance which is presented\nas characteristic of modern civilization is still rapturous\nenough--but it is with rapture of blasphemy.\n\n\n\n\nLETTER X.\n\nTHE MEANING AND ACTUAL OPERATION OF SATANIC OR DEMONIACAL INFLUENCE.\n\n\n                                                   _March 16, 1867._\n\n49. You may gather from the facts given you in my last letter that, as\nthe expression of true and holy gladness was in old time statedly\noffered up by men for a part of worship to God their Father, so the\nexpression of false and unholy gladness is in modern times, with as\nmuch distinctness and plainness, asserted by them openly to be offered\nto another spirit: \"Chain of the Devil,\" and \"Cancan of Hell\" being\nthe names assigned to these modern forms of joyous procession.\n\nNow, you know that, among the best and wisest of our present\nreligious teachers, there is a gradual tendency to disbelieve, and to\npreach their disbelief, in the commonly received ideas of the Devil,\nand of his place, and his work. While, among some of our equally\nwell-meaning, but far less wise, religious teachers, there is, in\nconsequence, a panic spreading in anticipation of the moral dangers\nwhich must follow on the loss of the help of the Devil. One of the\nlast appearances in public of the author of the 'Christian Year' was\nat a conclave of clergymen assembled in defense of faith in\ndamnation.[A] The sense of the meeting generally was, that there\n_must_ be such a place as hell, because no one would ever behave\ndecently upon earth unless they were kept in wholesome fear of the\nfires beneath it: and Mr. Keble, especially insisting on this view,\nrelated a story of an old woman who had a wicked son, and who, having\nlately heard with horror of the teaching of Mr. Maurice and others,\nexclaimed pathetically, \"My son is bad enough as it is, and if he were\nnot afraid of hell, what would become of him!\" (I write from memory,\nand cannot answer for the words, but I can for their purport.)\n\n    [A] _Physical_ damnation, I should have said. It is strange\n    how seldom pain of heart is spoken of as a possible element\n    of future, or as the worst of present pain.\n\n50. Now, my friend, I am afraid that I must incur the charge of such\npresumption as may be involved in variance from _both_ these systems\nof teaching.\n\nI do not merely _believe_ there is such a place as hell. I _know_\nthere is such a place; and I know also that when men have got to the\npoint of believing virtue impossible but through dread of it, they\nhave got _into_ it.\n\nI mean, that according to the distinctness with which they hold such a\ncreed, the stain of nether fire has passed upon them. In the depth of\nhis heart Mr. Keble could not have entertained the thought for an\ninstant; and I believe it was only as a conspicuous sign to the\nreligious world of the state into which they were sinking, that this\ncreed, possible in its sincerity only to the basest of them, was\nnevertheless appointed to be uttered by the lips of the most tender,\ngracious, and beloved of their teachers.\n\n51. \"Virtue impossible but for fear of hell\"--a lofty creed for your\nEnglish youth--and a holy one! And yet, my friend, there was something\nof right in the terrors of this clerical conclave. For, though you\nshould assuredly be able to hold your own in the straight ways of God,\nwithout always believing that the Devil is at your side, it is a state\nof mind much to be dreaded, that you should not _know_ the Devil when\nyou _see_ him there. For the probability is that when you do see him,\nthe way you are walking in is not one of God's ways at all, but is\nleading you quite into other neighborhoods than His. On His way,\nindeed, you may often, like Albert Duerer's Knight, see the Fiend\nbehind you, but you will find that he drops always farther and farther\nbehind; whereas, if he jogs with you at your side, it is probably one\nof his own bypaths you are got on. And, in any case, it is a highly\ndesirable matter that you should know him when you set eyes on him,\nwhich we are very far from doing in these days, having convinced\nourselves that the graminivorous form of him, with horn and tail, is\nextant no longer. But in fearful truth, the Presence and Power of Him\n_is_ here; in the world, with us, and within us, mock as you may; and\nthe fight with him, for the time, sore, and widely unprosperous.\n\nDo not think I am speaking metaphorically or rhetorically, or with any\nother than literal and earnest meaning of words. Hear me, I pray you,\ntherefore, for a little while, as earnestly as I speak.\n\n52. Every faculty of man's soul, and every instinct of it by which he\nis meant to live, is exposed to its own special form of corruption:\nand whether within Man, or in the external world, there is a power or\ncondition of temptation which is perpetually endeavoring to reduce\nevery glory of his soul, and every power of his life, to such\ncorruption as is possible to them. And the more beautiful they are,\nthe more fearful is the death which is attached as a penalty to their\ndegradation.\n\n53. Take, for instance, that which, in its purity, is the source of\nthe highest and purest mortal happiness--Love. Think of it first at\nits highest--as it may exist in the disciplined spirit of a perfect\nhuman creature; as it has so existed again and again, and does always,\nwherever it truly exists at all, as the _purifying_ passion of the\nsoul. I will not speak of the transcendental and imaginative intensity\nin which it may reign in noble hearts, as when it inspired the\ngreatest religious poem yet given to men; but take it in its true and\nquiet purity in any simple lover's heart,--as you have it expressed,\nfor instance, thus, exquisitely, in the 'Angel in the House':--\n\n  \"And there, with many a blissful tear,\n  I vowed to love and prayed to wed\n  The maiden who had grown so dear;--\n  Thanked God, who had set her in my path;\n  And promised, as I hoped to win,\n  I never would sully my faith\n  By the least selfishness or sin;\n  Whatever in her sight I'd seem\n  I'd really be; I ne'er would blend,\n  With my delight in her, a dream\n  'Twould change her cheek to comprehend;\n  And, if she wished it, would prefer\n  Another's to my own success;\n  And always seek the best for her\n  With unofficious tenderness.\"\n\nTake this for the pure type of it in its simplicity; and then think of\nwhat corruption this passion is capable. I will give you a type of\nthat also, and at your very doors. I cannot refer you to the time when\nthe crime happened; but it was some four or five years ago, near\nNewcastle, and it has remained always as a ghastly landmark in my\nmind, owing to the horror of the external circumstances. The body of\nthe murdered woman was found naked, rolled into a heap of ashes, at\nthe mouth of one of your pits.\n\n54. You have thus two limiting examples, of the Pure Passion, and of\nits corruption. Now, whatever influence it is, without or within us,\nwhich has a tendency to degrade the one towards the other, is\nliterally and accurately \"Satanic.\" And this treacherous or deceiving\nspirit is perpetually at work, so that all the worst evil among us is\na betrayed or corrupted good. Take religion itself: the desire of\nfinding out God, and placing one's self in some true son's or\nservant's relation to Him. The Devil, that is to say, the deceiving\nspirit within us, or outside of us, mixes up our own vanity with this\ndesire; makes us think that in our love to God we have established\nsome connection with Him which separates us from our fellow-men, and\nrenders us superior to them. Then it takes but one wave of the Devil's\nhand; and we are burning them alive for taking the liberty of\ncontradicting us.\n\n55. Take the desire of teaching--the entirely unselfish and noble\ninstinct for telling to those who are ignorant, the truth we know, and\nguarding them from the errors we see them in danger of;--there is no\nnobler, no more constant instinct in honorable breasts; but let the\nDevil formalize it, and mix the pride of a profession with it--get\nfoolish people entrusted with the business of instruction, and make\ntheir giddy heads giddier by putting them up in pulpits above a\nsubmissive crowd--and you have it instantly corrupted into its own\nreverse; you have an alliance _against_ the light, shrieking at the\nsun, and the moon, and stars, as profane spectra:--a company of the\nblind, beseeching those they lead to remain blind also. \"The heavens\nand the lights that rule them are untrue; the laws of creation are\ntreacherous; the poles of the earth are out of poise. But _we_ are\ntrue. Light is in us only. Shut your eyes close and fast, and we will\nlead you.\"\n\n56. Take the desire and faith of mutual help; the virtue of vowed\nbrotherhood for the accomplishment of common purpose, (without which\nnothing great can be wrought by multitudinous bands of men); let the\nDevil put pride of caste into it, and you have a military organization\napplied for a thousand years to maintain that higher caste in idleness\nby robbing the laboring poor; let the Devil put a few small personal\ninterests into it, and you have all faithful deliberation on national\nlaw rendered impossible in the parliaments of Europe, by the\nantagonism of parties.\n\n57. Take the instinct for justice, and the natural sense of\nindignation against crime; let the Devil color it with personal\npassion, and you have a mighty race of true and tender-hearted men\nliving for centuries in such bloody feud that every note and word of\ntheir national songs is a dirge, and every rock of their hills is a\ngravestone. Take the love of beauty, and power of imagination, which\nare the source of every true achievement in art; let the Devil touch\nthem with sensuality, and they are stronger than the sword or the\nflame to blast the cities where they were born, into ruin without\nhope. Take the instinct of industry and ardor of commerce, which are\nmeant to be the support and mutual maintenance of man; let the Devil\ntouch them with avarice, and you shall see the avenues of the exchange\nchoked with corpses that have died of famine.\n\n58. Now observe--I leave you to call this deceiving spirit what you\nlike--or to theorize about it as you like. All that I desire you to\nrecognize is the fact of its being here, and the need of its being\nfought with. If you take the Bible's account of it, or Dante's, or\nMilton's, you will receive the image of it as a mighty spiritual\ncreature, commanding others, and resisted by others: if you take\nAEschylus's or Hesiod's account of it, you will hold it for a partly\nelementary and unconscious adversity of fate, and partly for a group\nof monstrous spiritual agencies connected with death, and begotten out\nof the dust; if you take a modern rationalist's, you will accept it\nfor a mere treachery and want of vitality in our own moral nature\nexposing it to loathsomeness or moral disease, as the body is capable\nof mortification or leprosy. I do not care what you call it,--whose\nhistory you believe of it,--nor what you yourself can imagine about\nit; the origin, or nature, or name may be as you will, but the\ndeadly reality of the thing is with us, and warring against us,\nand on our true war with it depends whatever life we can win. Deadly\nreality, I say. The puff-adder or horned asp is not more real.\nUnbelievable,--_those_,--unless you had seen them; no fable could have\nbeen coined out of any human brain so dreadful, within its own poor\nmaterial sphere, as that blue-lipped serpent--working its way sidelong\nin the sand. As real, but with sting of eternal death--this worm that\ndies not, and fire that is not quenched, within our souls or around\nthem. Eternal death, I say--sure, that, whatever creed you hold;--if\nthe old Scriptural one, Death of perpetual banishment from before\nGod's face; if the modern rationalist one, Death Eternal for _us_,\ninstant and unredeemable ending of lives wasted in misery.\n\nThis is what this unquestionably present--this, according to his\npower, _omni_-present--fiend, brings us towards, daily. He is the\nperson to be \"voted\" against, my working friend; it is worth\nsomething, having a vote against _him_, if you can get it! Which you\ncan, indeed; but not by gift from Cabinet Ministers; you must work\nwarily with your own hands, and drop sweat of heart's blood, before\nyou can record that vote effectually.\n\nOf which more in next letter.\n\n\n\n\nLETTER XI.\n\nTHE SATANIC POWER IS MAINLY TWOFOLD: THE POWER OF CAUSING FALSEHOOD\nAND THE POWER OF CAUSING PAIN. THE RESISTANCE IS BY LAW OF HONOR AND\nLAW OF DELIGHT.\n\n\n                                                   _March 19, 1857._\n\n59. You may perhaps have thought my last three or four letters mere\nrhapsodies. They are nothing of the kind; they are accurate accounts\nof literal facts, which we have to deal with daily. This thing, or\npower, opposed to God's power, and specifically called \"Mammon\" in the\nSermon on the Mount, is, in deed and in truth, a continually present\nand active enemy, properly called \"_Arch_-enemy,\" that is to say,\n\"Beginning and Prince of Enemies,\" and daily we have to record our\nvote for, or against him. Of the manner of which record we were next\nto consider.\n\n60. This enemy is always recognizable, briefly in two functions. He is\npre-eminently the Lord of _Lies_ and the Lord of _Pain_. Wherever Lies\nare, he is; wherever Pain is, he has been--so that of the Spirit of\nWisdom (who is called God's Helper, as Satan His Adversary) it is\nwritten, not only that by her Kings reign, and Princes decree justice,\nbut also that her ways are ways of Pleasantness, and all her paths\nPeace.\n\nTherefore, you will succeed, you working men, in recording your votes\nagainst this arch-enemy, precisely in the degree in which you can do\naway with falsehood and pain in your work and lives; and bring truth\ninto the one, and pleasure into the other; all education being\ndirected to make yourselves and your children _capable of Honesty_ and\n_capable of Delight_; and to rescue yourselves from iniquity and\nagony. And this is what I meant by saying in the preface to 'Unto this\nLast' that the central requirement of education consisted in giving\nhabits of gentleness and justice; \"gentleness\" (as I will show you\npresently) being the best single word I could have used to express the\ncapacity for giving and receiving true pleasure; and \"justice\" being\nsimilarly the most comprehensive word for all kind of honest dealing.\n\n61. Now, I began these letters with the purpose of explaining the\nnature of the requirements of justice first, and then those of\ngentleness, but I allowed myself to be led into that talk about the\ntheaters, not only because the thoughts could be more easily written\nas they came, but also because I was able thus to illustrate for you\nmore directly the nature of the enemy we have to deal with. You do not\nperhaps know, though I say this diffidently (for I often find working\nmen know many things which one would have thought were out of their\nway), that music was, among the Greeks, quite the first means of\neducation; and that it was so connected with their system of ethics\nand of intellectual training, that the God of Music is with them also\nthe God of Righteousness;--the God who purges and avenges iniquity,\nand contends with their Satan as represented under the form of Python,\n\"the corrupter.\" And the Greeks were incontrovertibly right in this.\nMusic is the nearest at hand, the most orderly, the most delicate, and\nthe most perfect, of all bodily pleasures; it is also the only one\nwhich is equally helpful to all the ages of man,--helpful from the\nnurse's song to her infant, to the music, unheard of others, which so\noften haunts the deathbed of pure and innocent spirits. And the action\nof the deceiving or devilish power is in _nothing_ shown quite so\ndistinctly among us at this day,--not even in our commercial\ndishonesties, nor in our social cruelties,--as in its having been able\nto take away music, as an instrument of education, altogether; and to\nenlist it almost wholly in the service of superstition on the one\nhand, and of sensuality on the other.\n\n62. This power of the Muses, then, and its proper influence over you\nworkmen, I shall eventually have much to insist upon with you; and in\ndoing so I shall take that beautiful parable of the Prodigal Son\n(which I have already referred to), and explain, as far as I know, the\nsignificance of it, and then I will take the three means of festivity,\nor wholesome human joy, therein stated,--fine dress, rich food, and\nmusic;--(\"bring forth the fairest robe for him,\"--\"bring forth the\nfatted calf, and kill it;\" \"as he drew nigh, he heard music and\ndancing\"); and I will show you how all these three things, fine dress,\nrich food, and music (including ultimately all the other arts) are\nmeant to be sources of life, and means of moral discipline, to all\nmen; and how they have all three been made, by the Devil, the means of\nguilt, dissoluteness, and death.[A] But first I must return to my\noriginal plan of these letters, and endeavor to set down for you some\nof the laws which, in a true Working Men's Parliament, must be\nordained in defense of Honesty.\n\n    [A] See 'Fors Clavigera,' Letter XXIV.\n\nOf which laws (preliminary to all others, and necessary above all\nothers), having now somewhat got my raveled threads together again,\nI will begin talk in my next letter.\n\n\n\n\nLETTER XII.\n\nTHE NECESSITY OF IMPERATIVE LAW TO THE PROSPERITY OF STATES.\n\n\n                                                   _March 20, 1867._\n\n63. I have your most interesting letter,[A] which I keep for\nreference, when I come to the consideration of its subject in its\nproper place, under the head of the abuse of Food. I do not wonder\nthat your life should be rendered unhappy by the scenes of drunkenness\nwhich you are so often compelled to witness; nor that this so gigantic\nand infectious evil should seem to you the root of the greater part of\nthe misery of our lower orders. I do not wonder that George Cruikshank\nhas warped the entire current of his thoughts and life, at once to my\nadmiration and my sorrow, from their natural field of work, that he\nmight spend them, in struggle with this fiend, for the poor lowest\npeople whom he knows so well. I wholly sympathize with you in\nindignation at the methods of temptation employed, and at the use of\nthe fortunes made by the vendors of death; and whatever immediately\napplicable legal means there might be of restricting the causes of\ndrunkenness, I should without hesitation desire to bring into\noperation. But all such appliance I consider temporary and\nprovisionary; nor, while there is record of the miracle at Cana (not\nto speak of the sacrament) can I conceive it possible, without\n(logically) the denial of the entire truth of the New Testament, to\nreprobate the use of wine as a stimulus to the powers of life.\nSupposing we did deny the words and deeds of the Founder of\nChristianity, the authority of the wisest heathens, especially that of\nPlato in the 'Laws,' is wholly against abstinence from wine; and much\nas I can believe, and as I have been endeavoring to make you believe\nalso, of the subtlety of the Devil, I do not suppose the vine to have\nbeen one of his inventions. Of this, however, more in another place.\nBy the way, was it not curious that in the 'Manchester Examiner,' in\nwhich that letter of mine on the abuse of dancing appeared, there\nchanced to be, in the next column, a paragraph giving an account of a\ngirl stabbing her betrayer in a ball-room; and another paragraph\ndescribing a Parisian character, which gives exactly the extreme type\nI wanted, for example of the abuse of Food?[B]\n\n    [A] Appendix 4.\n\n    [B] Appendix 5.\n\n64. I return, however, now to the examination of possible means for\nthe enforcement of justice, in temper and in act, as the first of\npolitical requirements. And as, in stating my conviction of the\nnecessity of certain stringent laws on this matter, I shall be in\ndirect opposition to Mr. Stuart Mill; and, more or less, in opposition\nto other professors of modern political economy, as well as to many\nhonest and active promoters of the privileges of working men (as if\nprivilege only were wanted and never restraint!), I will give you, as\nbriefly as I can, the grounds on which I am prepared to justify such\nopposition.\n\n65. When the crew of a wrecked ship escape in an open boat, and the\nboat is crowded, the provisions scanty, and the prospect of making\nland distant, laws are instantly established and enforced which no one\nthinks of disobeying. An entire equality of claim to the provisions is\nacknowledged without dispute; and an equal liability to necessary\nlabor. No man who can row is allowed to refuse his oar; no man,\nhowever much money he may have saved in his pocket, is allowed so much\nas half a biscuit beyond his proper ration. Any riotous person who\nendangered the safety of the rest would be bound, and laid in the\nbottom of the boat, without the smallest compunction, for such\nviolation of the principles of individual liberty; and, on the other\nhand, any child, or woman, or aged person, who was helpless, and\nexposed to great danger and suffering by their weakness, would receive\nmore than ordinary care and indulgence, not unaccompanied with\nunanimous self-sacrifice on the part of the laboring crew.\n\nThere is never any question under circumstances like these, of what is\nright and wrong, worthy and unworthy, wise or foolish. If there _be_\nany question, there is little hope for boat or crew. The right man is\nput at the helm; every available hand is set to the oars; the sick are\ntended, and the vicious restrained, at once, and decisively; or if\nnot, the end is near.\n\n66. Now, the circumstances of every associated group of human society,\ncontending bravely for national honors and felicity of life, differ\nonly from those thus supposed, in the greater, instead of less,\nnecessity for the establishment of restraining law. There is no point\nof difference in the difficulties to be met, nor in the rights\nreciprocally to be exercised. Vice and indolence are not less, but\nmore, injurious in a nation than in a boat's company; the modes in\nwhich they affect the interests of worthy persons being far more\ncomplex, and more easily concealed. The right of restraint, vested in\nthose who labor, over those who would impede their labor, is as\nabsolute in the large as in the small society; the equal claim to\nshare in whatever is necessary to the common life (or commonwealth) is\nas indefeasible; the claim of the sick and helpless to be cared for by\nthe strong with earnest self-sacrifice, is as pitiful and as\nimperative; the necessity that the governing authority should be in\nthe hands of a true and trained pilot is as clear and as constant. In\nnone of these conditions is there any difference between a nation and\na boat's company. The only difference is in this, that the\nimpossibility of discerning the effects of individual error and crime,\nor of counteracting them by individual effort, in the affairs of a\ngreat nation renders it tenfold more necessary than in a small society\nthat direction by law should be sternly established. Assume that your\nboat's crew is disorderly and licentious, and will, by agreement,\nsubmit to no order;--the most troublesome of them will yet be easily\ndiscerned; and the chance is that the best man among them knocks him\ndown. Common instinct of self-preservation will make the rioters put a\ngood sailor at the helm, and impulsive pity and occasional help will\nbe, by heart and hand, here and there given to visible distress. Not\nso in the ship of the realm. The most troublesome persons in _it_ are\nusually the least recognized for such, and the most active in its\nmanagement; the best men mind their own business patiently, and are\nnever thought of; the good helmsman never touches the tiller but in\nthe last extremity; and the worst forms of misery are hidden, not only\nfrom every eye, but from every thought. On the deck, the aspect is of\nCleopatra's galley--under hatches there is a slave hospital; while,\nfinally (and this is the most fatal difference of all), even the few\npersons who care to interfere energetically, with purpose of doing\ngood, can, in a large society, discern so little of the real state of\nevil to be dealt with, and judge so little of the best means of\ndealing with it, that half of their best efforts will be misdirected,\nand some may even do more harm than good. Whereas it is the sorrowful\nlaw of this universe, that evil, even unconscious and unintended,\nnever fails of _its_ effect; and in a state where the evil and the\ngood, under conditions of individual \"liberty,\" are allowed to contend\ntogether, not only every _stroke_ on the Devil's side tells--but every\n_slip_, (the mistakes of wicked men being as mischievous as their\nsuccesses); while on the side of right, there will be much direct and\nfatal defeat, and, even of its measure of victory, half will be\nfruitless.\n\n67. It is true, of course, that, in the end of ends, nothing but the\nright conquers; the prevalent thorns of wrong, at last, crackle away\nin indiscriminate flame: and of the good seed sown, one grain in a\nthousand some day comes up--and somebody lives by it; but most of our\ngreat teachers, not excepting Carlyle and Emerson themselves, are a\nlittle too encouraging in their proclamation of this comfort, not, to\nmy mind, very sufficient, when for the present our fields are full of\nnothing but darnel instead of wheat, and cockle instead of barley; and\nnone of them seem to me yet to have enough insisted on the inevitable\npower and infectiousness of all evil, and the easy and utter\nextinguishableness of good. Medicine often fails of its effect--but\npoison never: and while, in summing the observation of past life, not\nunwatchfully spent, I can truly say that I have a thousand times seen\npatience disappointed of her hope, and wisdom of her aim, I have never\nyet seen folly fruitless of mischief, nor vice conclude but in\ncalamity.\n\n68. There is, however, one important condition in national economy, in\nwhich the analogy of that of a ship's company is incomplete: namely,\nthat while labor at oar or sail is necessarily united, and can attain\nno independent good, or personal profit, the labor properly undertaken\nby the several members of a political community is necessarily, and\njustly, within certain limits, independent; and obtains for them\nindependent advantage, of which, if you will glance at the last\nparagraph of the first chapter of 'Munera Pulveris,' you will see I\nshould be the last person to propose depriving them. This great\ndifference in final condition involves necessarily much complexity in\nthe system and application of general laws; but it in no wise\nabrogates,--on the contrary, it renders yet more imperative,--the\nnecessity for the firm ordinance of such laws, which, marking the due\nlimits of independent agency, may enable it to exist in full energy,\nnot only without becoming injurious, but so as more variously and\nperfectly to promote the entire interests of the commonwealth.\n\nI will address myself therefore in my next letter to the statement of\nsome of these necessary laws.\n\n\n\n\nLETTER XIII.\n\nTHE PROPER OFFICES OF THE BISHOP AND DUKE; OR, \"OVERSEER\" AND\n\"LEADER.\"\n\n\n                                                   _March 21, 1867._\n\n69. I see, by your last letter, for which I heartily thank you, that\nyou would not sympathize with me in my sorrow for the desertion of his\nown work by George Cruikshank, that he may fight in the front of the\ntemperance ranks. But you do not know what work he has left undone,\nnor how much richer inheritance you might have received from his hand.\nIt was no more _his_ business to etch diagrams of drunkenness than it\nis mine at this moment to be writing these letters against anarchy. It\nis \"the first mild day of March\" (high time, I think, that it should\nbe!), and by rights I ought to be out among the budding banks and\nhedges, outlining sprays of hawthorn and clusters of primrose. That is\n_my_ right work; and it is not, in the inner gist and truth of it,\nright nor good, for you, or for anybody else, that Cruikshank with his\ngreat gift, and I with my weak, but yet thoroughly clear and definite\none, should both of us be tormented by agony of indignation and\ncompassion, till we are forced to give up our peace, and pleasure, and\npower; and rush down into the streets and lanes of the city, to do the\nlittle that is in the strength of our single hands against their\nuncleanliness and iniquity. But, as in a sorely besieged town, every\nman must to the ramparts, whatsoever business he leaves, so neither he\nnor I have had any choice but to leave our household stuff, and go on\ncrusade, such as we are called to; not that I mean, if Fate may be\nanywise resisted, to give up the strength of my life, as he has given\nhis; for I think he was wrong in doing so; and that he should only\nhave carried the fiery cross his appointed leagues, and then given it\nto another hand; and, for my own part, I mean these very letters to\nclose my political work for many a day; and I write them, not in any\nhope of their being at present listened to, but to disburthen my heart\nof the witness I have to bear, that I may be free to go back to my\ngarden lawns, and paint birds and flowers there.\n\n70. For these same statutes which we are to consider to-day, have\nindeed been in my mind now these fourteen years, ever since I wrote\nthe last volume of the 'Stones of Venice,' in which you will find, in\nthe long note on Modern Education, most of what I have been now in\ndetail writing to you, hinted in abstract; and, at the close of it,\nthis sentence, of which I solemnly now avouch (in thankfulness that I\nwas permitted to write it), every word: \"Finally, I hold it for\nindisputable, that the first duty of a State is to see that every\nchild born therein shall be well housed, clothed, fed, and educated,\ntill it attain years of discretion. But in order to the effecting this\nthe Government must have an authority over the people of which we now\ndo not so much as dream.\"\n\nThat authority I did not then endeavor to define, for I knew all such\nassertions would be useless, and that the necessarily resultant outcry\nwould merely diminish my influence in other directions. But now I do\nnot care about influence any more, it being only my concern to say\ntruly that which I know, and, if it may be, get some quiet life, yet,\namong the fields in the evening shadow.\n\n71. There is, I suppose, no word which men are prouder of the right to\nattach to their names, or more envious of others who bear it, when\nthey themselves may not, than the word \"noble.\" Do you know what it\noriginally meant, and always, in the right use of it, means? It means\na \"known\" person; one who has risen far enough above others to draw\nmen's eyes to him, and to be known (honorably) for such and such an\none. \"Ignoble,\" on the other hand, is derived from the same root as\nthe word \"ignorance.\" It means an unknown, inglorious person. And no\nmore singular follies have been committed by weak human creatures than\nthose which have been caused by the instinct, pure and simple, of\nescaping from this obscurity. Instinct, which, corrupted, will\nhesitate at no means, good or evil, of satisfying itself with\nnotoriety--instinct, nevertheless, which, like all other natural ones,\nhas a true and pure purpose, and ought always in a worthy way to be\nsatisfied.\n\nAll men ought to be in this sense \"noble\"; known of each other, and\ndesiring to be known. And the first law which a nation, desiring to\nconquer all the devices of the Father of Lies, should establish among\nits people, is that they _shall_ be so known.\n\n72. Will you please now read Sec. 22 of 'Sesame and Lilies'? The\nreviewers in the ecclesiastical journals laughed at it, as a rhapsody,\nwhen the book came out; none having the slightest notion of what I\nmeant: (nor, indeed, do I well see how it could be otherwise!).\nNevertheless, I meant precisely and literally what is there said,\nnamely, that a bishop's duty being to watch over the souls of his\npeople, and _give_ account of every one of them, it becomes\npractically necessary for him first to _get_ some account of their\nbodies. Which he was wont to do in the early days of Christianity by\nhelp of a person called \"deacon\" or \"ministering servant,\" whose name\nis still retained among preliminary ecclesiastical dignities, vainly\nenough! Putting, however, all questions of forms and names aside, the\nthing actually needing to be done is this--that over every hundred\n(more or less) of the families composing a Christian State, there\nshould be appointed an overseer, or bishop, to render account, to the\nState, of the life of every individual in those families; and to have\ncare both of their interest and conduct to such an extent as they may\nbe willing to admit, or as their faults may justify: so that it may be\nimpossible for any person, however humble, to suffer from unknown\nwant, or live in unrecognized crime;--such help and observance being\nrendered without officiousness either of interference or inquisition\n(the limits of both being determined by national law), but with the\npatient and gentle watchfulness which true Christian pastors now\nexercise over their flocks; only with a higher legal authority\npresently to be defined, of interference on due occasion.\n\nAnd with this farther function, that such overseers shall be not only\nthe pastors, but the biographers, of their people; a written statement\nof the principal events in the life of each family being annually\nrequired to be rendered by them to a superior State Officer. These\nrecords, laid up in public offices, would soon furnish indications of\nthe families whom it would be advantageous to the nation to advance in\nposition, or distinguish with honor, and aid by such reward as it\nshould be the object of every Government to distribute no less\npunctually, and far more frankly, than it distributes punishment:\n(compare 'Munera Pulveris,' Essay IV., in paragraph on Critic Law),\nwhile the mere fact of permanent record being kept of every event of\nimportance, whether disgraceful or worthy of praise, in each family,\nwould of itself be a deterrent from crime, and a stimulant to\nwell-deserving conduct, far beyond mere punishment or reward.\n\n73. Nor need you think that there would be anything in such a system\nun-English, or tending to espionage. No uninvited visits should ever\nbe made in any house, unless law had been violated; nothing recorded,\nagainst its will, of any family, but what was inevitably known of its\npublicly visible conduct, and the results of that conduct. What else\nwas written should be only by the desire, and from the communications,\nof its head. And in a little while it would come to be felt that the\ntrue history of a nation was indeed not of its wars, but of its\nhouseholds; and the desire of men would rather be to obtain some\nconspicuous place in these honorable annals, than to shrink behind\nclosed shutters from public sight. Until at last, George Herbert's\ngrand word of command would hold not only on the conscience, but the\nactual system and outer economy of life,\n\n  \"Think the King sees thee still, for _his_ King does.\"\n\n74. Secondly, above these bishops or pastors, who are only to be\noccupied in offices of familiar supervision and help, should be\nappointed higher officers of State, having executive authority over as\nlarge districts as might be conveniently (according to the number and\ncircumstances of their inhabitants) committed to their care; officers\nwho, according to the reports of the pastors, should enforce or\nmitigate the operation of too rigid general law, and determine\nmeasures exceptionally necessary for public advantage. For instance,\nthe general law being that all children of the operative classes, at a\ncertain age, should be sent to public schools, these superior officers\nshould have power, on the report of the pastors, to dispense with the\nattendance of children who had sick parents to take charge of, or\nwhose home-life seemed to be one of better advantage for them than\nthat of the common schools; or who, for any other like cause, might\njustifiably claim remission. And it being the general law that the\nentire body of the public should contribute to the cost, and divide\nthe profits, of all necessary public works and undertakings, as roads,\nmines, harbor protections, and the like, and that nothing of this kind\nshould be permitted to be in the hands of private speculators, it\nshould be the duty of the district officer to collect whatever\ninformation was accessible respecting such sources of public profit;\nand to represent the circumstances in Parliament: and then, with\nParliamentary authority, but on his own sole personal responsibility,\nto see that such enterprises were conducted honestly and with due\nenergy and order.\n\nThe appointment to both these offices should be by election, and for\nlife; by what forms of election shall be matter of inquiry, after we\nhave determined some others of the necessary constitutional laws.\n\n75. I do not doubt but that you are already beginning to think it was\nwith good reason I held my peace these fourteen years,--and that, for\nany good likely to be done by speaking, I might as well have held it\naltogether!\n\nIt may be so: but merely to complete and explain my own work, it is\nnecessary that I should say these things finally; and I believe that\nthe imminent danger to which we are now in England exposed by the\ngradually accelerated fall of our aristocracy (wholly their own\nfault), and the substitution of money-power for their martial one; and\nby the correspondingly imminent prevalence of mob violence here, as in\nAmerica; together with the continually increasing chances of insane\nwar, founded on popular passion, whether of pride, fear, or\nacquisitiveness,--all these dangers being further darkened and\ndegraded by the monstrous forms of vice and selfishness which the\nappliances of recent wealth, and of vulgar mechanical art, make\npossible to the million,--will soon bring us into a condition in which\nmen will be glad to listen to almost any words but those of a\ndemagogue, and to seek any means of safety rather than those in which\nthey have lately trusted. So, with your good leave, I will say my say\nto the end, mock at it who may.\n\nP.S.--I take due note of the regulations of trade proposed in your\nletter just received[A]--all excellent. I shall come to them\npresently, \"Cash payment\" above all. You may write that on your\ntrade-banners in letters of gold, wherever you would have them raised\nvictoriously.\n\n    [A] Appendix 6.\n\n\n\n\nLETTER XIV.\n\nTHE FIRST GROUP OF ESSENTIAL LAWS--AGAINST THEFT BY FALSE WORK, AND BY\nBANKRUPTCY.--NECESSARY PUBLICITY OF ACCOUNTS.\n\n\n                                                   _March 26, 1867._\n\n76. I feel much inclined to pause at this point, to answer the kind of\nquestions and objections which I know must be rising in your mind,\nrespecting the authority supposed to be lodged in the persons of the\nofficers just specified. But I can neither define, nor justify to you,\nthe powers I would desire to see given to them, till I state to you\nthe kind of laws they would have to enforce: of which the first group\nshould be directed to the prevention of all kinds of thieving; but\nchiefly of the occult and polite methods of it; and, of all occult\nmethods, chiefly, the making and selling of bad goods. No form of\ntheft is so criminal as this--none so deadly to the State. If you\nbreak into a man's house and steal a hundred pounds' worth of plate,\nhe knows his loss, and there is an end (besides that you take your\nrisk of punishment for your gain, like a man). And if you do it\nbravely and openly, and habitually live by such inroad, you may retain\nnearly every moral and manly virtue, and become a heroic rider and\nreiver, and hero of song. But if you swindle me out of twenty\nshillings' worth of quality on each of a hundred bargains, I lose my\nhundred pounds all the same, and I get a hundred untrustworthy\narticles besides, which will fail me and injure me in all manner of\nways, when I least expect it; and you, having done your thieving\nbasely, are corrupted by the guilt of it to the very heart's core.\n\n77. This is the first thing, therefore, which your general laws must\nbe set to punish, fiercely, immitigably, to the utter prevention and\nextinction of it, or there is no hope for you. No religion that ever\nwas preached on this earth of God's rounding ever proclaimed any\nsalvation to sellers of bad goods. If the Ghost that is in you,\nwhatever the essence of it, leaves your hand a juggler's, and your\nheart a cheat's, it is not a Holy Ghost, be assured of that. And for\nthe rest, all political economy, as well as all higher virtue, depends\n_first on sound work_.\n\nLet your laws, then, I say, in the beginning, be set to secure this.\nYou cannot make punishment too stern for subtle knavery. Keep no truce\nwith this enemy, whatever pardon you extend to more generous ones. For\nlight weights and false measures, or for proved adulteration or\ndishonest manufacture of article, the penalty should be simply\nconfiscation of goods and sending out of the country. The kind of\nperson who desires prosperity by such practices could not be made to\n\"emigrate\" too speedily. What to do with him in the place you appoint\nto be blessed by his presence, we will in time consider.\n\n78. Under such penalty, however, and yet more under the pressure of\nsuch a right public opinion as could pronounce and enforce such\npenalty, I imagine that sham articles would become speedily as rare as\nsound ones are now. The chief difficulty in the matter would be to fix\nyour standard. This would have to be done by the guild of every trade\nin its own manner, and within certain easily recognizable limits, and\nthis fixing of standard would necessitate much simplicity in the forms\nand kinds of articles sold. You could only warrant a certain kind of\nglazing or painting in china, a certain quality of leather or cloth,\nbricks of a certain clay, loaves of a defined mixture of meal.\nAdvisable improvements or varieties in manufacture would have to be\nexamined and accepted by the trade guild: when so accepted, they\nwould be announced in public reports; and all puffery and\nself-proclamation, on the part of tradesmen, absolutely forbidden, as\nmuch as the making of any other kind of noise or disturbance.\n\n79. But observe, this law is only to have force over tradesmen whom I\nsuppose to have joined voluntarily in carrying out a better system of\ncommerce. Outside of their guild, they would have to leave the rogue\nto puff and cheat as he chose, and the public to be gulled as they\nchose. All that is necessary is that the said public should clearly\nknow the shops in which they could get warranted articles; and, as\nclearly, those in which they bought at their own risk.\n\nAnd the above-named penalty of confiscation of goods should of course\nbe enforced only against dishonest members of the trade guild. If\npeople chose to buy of those who had openly refused to join an honest\nsociety, they should be permitted to do so, at their pleasure, and\nperil: and this for two reasons,--the first, that it is always\nnecessary, in enacting strict law, to leave some safety valve for\noutlet of irrepressible vice (nearly all the stern lawgivers of old\ntime erred by oversight in this; so that the morbid elements of the\nState, which it should be allowed to get rid of in a cutaneous and\nopenly curable manner, were thrown inwards, and corrupted its\nconstitution, and broke all down);--the second, that operations of\ntrade and manufacture conducted under, and guarded by, severe law,\nought always to be subject to the stimulus of such erratic external\ningenuity as cannot be tested by law, or would be hindered from its\nfull exercise by the dread of it; not to speak of the farther need of\nextending all possible indulgence to foreign traders who might wish to\nexercise their industries here without liability to the surveillance\nof our trade guilds.\n\n80. Farther, while for all articles warranted by the guild (as above\nsupposed) the prices should be annually fixed for the trade throughout\nthe kingdom; and the producing workman's wages fixed, so as to define\nthe master's profits within limits admitting only such variation as\nthe nature of the given article of sale rendered inevitable;--yet, in\nthe production of other classes of articles, whether by skill of\napplied handicraft, or fineness of material above the standard of the\nguild, attaining, necessarily, values above its assigned prices, every\nfirm should be left free to make its own independent efforts and\narrangements with its workmen, subject always to the same penalty, if\nit could be proved to have consistently described, or offered,\nanything to the public for what it was not: and finally, the state of\nthe affairs of every firm should be annually reported to the guild,\nand its books laid open to inspection, for guidance in the regulation\nof prices in the subsequent year; and any firm whose liabilities\nexceeded its assets by a hundred pounds should be forthwith declared\nbankrupt. And I will anticipate what I have to say in succeeding\nletters so far as to tell you that I would have this condition extend\nto every firm in the country, large or small, and of whatever rank in\nbusiness. And thus you perceive, my friend, I shall not have to\ntrouble you or myself much with deliberations respecting commercial\n\"panics,\" nor to propose legislative cures for _them_, by any\nlaxatives or purgatives of paper currency, or any other change of\npecuniary diet.\n\n\n\n\nLETTER XV.\n\nTHE NATURE OF THEFT BY UNJUST PROFITS.--CRIME CAN FINALLY BE ARRESTED\nONLY BY EDUCATION.\n\n\n                                                       _29th March._\n\n81. The first methods of polite robbery, by dishonest manufacture and\nby debt, of which we have been hitherto speaking, are easily enough to\nbe dealt with and ended, when once men have a mind to end them. But\nthe third method of polite robbery, by dishonest _acquisition_, has\nmany branches, and is involved among honest arts of acquisition, so\nthat it is difficult to repress the one without restraining the other.\n\nObserve, first, large fortunes cannot honestly be made by the work of\nany _one_ man's hands, or head. If his work benefits multitudes, and\ninvolves position of high trust, it may be (I do not say that it _is_)\nexpedient to reward him with great wealth or estate; but fortune of\nthis kind is freely given in gratitude for benefit, not as repayment\nfor labor. Also, men of peculiar genius in any art, if the public can\nenjoy the product of their genius, may set it at almost any price they\nchoose; but this, I will show you when I come to speak of art, is\nunlawful on their part and ruinous to their own powers. Genius must\nnot be sold; the sale of it involves, in a transcendental, but\nperfectly true, sense, the guilt both of simony and prostitution. Your\nlabor only may be sold; your soul must not.\n\n82. Now, by fair pay for fair labor, according to the rank of it, a\nman can obtain means of comfortable, or if he needs it, refined life.\nBut he cannot obtain large fortune. Such fortunes as are now the\nprizes of commerce can be made only in one of three ways:--\n\n(1.) By obtaining command over the labor of multitudes of other men\nand taxing it for our own profit.\n\n(2.) By treasure-trove,--as of mines, useful vegetable products, and\nthe like,--in circumstances putting them under our own exclusive\ncontrol.\n\n(3.) By speculation, (commercial gambling).\n\nThe first two of these means of obtaining riches are, in some forms\nand within certain limits, lawful, and advantageous to the State. The\nthird is entirely detrimental to it; for in all cases of profit\nderived from speculation, at best, what one man gains another loses;\nand the net results to the State is zero, (pecuniarily,) with the loss\nof the time and ingenuity spent in the transaction; besides the\ndisadvantage involved in the discouragement of the losing party, and\nthe corrupted moral natures of both. This is the result of speculation\nat its best. At its worst, not only B loses what A gains (having taken\nhis fair risk of such loss for his fair chance of gain), but C and D,\nwho never had any chance at all, are drawn in by B's fall, and the\nfinal result is that A sets up his carriage on the collected sum\nwhich was once the means of living to a dozen families.\n\n83. Nor is this all. For while real commerce is founded on real\nnecessities or uses, and limited by these, speculation, of which the\nobject is merely gain, seeks to excite imaginary necessities and\npopular desires, in order to gather its temporary profit from the\nsupply of them. So that not only the persons who lend their money to\nit will be finally robbed, but the work done with their money will be,\nfor the most part, useless, and thus the entire body of the public\ninjured as well as the persons concerned in the transaction. Take, for\ninstance, the architectural decorations of railways throughout the\nkingdom,--representing many millions of money for which no farthing of\ndividend can ever be forthcoming. The public will not be induced to\npay the smallest fraction of higher fare to Rochester or Dover because\nthe ironwork of the bridge which carries them over the Thames is\ncovered with floral cockades, and the piers of it edged with\nornamental cornices. All that work is simply put there by the builders\nthat they may put the percentage upon it into their own pockets; and,\nthe rest of the money being thrown into that floral form, there is an\nend of it, as far as the shareholders are concerned. Millions upon\nmillions have thus been spent, within the last twenty years, on\nornamental arrangements of zigzag bricks, black and blue tiles,\ncast-iron foliage, and the like; of which millions, as I said, not a\npenny can ever return into the shareholders' pockets, nor contribute\nto public speed or safety on the line. It is all sunk forever in\nornamental architecture, and (trust me for this!) _all that\narchitecture is bad_. As such, it had incomparably better not have\nbeen built. Its only result will be to corrupt what capacity of taste\nor right pleasure in such work we have yet left to us! And consider a\nlittle, what other kind of result than that might have been attained\nif all those millions had been spent usefully: say, in buying land for\nthe people, or building good houses for them, or (if it had been\nimperatively required to be spent decoratively) in laying out gardens\nand parks for them,--or buying noble works of art for their permanent\npossession,--or, best of all, establishing frequent public schools and\nlibraries. Count what those lost millions would have so accomplished\nfor you! But you left the affair to \"supply and demand,\" and the\nBritish public had not brains enough to \"demand\" land, or lodging, or\nbooks. It \"demanded\" cast-iron cockades and zigzag cornices, and is\n\"supplied\" with them, to its beatitude for evermore.\n\n84. Now, the theft we first spoke of, by falsity of workmanship or\nmaterial, is, indeed, so far worse than these thefts by dishonest\nacquisition, that there is no possible excuse for it on the ground of\nself-deception; while many speculative thefts are committed by persons\nwho really mean to do no harm, but think the system on the whole a\nfair one, and do the best they can in it for themselves. But in the\nreal fact of the crime, when consciously committed, in the numbers\nreached by its injury, in the degree of suffering it causes to those\nwhom it ruins, in the baseness of its calculated betrayal of implicit\ntrust, in the yet more perfect vileness of the obtaining such trust\nby misrepresentation, only that it may be betrayed, and in the\nimpossibility that the crime should be at all committed, except by\npersons of good position and large knowledge of the world--what manner\nof theft is so wholly unpardonable, so inhuman, so contrary to every\nlaw and instinct which binds or animates society?\n\nAnd then consider farther, how many of the carriages that glitter in\nour streets are driven, and how many of the stately houses that gleam\namong our English fields are inhabited, by this kind of thief!\n\n85. I happened to be reading this morning (29th March) some portions\nof the Lent services, and I came to a pause over the familiar words,\n\"And with Him they crucified two thieves.\" Have you ever considered\n(I speak to you now as a professing Christian), why, in the\naccomplishment of the \"numbering among transgressors,\" the\ntransgressors chosen should have been especially thieves--not\nmurderers, nor, as far as we know, sinners by any gross violence? Do\nyou observe how the sin of theft is again and again indicated as the\nchiefly antagonistic one to the law of Christ? \"This he said, not that\nhe cared for the poor, but because he was a thief, and had the bag\"\n(of Judas). And again, though Barabbas was a leader of sedition, and a\nmurderer besides,--(that the popular election might be in all respects\nperfect)--yet St. John, in curt and conclusive account of him, fastens\nagain on the theft. \"Then cried they all again saying, Not this man,\nbut Barabbas. Now Barabbas was a robber.\" I believe myself the reason\nto be that theft is indeed, in its subtle forms, the most complete and\nexcuseless of human crimes. Sins of violence usually are committed\nunder sudden or oppressive temptation: they may be the madness of\nmoments; or they may be apparently the only means of extrication from\ncalamity. In other cases, they are the diseased acts or habits of\nlower and brutified natures.[A] But theft involving deliberative\nintellect, and absence of passion, is the purest type of wilful\niniquity, in persons capable of doing right. Which being so, it seems\nto be fast becoming the practice of modern society to crucify its\nChrist indeed, as willingly as ever, in the persons of His poor; but\nby no means now to crucify its thieves beside Him! It elevates its\nthieves after another fashion; sets them upon a hill, that their light\nmay shine before men and that all may see their good works, and\nglorify their Father, in--the Opposite of Heaven.\n\n    [A] See the analysis of the moral system of Dante, respecting\n    punishment, given in 'Fors Clavigera,' Letter XXIII.\n\n86. I think your trade parliament will have to put an end to this kind\nof business somehow! But it cannot be done by laws merely, where the\ninterests and circumstances are so extended and complex. Nay, even as\nregards lower and more defined crimes, the assigned punishment is not\nto be thought of as a preventive means; but only as the seal of\nopinion set by society on the fact. Crime cannot be hindered by\npunishment; it will always find some shape and outlet, unpunishable or\nunclosed. Crime can only be truly hindered by letting no man grow up a\ncriminal--by taking away the _will_ to commit sin; not by mere\npunishment of its commission. Crime, small and great, can only be\ntruly stayed by education--not the education of the intellect only,\nwhich is, on some men, wasted, and for others mischievous; but\neducation of the heart, which is alike good and necessary for all. So,\non this matter, I will try in my next letter to say one or two things\nof which the silence has kept my own heart heavy this many a day.\n\n\n\n\nLETTER XVI.\n\nOF PUBLIC EDUCATION IRRESPECTIVE OF CLASS-DISTINCTION. IT CONSISTS\nESSENTIALLY IN GIVING HABITS OF MERCY, AND HABITS OF TRUTH.\n(GENTLENESS[A] AND JUSTICE.)\n\n\n                                                 _March 30th, 1867._\n\n87. Thank you for sending me the pamphlet containing the account of\nthe meeting of clergy and workmen, and of the reasonings which there\ntook place. I cannot promise you that I shall read much of them, for\nthe question to my mind most requiring discussion and explanation is\nnot, why workmen don't go to church, but--why other people do.\nHowever, this I know, that if among our many spiritual teachers, there\nare indeed any who heartily and literally believe that the wisdom they\nhave to teach \"is more precious than rubies, and all the things thou\ncanst desire are not to be compared unto her,\" and if, so believing,\nthey will further dare to affront their congregations by the\nassertion; and plainly tell them they are not to hunt for rubies or\ngold any more, at their peril, till they have gained that which cannot\nbe gotten for gold, nor silver weighed for the price thereof,--such\nbelievers, so preaching, and refusing to preach otherwise till they\nare in that attended to, will never want congregations, both of\nworking men, and every other kind of men.\n\n    [A] \"Mercy,\" in its full sense, means delight in perceiving\n    nobleness, or in doing kindness. Compare Sec. 50.\n\n88. Did you ever hear of anything else so ill-named as the phantom\ncalled the \"Philosopher's Stone\"? A talisman that shall turn base\nmetal into precious metal, nature acknowledges not; nor would any but\nfools seek after it. But a talisman to turn base souls into noble\nsouls, nature has given us! and that is a \"Philosopher's Stone\"\nindeed, but it is a stone which the builders refuse.\n\n89. If there were two valleys in California or Australia, with two\ndifferent kinds of gravel in the bottom of them; and in the one stream\nbed you could dig up, occasionally and by good fortune, nuggets of\ngold; and in the other stream bed, certainly and without hazard, you\ncould dig up little caskets, containing talismans which gave length of\ndays and peace; and alabaster vases of precious balms, which were\nbetter than the Arabian Dervish's ointment, and made not only the eyes\nto see, but the mind to know, whatever it would--I wonder in which of\nthe stream beds there would be most diggers?\n\n90. \"Time is money\"--so say your practised merchants and economists.\nNone of them, however, I fancy, as they draw towards death, find that\nthe reverse is true, and that \"money is time\"? Perhaps it might be\nbetter for them, in the end, if they did not turn so much of their\ntime into money, lest, perchance, they also turn Eternity into it!\nThere are other things, however, which in the same sense are money, or\ncan be changed into it, as well as time. Health is money, wit is\nmoney, knowledge is money; and all your health, and wit, and knowledge\nmay be changed for gold; and the happy goal so reached, of a sick,\ninsane, and blind, auriferous old age; but the gold cannot be changed\nin its turn back into health and wit.\n\n91. \"Time is money;\" the words tingle in my ears so that I can't go on\nwriting. Is it nothing better, then? If we could thoroughly understand\nthat time was--_itself_,--would it not be more to the purpose? A thing\nof which loss or gain was absolute loss, and perfect gain. And that it\nwas expedient also to buy health and knowledge with money, if so\npurchasable; but not to buy money with _them_?\n\nAnd purchasable they are at the beginning of life, though not at its\nclose. Purchasable, always, for others, if not for ourselves. You can\nbuy, and cheaply, life, endless life, according to your Christian's\ncreed--(there's a bargain for you!) but--long years of knowledge, and\npeace, and power, and happiness of love--these assuredly and\nirrespectively of any creed or question,--for all those desolate and\nhaggard children about your streets.\n\n92. \"That is not political economy, however.\" Pardon me; the\nall-comfortable saying, \"What he layeth out, it shall be paid him\nagain,\" is quite literally true in matters of education; no money seed\ncan be sown with so sure and large return at harvest-time as that;\nonly of this money-seed, more than of flesh-seed, it is utterly true,\n\"That which thou sowest is not quickened except it _die_.\" You must\nforget your money, and every other material interest, and educate for\neducation's sake only! or the very good you try to bestow will become\nvenomous, and that and your money will be lost together.\n\n93. And this has been the real cause of failure in our efforts for\neducation hitherto--whether from above or below. There is no honest\ndesire for the thing itself. The cry for it among the lower orders is\nbecause they think that, when once they have got it, they must become\nupper orders. There is a strange notion in the mob's mind now-a-days\n(including all our popular economists and educators, as we most justly\nmay, under that brief term \"mob\"), that _everybody_ can be uppermost;\nor at least, that a state of general scramble, in which everybody in\nhis turn should come to the top, is a proper Utopian constitution; and\nthat, once give every lad a good education, and he cannot but come to\nride in his carriage (the methods of supply of coachmen and footmen\nnot being contemplated). And very sternly I say to you--and say from\nsure knowledge--that a man had better not know how to read and write,\nthan receive education on such terms.\n\n94. The first condition under which it can be given usefully is, that\nit should be clearly understood to be no means of getting on in the\nworld, but a means of staying pleasantly in your place there. And the\nfirst elements of State education should be calculated equally for the\nadvantage of every order of person composing the State. From the\nlowest to the highest class, every child born in this island should be\nrequired by law to receive these general elements of human discipline,\nand to be baptized--not with a drop of water on its forehead--but in\nthe cloud and sea of heavenly wisdom and of earthly power.\n\nAnd the elements of this general State education should be briefly\nthese:\n\n95. First--The body must be made as beautiful and perfect in its youth\nas it can be, wholly irrespective of ulterior purpose. If you mean\nafterwards to set the creature to business which will degrade its body\nand shorten its life, first, I should say, simply,--you had better let\nsuch business alone;--but if you must have it done, somehow, yet let\nthe living creature, whom you mean to kill, get the full strength of\nits body first, and taste the joy, and bear the beauty of youth. After\nthat, poison it, if you will. Economically, the arrangement is a wiser\none, for it will take longer in the killing than if you began with it\nyounger; and you will get an excess of work out of it which will more\nthan pay for its training.\n\nTherefore, first teach--as I have said in the preface to 'Unto this\nLast'--\"The Laws of Health, and exercises enjoined by them;\" and, to\nthis end, your schools must be in fresh country, and amidst fresh air,\nand have great extents of land attached to them in permanent estate.\nRiding, running, all the honest, personal exercises of offense and\ndefense, and music, should be the primal heads of this bodily\neducation.\n\n96. Next to these bodily accomplishments, the two great mental graces\nshould be taught, Reverence and Compassion: not that these are in a\nliteral sense to be \"taught,\" for they are innate in every well-born\nhuman creature, but they have to be developed exactly as the strength\nof the body must be, by deliberate and constant exercise. I never\nunderstood why Goethe (in the plan of education in 'Wilhelm Meister')\nsays that reverence is not innate, but must be taught from without; it\nseems to me so fixedly a function of the human spirit, that if men can\nget nothing else to reverence they will worship a fool, or a stone, or\na vegetable.[A] But to teach reverence rightly is to attach it to the\nright persons and things; first, by setting over your youth masters\nwhom they cannot but love and respect; next, by gathering for them,\nout of past history, whatever has been most worthy in human deeds and\nhuman passion; and leading them continually to dwell upon such\ninstances, making this the principal element of emotional excitement\nto them; and, lastly, by letting them justly feel, as far as may be,\nthe smallness of their own powers and knowledge, as compared with the\nattainments of others.\n\n    [A] By steady preaching against it, one may quench reverence,\n    and bring insolence to its height; but the instinct cannot be\n    wholly uprooted.\n\n97. Compassion, on the other hand, is to be taught chiefly by making\nit a point of honor, collaterally with courage, and in the same rank\n(as indeed the complement and evidence of courage), so that, in the\ncode of unwritten school law, it shall be held as shameful to have\ndone a cruel thing as a cowardly one. All infliction of pain on weaker\ncreatures is to be stigmatized as unmanly crime; and every possible\nopportunity taken to exercise the youths in offices of some practical\nhelp, and to acquaint them with the realities of the distress which,\nin the joyfulness of entering into life, it is so difficult, for those\nwho have not seen home suffering, to conceive.\n\n98. Reverence, then, and compassion, we are to teach primarily, and\nwith these, as the bond and guardian of them, truth of spirit and\nword, of thought and sight. Truth, earnest and passionate, sought for\nlike a treasure, and kept like a crown.\n\nThis teaching of truth as a habit will be the chief work the master\nhas to do; and it will enter into all parts of education. First, you\nmust accustom the children to close accuracy of statement; this both\nas a principle of honor, and as an accomplishment of language, making\nthem try always who shall speak truest, both as regards the fact he\nhas to relate or express (not concealing or exaggerating), and as\nregards the precision of the words he expresses it in, thus making\ntruth (which, indeed, it is) the test of perfect language, and giving\nthe intensity of a moral purpose to the study and art of words: then\ncarrying this accuracy into all habits of thought and observation\nalso, so as always to _think_ of things as they truly are, and to see\nthem as they truly are, as far as in us rests. And it does rest much\nin our power, for all false thoughts and seeings come mainly of our\nthinking of what we have no business with, and looking for things we\nwant to see, instead of things that ought to be seen.\n\n99. \"Do not talk but of what you know; do not think but of what you\nhave materials to think justly upon; and do not look for things only\nthat you like, when there are others to be seen\"--this is the lesson\nto be taught to our youth, and inbred in them; and that mainly by our\nown example and continence. Never teach a child anything of which you\nare not yourself sure; and, above all, if you feel anxious to force\nanything into its mind in tender years, that the virtue of youth and\nearly association may fasten it there, be sure it is no lie which you\nthus sanctify. There is always more to be taught of absolute,\nincontrovertible knowledge, open to its capacity, than any child can\nlearn; there is no need to teach it anything doubtful. Better that it\nshould be ignorant of a thousand truths, than have consecrated in its\nheart a single lie.\n\n100. And for this, as well as for many other reasons, the principal\nsubjects of education, after history, ought to be natural science and\nmathematics; but with respect to these studies, your schools will\nrequire to be divided into three groups: one for children who will\nprobably have to live in cities, one for those who will live in the\ncountry, and one for those who will live at sea; the schools for these\nlast, of course, being always placed on the coast. And for children\nwhose life is to be in cities, the subjects of study should be, as\nfar as their disposition will allow of it, mathematics and the arts;\nfor children who are to live in the country, natural history of birds,\ninsects, and plants, together with agriculture taught practically; and\nfor children who are to be seamen, physical geography, astronomy, and\nthe natural history of sea-fish and sea-birds.\n\n101. This, then, being the general course and material of education\nfor all children, observe farther, that in the preface to 'Unto this\nLast' I said that every child, besides passing through this course,\nwas at school to learn \"the calling by which it was to live.\" And it\nmay perhaps appear to you that after, or even in the early stages of\neducation such as this above described, there are many callings which,\nhowever much called to them, the children might not willingly\ndetermine to learn or live by. \"Probably,\" you may say, \"after they\nhave learned to ride, and fence, and sing, and know birds and flowers,\nit will be little to their liking to make themselves into tailors,\ncarpenters, shoemakers, blacksmiths, and the like.\" And I cannot but\nagree with you as to the exceeding probability of some such reluctance\non their part, which will be a very awkward state of things indeed,\n(since we can by no means get on without tailoring and shoemaking,)\nand one to be meditated upon very seriously in next letter.\n\n102. P.S.--Thank you for sending me your friend's letter about Gustave\nDore; he is wrong, however, in thinking there is any good in those\nillustrations of 'Elaine.' I had intended to speak of them afterwards,\nfor it is to my mind quite as significant--almost as awful--a sign of\nwhat is going on in the midst of us, that our great English poet\nshould have suffered his work to be thus contaminated, as that the\nlower Evangelicals, never notable for sense in the arts, should have\ngot their Bibles dishonored. Those 'Elaine' illustrations are just as\nimpure as anything else that Dore has done; but they are also vapid,\nand without any one merit whatever in point of art. The illustrations\nto the 'Contes Drolatiques' are full of power and invention; but those\nto 'Elaine' are merely and simply stupid; theatrical betises, with\nthe taint of the charnel-house on them besides.\n\n\n\n\nLETTER XVII.\n\nTHE RELATIONS OF EDUCATION TO POSITION IN LIFE.\n\n\n                                                    _April 3, 1867._\n\n103. I am not quite sure that you will feel the awkwardness of the\ndilemma I got into at the end of last letter, as much as I do myself.\nYou working men have been crowing and peacocking at such a rate\nlately; and setting yourselves forth so confidently for the cream of\nsociety, and the top of the world, that perhaps you will not\nanticipate any of the difficulties which suggest themselves to a\nthoroughbred Tory and Conservative, like me. Perhaps you will expect a\nyouth properly educated--a good rider--musician--and well-grounded\nscholar in natural philosophy, to think it a step of promotion when he\nhas to go and be made a tailor of, or a coalheaver? If you do, I\nshould very willingly admit that you might be right, and go on to the\nfarther development of my notions without pausing at this\nstumbling-block, were it not that, unluckily, all the wisest men whose\nsayings I ever heard or read, agree in expressing (one way or another)\njust such contempt for those useful occupations, as I dread on the\npart of my foolishly refined scholars. Shakespeare and Chaucer,--Dante\nand Virgil,--Horace and Pindar,--Homer, AEschylus, and Plato,--all the\nmen of any age or country who seem to have had Heaven's music on their\nlips, agree in their scorn of mechanic life. And I imagine that the\nfeeling of prudent Englishmen, and sensible as well as sensitive\nEnglishwomen, on reading my last letter, would mostly be--\"Is the man\nmad, or laughing at us, to propose educating the working classes this\nway? He could not, if his wild scheme were possible, find a better\nmethod of making them acutely wretched.\"\n\n104. It may be so, my sensible and polite friends; and I am heartily\nwilling, as well as curious, to hear you develop your own scheme of\noperative education, so only that it be universal, orderly, and\ncareful. I do not say that I shall be prepared to advocate my\nathletics and philosophies instead. Only, observe what you admit, or\nimply, in bringing forward your possibly wiser system. You imply that\na certain portion of mankind must be employed in degrading work; and\nthat, to fit them for this work, it is necessary to limit their\nknowledge, their active powers, and their enjoyments, from childhood\nupwards, so that they may not be able to conceive of any state better\nthan the one they were born in, nor possess any knowledge or\nacquirements inconsistent with the coarseness, or disturbing the\nmonotony, of their vulgar occupation. And by their labor in this\ncontracted state of mind, we superior beings are to be maintained; and\nalways to be curtseyed to by the properly ignorant little girls, and\ncapped by the properly ignorant little boys, whenever we pass by.\n\n105. Mind, I do not say that this is _not_ the right state of things.\nOnly, if it be, you need not be so over-particular about the\nslave-trade, it seems to me. What is the use of arguing so\npertinaciously that a black's skull will hold as much as a white's,\nwhen you are declaring in the same breath that a white's skull must\nnot hold as much as it can, or it will be the worse for him? It does\nnot appear to me at all a profound state of slavery to be whipped into\ndoing a piece of low work that I don't like; but it is a very profound\nstate of slavery to be kept, myself, low in the forehead, that I may\nnot dislike low work.\n\n106. You see, my friend, the dilemma is really an awkward one,\nwhichever way you look at it. But, what is still worse, I am not\npuzzled only, at this part of my scheme, about the boys I shall have\nto make _workmen_ of; I am just as much puzzled about the boys I\nshall have to make _nothing_ of! Grant, that by hook or crook, by\nreason or rattan, I persuade a certain number of the roughest ones\ninto some serviceable business, and get coats and shoes made for the\nrest,--what is the business of \"the rest\" to be? Naturally, according\nto the existing state of things, one supposes they are to belong to\nsome of the gentlemanly professions; to be soldiers, lawyers, doctors,\nor clergymen. But alas, I shall not want any soldiers of special skill\nor pugnacity. _All_ my boys will be soldiers. So far from wanting any\nlawyers, of the kind that live by talking, I shall have the strongest\npossible objection to their appearance in the country. For doctors, I\nshall always entertain a profound respect; but when I get my athletic\neducation fairly established, of what help to them will my respect be?\nThey will all starve! And for clergymen, it is true, I shall have a\nlarge number of episcopates--one over every hundred families--(and\nmany positions of civil authority also, for civil officers, above them\nand below), but all these places will involve much hard work, and be\nanything but covetable; while, of clergymen's usual work, admonition,\ntheological demonstration, and the like, I shall want very little done\nindeed, and that little done for nothing! for I will allow no man to\nadmonish anybody, until he has previously earned his own dinner by\nmore productive work than admonition.\n\nWell, I wish, my friend, you would write me a word or two in answer to\nthis, telling me your own ideas as to the proper issue out of these\ndifficulties. I should like to know what you think, and what you\nsuppose others will think, before I tell you my own notions about the\nmatter.\n\n\n\n\nLETTER XVIII.\n\nTHE HARMFUL EFFECTS OF SERVILE EMPLOYMENTS. THE POSSIBLE PRACTICE AND\nEXHIBITION OF SINCERE HUMILITY BY RELIGIOUS PERSONS.\n\n\n                                                    _April 7, 1867._\n\n107. I have been waiting these three days to know what you would say\nto my last questions; and now you send me two pamphlets of Combe's to\nread! I never read anything in spring-time (except the Ai, Ai, on the\n\"sanguine flower inscribed with woe\"); and, besides, if, as I gather\nfrom your letter, Combe thinks that among well-educated boys there\nwould be a percentage constitutionally inclined to be cobblers, or\nlooking forward with unction to establishment in the oil and tallow\nline, or fretting themselves for a flunkey's uniform, nothing that he\ncould say would make me agree with him. I know, as well as he does,\nthe unconquerable differences in the clay of the human creature: and I\nknow that, in the outset, whatever system of education you adopted, a\nlarge number of children could be made nothing of, and would\nnecessarily fall out of the ranks, and supply candidates enough for\ndegradation to common mechanical business: but this enormous\ndifference in bodily and mental capacity has been mainly brought about\nby difference in occupation, and by direct maltreatment; and in a few\ngenerations, if the poor were cared for, their marriages looked after,\nand sanitary law enforced, a beautiful type of face and form, and a\nhigh intelligence, would become all but universal, in a climate like\nthis of England. Even as it is, the marvel is always to me, how the\nrace resists, at least in its childhood, influences of ill-regulated\nbirth, poisoned food, poisoned air, and soul neglect. I often see\nfaces of children, as I walk through the black district of St. Giles's\n(lying, as it does, just between my own house and the British Museum),\nwhich, through all their pale and corrupt misery, recall the old \"Non\nAngli,\" and recall it, not by their beauty, but by their sweetness of\nexpression, even though signed already with trace and cloud of the\ncoming life,--a life so bitter that it would make the curse of the\n137th Psalm true upon our modern Babylon, though we were to read it\nthus, \"Happy shall _thy children_ be, if one taketh and dasheth them\nagainst the stones.\"\n\n108. Yes, very solemnly I repeat to you that in those worst treated\nchildren of the English race, I yet see the making of gentlemen and\ngentlewomen--not the making of dog-stealers and gin-drinkers, such as\ntheir parents were; and the child of the average English tradesman or\npeasant, even at this day, well schooled, will show no innate\ndisposition such as must fetter him forever to the clod or the\ncounter. You say that many a boy runs away, or would run away if he\ncould, from good positions to go to sea. Of course he does. I never\nsaid I should have any difficulty in finding sailors, but I shall in\nfinding fishmongers. I am at no loss for gardeners either, but what\nam I to do for greengrocers?\n\n109. The fact is, a great number of quite necessary employments are,\nin the accuratest sense, \"Servile;\" that is, they sink a man to the\ncondition of a serf, or unthinking worker, the proper state of an\nanimal, but more or less unworthy of men; nay, unholy in some sense,\nso that a day is made \"holy\" by the fact of its being commanded, \"Thou\nshalt do no _servile_ work therein.\" And yet, if undertaken in a\ncertain spirit, such work might be the holiest of all. If there were\nbut a thread or two of sound fiber here and there left in our modern\nreligion, so that the stuff of it would bear a real strain, one might\naddress our two opposite groups of evangelicals and ritualists\nsomewhat after this fashion:--\"Good friends, these differences of\nopinion between you cannot but be painful to your Christian charity,\nand they are unseemly to us, the profane; and prevent us from learning\nfrom you what, perhaps, we ought. But, as we read your Book, we, for\nour part, gather from it that you might, without danger to your own\nsouls, set an undivided example to us, for the benefit of ours. You,\nboth of you, as far as we understand, agree in the necessity of\nhumility to the perfection of your character. We often hear you, of\nCalvinistic persuasion, speaking of yourselves as 'sinful dust and\nashes,'--would it then be inconsistent with your feelings to make\nyourselves into 'serviceable' dust and ashes? We observe that of late\nmany of our roads have been hardened and mended with cinders; now, if,\nin a higher sense, you could allow us to mend the roads of the world\nwith _you_ a little, it would be a great proof to us of your\nsincerity. Suppose, only for a little while, in the present difficulty\nand distress, you were to make it a test of conversion that a man\nshould regularly give Zaccheus's portion, half his goods, to the\npoor, and at once adopt some disagreeable and despised, but thoroughly\nuseful, trade? You cannot think that this would finally be to your\ndisadvantage; you doubtless believe the texts, 'He that giveth to the\npoor lendeth to the Lord,' and 'He that would be chief among you, let\nhim be your servant.' The more you parted with, and the lower you\nstooped, the greater would be your final reward, and final exaltation.\nYou profess to despise human learning and worldly riches; leave both\nof these to _us_; undertake for us the illiterate and ill-paid\nemployments which must deprive you of the privileges of society and\nthe pleasures of luxury. You cannot possibly preach your faith so\nforcibly to the world by any quantity of the finest words, as by a few\nsuch simple and painful acts; and over your counters, in honest retail\nbusiness, you might preach a gospel that would sound in more ears than\nany that was ever proclaimed over pulpit cushions or tabernacle rails.\nAnd, whatever may be your gifts of utterance, you cannot but feel\n(studying St. Paul's Epistles as carefully as you do) that you might\nmore easily and modestly emulate the practical teaching of the silent\nApostle of the Gentiles than the speech or writing of his companion.\nAmidst the present discomforts of your brethren you may surely, with\ngreater prospect of good to them, seek the title of Sons of\nConsolation, than of Sons of Thunder, and be satisfied with Barnabas's\nconfession of faith, (if you can reach no farther,) who, 'having land,\nsold it, and brought the money and laid it at the Apostles' feet.'\n\n110. \"To you, on the other hand, gentlemen of the embroidered robe,\nwho neither despise learning nor the arts, we know that sacrifices\nsuch as these would be truly painful, and might at first appear\ninexpedient. But the doctrine of self-mortification is not a new one\nto you; and we should be sorry to think--we would not, indeed, for a\nmoment dishonor you by thinking--that these melodious chants, and\nprismatic brightnesses of vitreous pictures, and floral graces of\ndeep-wrought stone, were in any wise intended for your own poor\npleasures, whatever profane attraction they may exercise on more\nfleshly-minded persons. And as you have certainly received no definite\norder for the painting, carving, or lighting up of churches, while the\ntemple of the body of so many poor living Christians is so pale, so\nmis-shapen, and so ill-lighted; but have, on the contrary, received\nvery definite orders for the feeding and clothing of such sad\nhumanity, we may surely ask you, not unreasonably, to humiliate\nyourselves in the most complete way--not with a voluntary, but a\nsternly _in_voluntary humility--not with a show of wisdom in\nwill-worship, but with practical wisdom, in all honor, to the\nsatisfying of the flesh; and to associate yourselves in monasteries\nand convents for the better practice of useful and humble trades. Do\nnot burn any more candles, but mould some; do not paint any more\nwindows, but mend a few where the wind comes in, in winter time, with\nsubstantial clear glass and putty. Do not vault any more high roofs,\nbut thatch some low ones; and embroider rather on backs which are\nturned to the cold, than only on those which are turned to\ncongregations. And you will have your reward afterwards, and attain,\nwith all your flocks thus tended, to a place where you may have as\nmuch gold, and painted glass, and singing, as you like.\"\n\nThus much, it seems to me, one might say with some hope of acceptance,\nto any very earnest member of either of our two great religious\nparties, if, as I say, their faith could stand a strain. I have not,\nhowever, based any of my imaginary political arrangements on the\nprobability of its doing so; and I trust only to such general good\nnature and willingness to help each other, as I presume may be found\namong men of the world; to whom I should have to make quite another\nsort of speech, which I will endeavor to set down the heads of, for\nyou, in next letter.\n\n\n\n\nLETTER XIX.\n\nTHE GENERAL PRESSURE OF EXCESSIVE AND IMPROPER WORK, IN ENGLISH LIFE.\n\n\n                                                   _April 10, 1867._\n\n111. I cannot go on to-day with the part of my subject I had proposed,\nfor I was disturbed by receiving a letter last night, which I herewith\nenclose to you, and of which I wish you to print, here following, the\nparts I have not underlined--\n\n                      1, Phene Street, Chelsea, April 8, 1867.\n\n     MY DEAR R----,--\n\n     It is long since you have heard of me, and now I ask your\n     patience with me for a little. I have but just returned from\n     the funeral of my dear, dear friend ----, the first artist\n     friend I made in London--a loved and prized one. For years\n     past he had lived in the very humblest way, fighting his\n     battle of life against mean appreciation of his talents, the\n     wants of a rising family, and frequent attacks of illness,\n     crippling him for months at a time, the wolf at the door\n     meanwhile.\n\n     But about two years since his prospects brightened * * * and\n     he had but a few weeks since ventured on removal to a larger\n     house. His eldest boy of seventeen years, a very intelligent\n     youth, so strongly desired to be a civil engineer that Mr.\n     ----, not being able to pay the large premium required for\n     his apprenticeship, had been made very glad by the consent\n     of Mr. Penn, of Millwall, to receive him without a premium\n     after the boy should have spent some time at King's College\n     in the study of mechanics. The rest is a sad story. About a\n     fortnight ago Mr. ---- was taken ill, and died last week,\n     the doctors say, of sheer physical exhaustion, not\n     thirty-nine years old, leaving eight young children, and his\n     poor widow expecting her confinement, and so weak and ill as\n     to be incapable of effort. This youth is the eldest, and the\n     other children range downwards to a babe of eighteen months.\n     There is not one who knew him, I believe, that will not give\n     cheerfully, to their ability, for his widow and children;\n     but such aid will go but a little way in this painful case;\n     and it would be a real boon to this poor widow if some of\n     her children could be got into an Orphan Asylum. * * *\n\n     If you are able to do anything I would send particulars of\n     the age and sex of the children.\n\n             I remain, dear Sir, ever obediently yours,\n                                             FRED. J. SHIELDS.\n\n     P.S.--I ought to say that poor ---- has been quite unable to\n     save, with his large family; and that they would be utterly\n     destitute now, but for the kindness of some with whom he was\n     professionally connected.\n\n112. Now this case, of which you see the entire authenticity, is, out\nof the many of which I hear continually, a _notably_ sad one only in\nso far as the artist in question has died of distress while he was\ncatering for the public amusement. Hardly a week now passes without\nsome such misery coming to my knowledge; and the quantity of pain, and\nanxiety of daily effort, through the best part of life, ending all at\nlast in utter grief, which the lower middle classes in England are now\nsuffering, is so great that I feel constantly as if I were living in\none great churchyard, with people all round me clinging feebly to the\nedges of the open graves, and calling for help, as they fall back into\nthem, out of sight.\n\n113. Now I want you to observe here, in a definite case, the working\nof your beautiful modern political economy of \"supply and demand.\"\nHere is a man who could have \"supplied\" you with good and entertaining\nart,--say for fifty good years,--if you had paid him enough for his\nday's work to find him and his children peacefully in bread. But you\nlike having your prints as cheap as possible--you triumph in the\nlittle that your laugh costs--you take all you can get from the man,\ngive the least you can give to him,--and you accordingly kill him at\nthirty-nine; and thereafter have his children to take care of, or to\nkill also, whichever you choose; but, now, observe, you must take care\nof _them_ for nothing, or not at all; and what you might have had good\nvalue for, if you had given it when it would have cheered the father's\nheart, you now can have no return for at all, to yourselves; and what\nyou give to the orphans, if it does not degrade them, at least\nafflicts, coming, not through their father's hand, its honest\nearnings, but from strangers.\n\nObserve, farther, whatever help the orphans may receive, will not be\nfrom the public at all. It will not be from those who profited by\ntheir father's labors; it will be chiefly from his fellow-laborers; or\nfrom persons whose money would have been beneficially spent in other\ndirections, from whence it is drawn away to this need, which ought\nnever to have occurred,--while those who waste their money without\ndoing any service to the public will never contribute one farthing to\nthis distress.\n\n114. Now it is this double fault in the help--that it comes too late,\nand that the burden of it falls wholly on those who ought least to be\ncharged with it--which would be corrected by that institution of\noverseers of which I spoke to you in the twelfth of these letters,\nsaying, you remember, that they were to have farther legal powers,\nwhich I did not then specify, but which would belong to them chiefly\nin the capacity of public almoners, or help-givers, aided by their\ndeacons, the reception of such help, in time of true need, being not\nheld disgraceful, but honorable; since the fact of its reception would\nbe so entirely public that no impostor or idle person could ever\nobtain it surreptitiously.\n\n115. (11th April.) I was interrupted yesterday, and I am glad of it,\nfor here happens just an instance of the way in which the unjust\ndistribution of the burden of charity is reflected on general\ninterests; I cannot help what taint of ungracefulness you or other\nreaders of these letters may feel that I incur, in speaking, in this\ninstance, of myself. If I could speak with the same accurate knowledge\nof any one else, most gladly I would; but I also think it right that,\nwhether people accuse me of boasting or not, they should know that I\npractise what I preach. I had not intended to say what I now shall,\nbut the coming of this letter last night just turns the balance of the\ndecision with me. I enclose it with the other; you see it is one from\nmy bookseller, Mr. Quaritch, offering me Fischer's work on the _Flora\nof Java_, and Latour's on _Indian Orchidaceae_, bound together, for\ntwenty guineas. Now, I am writing a book on botany just now, for young\npeople, chiefly on wild flowers, and I want these two books very much;\nbut I simply cannot afford to buy them, because I sent my last spare\ntwenty guineas to Mr. Shields yesterday for this widow. And though you\nmay think it not the affair of the public that I have not this book on\nIndian flowers, it is their affair finally, that what I write for them\nshould be founded on as broad knowledge as possible; whatever value my\nown book may or may not have, it will just be in a given degree worth\n_less_ to them, because of my want of this knowledge.\n\n116. So again--for having begun to speak of myself I will do so yet\nmore frankly--I suppose that when people see my name down for a\nhundred pounds to the Cruikshank Memorial, and for another hundred to\nthe Eyre Defense Fund, they think only that I have more money than I\nknow what to do with. Well, the giving of those subscriptions simply\ndecides the question whether or no I shall be able to afford a journey\nto Switzerland this year, in the negative; and I wanted to go, not\nonly for health's sake, but to examine the junctions of the molasse\nsandstones and nagelfluh with the Alpine limestone, in order to\ncomplete some notes I meant to publish next spring on the geology of\nthe great northern Swiss valley; notes which must now lie by me at\nleast for another year; and I believe this delay (though I say it)\nwill be really something of a loss to the traveling public, for the\nlittle essay was intended to explain to them, in a familiar way, the\nreal wonderfulness of their favorite mountain, the Righi; and to give\nthem some amusement in trying to find out where the many-colored\npebbles of it had come from. But it is more important that I should,\nwith some stoutness, assert my respect for the genius and earnest\npatriotism of Cruikshank, and my much more than disrespect for the\nJamaica Committee, than that I should see the Alps this year, or get\nmy essay finished next spring; but I tell you the fact, because I want\nyou to feel how, in thus leaving their men of worth to be assisted or\ndefended only by those who deeply care for them, the public more or\nless cripple, to their own ultimate disadvantage, just the people\nwho could serve them in other ways; while the speculators and\nmoney-seekers, who are only making their profit out of the said\npublic, of course take no part in the help of anybody. And even if\nthe willing bearers could sustain the burden anywise adequately, none\nof us would complain; but I am certain there is no man, whatever\nhis fortune, who is now engaged in any earnest offices of kindness\nto these sufferers, especially of the middle class, among his\nacquaintance, who will not bear me witness that for one we can\nrelieve, we must leave three to perish. I have left three, myself, in\nthe first three months of this year. One was the artist Paul Gray, for\nwhom an appeal was made to me for funds to assist him in going abroad\nout of the bitter English winter. I had not the means by me, and he\ndied a week afterwards. Another case was that of a widow whose husband\nhad committed suicide, for whom application was made to me at the same\ntime; and the third was a personal friend, to whom I refused a sum\nwhich he said would have saved him from bankruptcy. I believe six\ntimes as much would not have saved him; however, I refused, and he is\nruined.\n\n117. And observe, also, it is not the mere crippling of my means that\nI regret. It is the crippling of my temper, and waste of my time. The\nknowledge of all this distress, even when I can assist it,--much more\nwhen I cannot,--and the various thoughts of what I can and cannot, or\nought and ought not, to do, are a far greater burden to me than the\nmere loss of the money. It is peremptorily not my business--it is not\nmy gift, bodily or mentally, to look after other people's sorrow. I\nhave enough of my own; and even if I had not, the sight of pain is not\ngood for me. I don't want to be a bishop. In a most literal and\nsincere sense, \"_nolo episcopari_.\" I don't want to be an almoner, nor\na counselor, nor a Member of Parliament, nor a voter for Members of\nParliament. (What would Mr. Holyoake say to me if he knew that I have\nnever voted for anybody in my life, and never mean to do so!) I am\nessentially a painter and a leaf dissector; and my powers of thought\nare all purely mathematical, seizing ultimate principles only--never\naccidents; a line is always, to me, length without breadth; it is not\na cable or a crowbar; and though I can almost infallibly reason out\nthe final law of anything, if within reach of my industry, I neither\ncare for, nor can trace, the minor exigencies of its daily appliance.\nSo, in every way, I like a quiet life; and I don't like seeing people\ncry, or die; and should rejoice, more than I can tell you, in giving\nup the full half of my fortune for the poor, provided I knew that the\npublic would make Lord Overstone also give the half of his, and other\npeople who were independent give the half of theirs; and then set men\nwho were really fit for such office to administer the fund, and answer\nto us for nobody's perishing innocently; and so leave us all to do\nwhat we chose with the rest, and with our days, in peace.\n\nThus far of the public's fault in the matter. Next, I have a word or\ntwo to say of the sufferers' own fault--for much as I pity them, I\nconceive that none of them _do_ perish altogether innocently. But this\nmust be for next letter.\n\n\n\n\nLETTER XX.\n\nOF IMPROVIDENCE IN MARRIAGE IN THE MIDDLE CLASSES; AND OF THE\nADVISABLE RESTRICTIONS OF IT.\n\n\n                                                   _April 12, 1867._\n\n118. It is quite as well, whatever irregularity it may introduce in\nthe arrangement of the general subject, that yonder sad letter warped\nme away from the broad inquiry, to this speciality, respecting the\npresent distress of the middle classes. For the immediate cause of\nthat distress, in their own imprudence, of which I have to speak to\nyou to-day, is only to be finally vanquished by strict laws, which,\nthough they have been many a year in my mind, I was glad to have a\nquiet hour of sunshine for the thinking over again, this morning.\nSunshine which happily rose cloudless; and allowed me to meditate my\ntyrannies before breakfast, under the just opened blossoms of my\norchard, and assisted by much melodious advice from the birds; who (my\ngardener having positive orders never to trouble any of them in\nanything, or object to their eating even my best peas if they like\ntheir flavor) rather now get _into_ my way, than out of it, when they\nsee me about the walks; and take me into most of their counsels in\nnest-building.\n\n119. The letter from Mr. Shields, which interrupted us, reached me,\nas you see, on the evening of the 9th instant. On the morning of the\n10th, I received another, which I herewith forward to you, for\nverification. It is--characteristically enough--dateless, so you must\ntake the time of its arrival on my word. And substituting M. N. for\nthe name of the boy referred to, and withholding only the address and\nname of the writer, you see that it may be printed word for word--as\nfollows:--\n\n     SIR,--\n\n     May I beg for the favor of your presentation to Christ's\n     Hospital for my youngest son, M. N.? I have nine children,\n     and no means to educate them. I ventured to address you,\n     believing that my husband's name is not unknown to you as\n     an artist.\n\n                 Believe me to remain faithfully yours,\n                                                         * * *\n\n120. Now this letter is only a typical example of the entire class of\nthose which, being a governor of Christ's Hospital, I receive, in\ncommon with all the other governors, at the rate of about three a day,\nfor a month or six weeks from the date of our names appearing in the\nprinted list of the governors who have presentations for the current\nyear. Having been a governor now some twenty-five years, I have\ndocumentary evidence enough to found some general statistics upon;\nfrom which there have resulted two impressions on my mind, which I\nwish here specially to note to you, and I do not doubt but that all\nthe other governors, if you could ask them, would at once confirm what\nI say. My first impression is, a heavy and sorrowful sense of the\ngeneral feebleness of intellect of that portion of the British public\nwhich stands in need of presentations to Christ's Hospital. This\nfeebleness of intellect is mainly shown in the nearly total\nunconsciousness of the writers that anybody else may want a\npresentation, besides themselves. With the exception here and there\nof a soldier's or a sailor's widow, hardly one of them seems to have\nperceived the existence of any distress in the world but their own:\nnone know what they are asking for, or imagine, unless as a remote\ncontingency, the possibility of its having been promised at a prior\ndate. The second most distinct impression on my mind, is that the\nportion of the British public which is in need of presentations to\nChrist's Hospital considers it a merit to have large families, with or\nwithout the means of supporting them!\n\n121. Now it happened also (and remember, all this is strictly true,\nnor in the slightest particular represented otherwise than as it\nchanced; though the said chance brought thus together exactly the\nevidence I wanted for my letter to you)--it happened, I say, that on\nthis same morning of the 10th April, I became accidentally acquainted\nwith a case of quite a different kind: that of a noble girl, who,\nengaged at sixteen, and having received several advantageous offers\nsince, has remained for ten years faithful to her equally faithful\nlover; while, their circumstances rendering it, as they rightly\nconsidered, unjustifiable in them to think of marriage, each of them\nsimply and happily, aided and cheered by the other's love, discharged\nthe duties of their own separate positions in life.\n\n122. In the nature of things, instances of this kind of noble life\nremain more or less concealed, (while imprudence and error proclaim\nthemselves by misfortune,) but they are assuredly not unfrequent in\nour English homes. Let us next observe the political and national\nresult of these arrangements. You leave your marriages to be settled\nby \"supply and demand,\" instead of wholesome law. And thus, among your\nyouths and maidens, the improvident, incontinent, selfish, and foolish\nones marry, whether you will or not; and beget families of children\nnecessarily inheritors in a great degree of these parental\ndispositions; and for whom, supposing they had the best dispositions\nin the world, you have thus provided, by way of educators, the\nfoolishest fathers and mothers you could find; (the only rational\nsentence in their letters, usually, is the invariable one, in which\nthey declare themselves \"incapable of providing for their children's\neducation\"). On the other hand, whosoever is wise, patient, unselfish,\nand pure among your youth, you keep maid or bachelor; wasting their\nbest days of natural life in painful sacrifice, forbidding them their\nbest help and best reward, and carefully excluding their prudence and\ntenderness from any offices of parental duty.\n\nIs not this a beatific and beautifully sagacious system for a\nCelestial Empire, such as that of these British Isles?\n\n123. I will not here enter into any statement of the physical laws\nwhich it is the province of our physicians to explain; and which are\nindeed at last so far beginning to be understood, that there is hope\nof the nation's giving some of the attention to the conditions\naffecting the race of man, which it has hitherto bestowed only on\nthose which may better its races of cattle.\n\nIt is enough, I think, to say here that the beginning of all sanitary\nand moral law is in the regulation of marriage, and that, ugly and\nfatal as is every form and agency of license, no licentiousness is so\nmortal as licentiousness in marriage.\n\n124. Briefly, then, and in main points, subject in minor ones to such\nmodifications in detail as local circumstances and characters would\nrender expedient, those following are laws such as a prudent nation\nwould institute respecting its marriages. Permission to marry should\nbe the reward held in sight of its youth during the entire latter part\nof the course of their education; and it should be granted as the\nnational attestation that the first portion of their lives had been\nrightly fulfilled. It should not be attainable without earnest and\nconsistent effort, though put within the reach of all who were willing\nto make such effort; and the granting of it should be a public\ntestimony to the fact, that the youth or maid to whom it was given\nhad lived, within their proper sphere, a modest and virtuous life, and\nhad attained such skill in their proper handicraft, and in arts of\nhousehold economy, as might give well-founded expectations of their\nbeing able honorably to maintain and teach their children.\n\n125. No girl should receive her permission to marry before her\nseventeenth birthday, nor any youth before his twenty-first; and it\nshould be a point of somewhat distinguished honor with both sexes to\ngain their permission of marriage in the eighteenth and twenty-second\nyears; and a recognized disgrace not to have gained it at least before\nthe close of their twenty-first and twenty-fourth. I do not mean that\nthey should in any wise hasten actual marriage; but only that they\nshould hold it a point of honor to have the right to marry. In every\nyear there should be two festivals, one on the first of May, and one\nat the feast of harvest home in each district, at which festivals\ntheir permissions to marry should be given publicly to the maidens and\nyouths who had won them in that half-year; and they should be crowned,\nthe maids by the old French title of Rosieres, and the youths, perhaps\nby some name rightly derived from one supposed signification of the\nword \"bachelor,\" \"laurel fruit,\" and so led in joyful procession, with\nmusic and singing, through the city street or village lane, and the\nday ended with feasting of the poor.\n\n126. And every bachelor and rosiere should be entitled to claim, if\nthey needed it, according to their position in life, a fixed income\nfrom the State, for seven years from the day of their marriage, for\nthe setting up of their homes; and, however rich they might be by\ninheritance, their income should not be permitted to exceed a given\nsum, proportioned to their rank, for the seven years following that in\nwhich they had obtained their permission to marry, but should\naccumulate in the trust of the State until that seventh year, in which\nthey should be put (on certain conditions) finally in possession of\ntheir property; and the men, thus necessarily not before their\ntwenty-eighth, nor usually later than their thirty-first year, become\neligible to offices of State. So that the rich and poor should not be\nsharply separated in the beginning of the war of life; but the one\nsupported against the first stress of it long enough to enable them,\nby proper forethought and economy, to secure their footing; and the\nother trained somewhat in the use of moderate means, before they were\npermitted to have the command of abundant ones. And of the sources\nfrom which these State incomes for the married poor should be\nsupplied, or of the treatment of those of our youth whose conduct\nrendered it advisable to refuse them permission to marry, I defer what\nI have to say till we come to the general subjects of taxation and\ncriminal discipline; leaving the proposals made in this letter to\nbear, for the present, whatever aspect of mere romance and\nunrealizable vision they probably may, and to most readers, such as\nthey assuredly will. Nor shall I make the slightest effort to redeem\nthem from these imputations; for though there is nothing in all their\npurport which would not be approved, as in the deepest sense\n\"practical\"--by the Spirit of Paradise--\n\n  \"Which gives to all the self-same bent,\n  Whose lives are wise and innocent,\"\n\nand though I know that national justice in conduct, and peace in\nheart, could by no other laws be so swiftly secured, I confess with\nmuch _dis_peace of heart, that both justice and happiness have at this\nday become, in England, \"romantic impossibilities.\"\n\n\n\n\nLETTER XXI.\n\nOF THE DIGNITY OF THE FOUR FINE ARTS; AND OF THE PROPER SYSTEM OF\nRETAIL TRADE.\n\n\n                                                   _April 15, 1867._\n\n127. I return now to the part of the subject at which I was\ninterrupted--the inquiry as to the proper means of finding persons\nwilling to maintain themselves and others by degrading occupations.\n\nThat, on the whole, simply manual occupations _are_ degrading, I\nsuppose I may assume you to admit; at all events, the fact is so,\nand I suppose few general readers will have any doubt of it.[A]\n\n    [A] Many of my working readers have disputed this statement\n    eagerly, feeling the good effect of work in themselves; but\n    observe, I only say, _simply_ or _totally_ manual work; and\n    that, alone, _is_ degrading, though often in measure,\n    refreshing, wholesome, and necessary. So it is highly\n    necessary and wholesome to eat sometimes; but degrading to\n    eat all day, as to labor with the hands all day. But it is\n    not degrading to think all day--if you can. A highly-bred\n    court lady, rightly interested in politics and literature,\n    is a much finer type of the human creature than a servant of\n    all work, however clever and honest.\n\nGranting this, it follows as a direct consequence that it is the duty\nof all persons in higher stations of life, by every means in their\npower to diminish their demand for work of such kind, _and to live\nwith as little aid from the lower trades_, as they can possibly\ncontrive.\n\n128. I suppose you see that this conclusion is not a little at\nvariance with received notions on political economy? It is popularly\nsupposed that it benefits a nation to invent a want. But the fact is,\nthat the true benefit is in extinguishing a want--in living with as\nfew wants as possible.\n\nI cannot tell you the contempt I feel for the common writers on\npolitical economy, in their stupefied missing of this first principle\nof all human economy--individual or political--to live, namely, with\nas few wants as possible, and to waste nothing of what is given you to\nsupply them.\n\n129. This ought to be the first lesson of every rich man's political\ncode. \"Sir,\" his tutor should early say to him, \"you are so placed in\nsociety,--it may be for your misfortune, it _must_ be for your\ntrial--that you are likely to be maintained all your life by the labor\nof other men. You will have to make shoes for nobody, but some one\nwill have to make a great many for you. You will have to dig ground\nfor nobody, but some one will have to dig through every summer's hot\nday for you. You will build houses and make clothes for no one, but\nmany a rough hand must knead clay, and many an elbow be crooked to the\nstitch, to keep that body of yours warm and fine. Now remember,\nwhatever you and your work may be worth, the less your keep costs, the\nbetter. It does not cost money only. It costs degradation. You do not\nmerely employ these people. You also tread upon them. It cannot be\nhelped;--you have your place, and they have theirs; but see that you\ntread as lightly as possible, and on as few as possible. What food,\nand clothes, and lodging, you honestly need, for your health and\npeace, you may righteously take. See that you take the plainest you\ncan serve yourself with--that you waste or wear nothing vainly--and\nthat you employ no man in furnishing you with any useless luxury.\"\n\n130. That is the first lesson of Christian--or human--economy; and\ndepend upon it, my friend, it is a sound one, and has every voice and\nvote of the spirits of Heaven and earth to back it, whatever views the\nManchester men, or any other manner of men, may take respecting\n\"demand and supply.\" Demand what you deserve, and you shall be\nsupplied with it, for your good. Demand what you do _not_ deserve, and\nyou shall be supplied with something which you have not demanded, and\nwhich Nature perceives that you deserve, quite to the contrary of your\ngood. That is the law of your existence, and if you do not make it the\nlaw of your resolved acts, so much, precisely, the worse for you and\nall connected with you.\n\n131. Yet observe, though it is out of its proper place said here, this\nlaw forbids no luxury which men are not degraded in providing. You may\nhave Paul Veronese to paint your ceiling, if you like, or Benvenuto\nCellini to make cups for you. But you must not employ a hundred divers\nto find beads to stitch over your sleeve. (Did you see the account of\nthe sales of the Esterhazy jewels the other day?)\n\nAnd the degree in which you recognize the difference between these two\nkinds of services, is precisely what makes the difference between your\nbeing a civilized person or a barbarian. If you keep slaves to furnish\nforth your dress--to glut your stomach--sustain your indolence--or\ndeck your pride, you are a barbarian. If you keep servants, properly\ncared for, to furnish you with what you verily want, and no more than\nthat--you are a \"civil\" person--a person capable of the qualities of\ncitizenship.[A]\n\n    [A] Compare 'The Crown of Wild Olive,' Sec.Sec. 79, 118, and 122.\n\n132. Now, farther, observe that in a truly civilized and disciplined\nstate, no man would be allowed to meddle with any material who did not\nknow how to make the best of it. In other words, the arts of working\nin wood, clay, stone, and metal, would all be _fine_ arts (working in\niron for machinery becoming an entirely distinct business). There\nwould be no joiner's work, no smith's, no pottery nor stone-cutting,\nso debased in character as to be entirely unconnected with the finer\nbranches of the same art; and to at least one of these finer branches\n(generally in metal-work) every painter and sculptor would be\nnecessarily apprenticed during some years of his education. There\nwould be room, in these four trades alone, for nearly every grade of\npractical intelligence and productive imagination.\n\n133. But it should not be artists alone who are exercised early in\nthese crafts. It would be part of my scheme of physical education that\nevery youth in the state--from the King's son downwards,--should learn\nto do something finely and thoroughly with his hand, so as to let him\nknow what _touch_ meant; and what stout craftsmanship meant; and to\ninform him of many things besides, which no man can learn but by some\nseverely accurate discipline in doing. Let him once learn to take a\nstraight shaving off a plank, or draw a fine curve without faltering,\nor lay a brick level in its mortar; and he has learned a multitude of\nother matters which no lips of man could ever teach him. He might\nchoose his craft, but whatever it was, he should learn it to some\nsufficient degree of true dexterity: and the result would be, in after\nlife, that among the middle classes a good deal of their house\nfurniture would be made, and a good deal of rough work, more or less\nclumsily, but not ineffectively, got through, by the master himself\nand his sons, with much furtherance of their general health and peace\nof mind, and increase of innocent domestic pride and pleasure, and to\nthe extinction of a great deal of vulgar upholstery and other mean\nhandicraft.\n\n134. Farther. A great deal of the vulgarity, and nearly all the vice,\nof retail commerce, involving the degradation of persons occupied in\nit, depends simply on the fact that their minds are always occupied by\nthe vital (or rather mortal) question of profits. I should at once put\nan end to this source of baseness by making all retail dealers merely\nsalaried officers in the employ of the trade guilds; the stewards,\nthat is to say, of the salable properties of those guilds, and\npurveyors of such and such articles to a given number of families. A\nperfectly well-educated person might, without the least degradation,\nhold such an office as this, however poorly paid; and it would be\nprecisely the fact of his being well educated which would enable him\nto fulfil his duties to the public without the stimulus of direct\nprofit. Of course the current objection to such a system would be that\nno man, for a regularly paid salary, would take pains to please his\ncustomers; and the answer to that objection is, that if you can train\na man to so much unselfishness as to offer himself fearlessly to the\nchance of being shot, in the course of his daily duty, you can most\nassuredly, if you make it also a point of honor with him, train him to\nthe amount of self-denial involved in looking you out with care such a\npiece of cheese or bacon as you have asked for.\n\n135. You see that I have already much diminished the number of\nemployments involving degradation; and raised the character of many of\nthose that are left. There remain to be considered the necessarily\npainful or mechanical works of mining, forging, and the like: the\nunclean, noisome, or paltry manufactures--the various kinds of\ntransport--(by merchant shipping, etc.) and the conditions of menial\nservice.\n\nIt will facilitate the examination of these if we put them for the\nmoment aside, and pass to the other division of our dilemma, the\nquestion, namely, what kind of lives our gentlemen and ladies are to\nlive, for whom all this hard work is to be done.\n\n\n\n\nLETTER XXII.\n\nOF THE NORMAL POSITION AND DUTIES OF THE UPPER CLASSES. GENERAL\nSTATEMENT OF THE LAND QUESTION.\n\n\n                                                   _April 17, 1867._\n\n136. In passing now to the statement of conditions affecting the\ninterests of the upper classes, I would rather have addressed these\nclosing letters to one of themselves than to you, for it is with their\nown faults and needs that each class is primarily concerned. As,\nhowever, unless I kept the letters private, this change of their\naddress would be but a matter of courtesy and form, not of any\ntrue prudential use; and as besides I am now no more inclined to\nreticence--prudent or otherwise; but desire only to state the facts\nof our national economy as clearly and completely as may be, I pursue\nthe subject without respect of persons.\n\n137. Before examining what the occupation and estate of the upper\nclasses ought, as far as may reasonably be conjectured, finally to\nbecome, it will be well to set down in brief terms what they actually\nhave been in past ages: for this, in many respects, they must also\nalways be. The upper classes, broadly speaking, are originally\ncomposed of the best-bred (in the mere animal sense of the term), the\nmost energetic, and most thoughtful, of the population, who either by\nstrength of arm seize the land from the rest, and make slaves of them,\nor bring desert land into cultivation, over which they have therefore,\nwithin certain limits, true personal right; or, by industry,\naccumulate other property, or by choice devote themselves to\nintellectual pursuits, and, though poor, obtain an acknowledged\nsuperiority of position, shown by benefits conferred in discovery, or\nin teaching, or in gifts of art. This is all in the simple course of\nthe law of nature; and the proper offices of the upper classes, thus\ndistinguished from the rest, become, therefore, in the main\nthreefold:--\n\n138. (A) Those who are strongest of arm have for their proper\nfunction the restraint and punishment of vice, and the general\nmaintenance of law and order; releasing only from its original\nsubjection to their power that which truly deserves to be emancipated.\n\n(B) Those who are superior by forethought and industry, have for their\nfunction to be the providences of the foolish, the weak, and the idle;\nand to establish such systems of trade and distribution of goods as\nshall preserve the lower orders from perishing by famine, or any other\nconsequence of their carelessness or folly, and to bring them all,\naccording to each man's capacity, at last into some harmonious\nindustry.\n\n(C) The third class, of scholars and artists, of course, have for\nfunction the teaching and delighting of the inferior multitude.\n\nThe office of the upper classes, then, as a body, is to keep order\namong their inferiors, and raise them always to the nearest level with\nthemselves of which those inferiors are capable. So far as they are\nthus occupied, they are invariably loved and reverenced intensely by\nall beneath them, and reach, themselves, the highest types of human\npower and beauty.\n\n139. This, then, being the natural ordinance and function of\naristocracy, its corruption, like that of all other beautiful things\nunder the Devil's touch, is a very fearful one. Its corruption is,\nthat those who ought to be the rulers and guides of the people,\nforsake their task of painful honorableness; seek their own pleasure\nand pre-eminence only; and use their power, subtlety, conceded\ninfluence, prestige of ancestry, and mechanical instrumentality of\nmartial power, to make the lower orders toil for them, and feed and\nclothe them for nothing, and become in various ways their living\nproperty, goods, and chattels, even to the point of utter\nregardlessness of whatever misery these serfs may suffer through such\ninsolent domination, or they themselves, their masters, commit of\ncrime to enforce it.\n\n140. And this is especially likely to be the case when means of\nvarious and tempting pleasures are put within the reach of the upper\nclasses by advanced conditions of national commerce and knowledge: and\nit is _certain_ to be the case as soon as position among those upper\nclasses becomes any way purchasable with money, instead of being the\nassured measure of some kind of worth, (either strength of hand, or\ntrue wisdom of conduct, or imaginative gift). It has been becoming\nmore and more the condition of the aristocracy of Europe, ever since\nthe fifteenth century; and is gradually bringing about its ruin, and\nin that ruin, checked only by the power which here and there a good\nsoldier or true statesman achieves over the putrid chaos of its vain\npolicy, the ruin of all beneath it; which can be arrested only, either\nby the repentance of that old aristocracy, (hardly to be hoped,) or by\nthe stern substitution of other aristocracy worthier than it.\n\n141. Corrupt as it may be, it and its laws together, I would at this\nmoment, if I could, fasten every one of its institutions down with\nbands of iron, and trust for all progress and help against its tyranny\nsimply to the patience and strength of private conduct. And if I had\nto choose, I would tenfold rather see the tyranny of old Austria\ntriumphant in the old and new worlds, and trust to the chance (or\nrather the distant certainty) of some day seeing a true Emperor born\nto its throne, than, with every privilege of thought and act, run the\nmost distant risk of seeing the thoughts of the people of Germany and\nEngland become like the thoughts of the people of America.\n\nMy American friends, of whom one, Charles Eliot Norton, of Cambridge,\nis the dearest I have in the world, tell me I know nothing about\nAmerica. It may be so, and they must do me the justice to observe that\nI, therefore, usually _say_ nothing about America. But this much I\nhave said, because the Americans, as a nation, set their trust in\nliberty and in equality, of which I detest the one, and deny the\npossibility of the other; and because, also, as a nation, they are\nwholly undesirous of Rest, and incapable of it; irreverent of\nthemselves, both in the present and in the future; discontented with\nwhat they are, yet having no ideal of anything which they desire to\nbecome.[A]\n\n    [A] Some following passages in this letter, containing\n    personal references which might, in permanence, have given\n    pain or offense, are now omitted--the substance of them being\n    also irrelevant to my main purpose. These few words about the\n    American war, with which they concluded, are, I think, worth\n    retaining:--\"All methods of right government are to be\n    communicated to foreign nations by perfectness of example and\n    gentleness of patiently expanded power, not suddenly, nor at\n    the bayonet's point. And though it is the duty of every\n    nation to interfere, at bayonet point, if they have the\n    strength to do so, to save any oppressed multitude, or even\n    individual, from manifest violence, it is wholly unlawful to\n    interfere in such matter, except with sacredly pledged\n    limitation of the objects to be accomplished in the oppressed\n    person's favor, and with absolute refusal of all selfish\n    advantage and _increase of territory or of political power_\n    which might otherwise accrue from the victory.\"\n\n142. But, however corrupted, the aristocracy of any nation may thus be\nalways divided into three great classes. First, the landed proprietors\nand soldiers, essentially one political body (for the possession of\nland can only be maintained by military power); secondly, the moneyed\nmen and leaders of commerce; thirdly, the professional men and masters\nin science, art, and literature.\n\nAnd we were to consider the proper duties of all these, and the laws\nprobably expedient respecting them. Whereupon, in the outset, we are\nat once brought face to face with the great land question.\n\n143. Great as it may be, it is wholly subordinate to those we have\nhitherto been considering. The laws you make regarding methods of\nlabor, or to secure the genuineness of the things produced by it,\naffect the entire moral state of the nation, and all possibility of\nhuman happiness for them. The mode of distribution of the land only\naffects their numbers. By this or that law respecting land you decide\nwhether the nation shall consist of fifty or of a hundred millions.\nBut by this or that law respecting work, you decide whether the given\nnumber of millions shall be rogues, or honest men;--shall be wretches,\nor happy men. And the question of numbers is wholly immaterial,\ncompared with that of character; or rather, its own materialness\ndepends on the prior determination of character. Make your nation\nconsist of knaves, and, as Emerson said long ago, it is but the case\nof any other vermin--\"the more, the worse.\" Or, to put the matter in\nnarrower limits, it is a matter of no final concern to any parent\nwhether he shall have two children, or four; but matter of quite final\nconcern whether those he has shall, or shall not, deserve to be\nhanged. The great difficulty in dealing with the land question at all\narises from the false, though very natural, notion on the part of many\nreformers, and of large bodies of the poor, that the division of the\nland among the said poor would be an immediate and everlasting relief\nto them. An _immediate_ relief it would be to the extent of a small\nannual sum (you may easily calculate how little, if you choose) to\neach of them; on the strength of which accession to their finances,\nthey would multiply into as much extra personality as the extra pence\nwould sustain, and at that point be checked by starvation, exactly as\nthey are now.\n\n144. Any other form of pillage would benefit them only in like manner;\nand, in reality, the difficult part of the question respecting\nnumbers, is, not where they shall be arrested, but what shall be the\nmethod of their arrest.\n\nAn island of a certain size has standing room only for so many people;\nfeeding ground for a great many fewer than could stand on it. Reach\nthe limits of your feeding ground, and you must cease to multiply,\nmust emigrate or starve. The modes in which the pressure is gradually\nbrought to bear on the population depend on the justice of your laws;\nbut the pressure itself must come at last, whatever the distribution\nof the land. And arithmeticians seem to me a little slow to remark the\nimportance of the old child's puzzle about the nails in the\nhorseshoe--when it is populations that are doubling themselves,\ninstead of farthings.\n\n145. The essential land question, then, is to be treated quite\nseparately from that of the methods of restriction of population. The\nland question is--At what point will you resolve to stop? It is\nseparate matter of discussion how you are to stop at it.\n\nAnd this essential land question--\"At what point will you stop?\"--is\nitself two-fold. You have to consider first, by what methods of land\ndistribution you can maintain the greatest number of healthy persons;\nand secondly, whether, if, by any other mode of distribution and\nrelative ethical laws, you can raise their character, while you\ndiminish their numbers, such sacrifice should be made, and to what\nextent? I think it will be better, for clearness' sake, to end this\nletter with the putting of these two queries in their decisive form,\nand to reserve suggestions of answer for my next.\n\n\n\n\nLETTER XXIII.\n\nOF THE JUST TENURE OF LANDS: AND THE PROPER FUNCTIONS OF HIGH PUBLIC\nOFFICERS.\n\n\n                                                 _20th April, 1867._\n\n146. I must repeat to you, once more, before I proceed, that I only\nenter on this part of our inquiry to complete the sequence of its\nsystem, and explain fully the bearing of former conclusions, and not\nfor any immediately practicable good to be got out of the\ninvestigation. Whatever I have hitherto urged upon you, it is in the\npower of all men quietly to promote, and finally to secure, by the\npatient resolution of personal conduct; but no action could be taken\nin re-distribution of land or in limitation of the incomes of the\nupper classes, without grave and prolonged civil disturbance.\n\nSuch disturbance, however, is only too likely to take place, if the\nexisting theories of political economy are allowed credence much\nlonger. In the writings of the vulgar economists, nothing more excites\nmy indignation than the subterfuges by which they endeavor to\naccommodate their pseudoscience to the existing abuses of wealth, by\ndisguising the true nature of rent. I will not waste time in exposing\ntheir fallacies, but will put the truth for you into as clear a shape\nas I can.\n\n147. Rent, of whatever kind, is, briefly, the price continuously paid\nfor the loan of the property of another person. It may be too little,\nor it may be just or exorbitant or altogether unjustifiable, according\nto circumstances. Exorbitant rents can only be exacted from ignorant\nor necessitous rent-payers: and it is one of the most necessary\nconditions of state economy that there should be clear laws to prevent\nsuch exaction.\n\n148. I may interrupt myself for a moment to give you an instance of\nwhat I mean. The most wretched houses of the poor in London often pay\nten or fifteen per cent. to the landlord; and I have known an instance\nof sanitary legislation being hindered, to the loss of many hundreds\nof lives, in order that the rents of a nobleman, derived from the\nnecessities of the poor, might not be diminished. And it is a curious\nthing to me to see Mr. J. S. Mill foaming at the mouth, and really\nafflicted conscientiously, because he supposes one man to have been\nunjustly hanged, while by his own failure, (I believe, _wilful_\nfailure)[A] in stating clearly to the public one of the first\nelementary truths of the science he professes, he is aiding and\nabetting the commission of the cruelest possible form of murder on\nmany thousands of persons yearly, for the sake simply of putting money\ninto the pockets of the landlords. I felt this evil so strongly that I\nbought, in the worst part of London, one freehold and one leasehold\nproperty, consisting of houses inhabited by the lowest poor; in order\nto try what change in their comfort and habits I could effect by\ntaking only a just rent, but that firmly. The houses of the leasehold\npay me five per cent.; the families that used to have one room in them\nhave now two; and are more orderly and hopeful besides; and there is a\nsurplus still on the rents they pay after I have taken my five per\ncent., with which, if all goes well, they will eventually be able to\nbuy twelve years of the lease from me. The freehold pays three per\ncent., with similar results in the comfort of the tenant. This is\nmerely an example of what might be done by firm State action in such\nmatters.\n\n    [A] See Sec. 156.\n\n149. Next, of wholly unjustifiable rents. These are for things which\nare not, and which it is criminal to consider as, personal or\nexchangeable property. Bodies of men, land, water, and air, are the\nprincipal of these things.\n\nParenthetically, may I ask you to observe, that though a fearless\ndefender of some forms of slavery, I am no defender of the slave\n_trade_. It is by a blundering confusion of ideas between _governing_\nmen, and _trading in_ men, and by consequent interference with the\nrestraint, instead of only with the sale, that most of the great\nerrors in action have been caused among the emancipation men. I am\nprepared, if the need be clear to my own mind, and if the power is in\nmy hands, to throw men into prison, or any other captivity--to bind\nthem or to beat them--and force them, for such periods as I may judge\nnecessary, to any kind of irksome labor: and on occasion of desperate\nresistance, to hang or shoot them. But I will not _sell_ them.\n\n150. Bodies of men, or women, then (and much more, as I said before,\ntheir souls), must not be bought or sold. Neither must land, nor\nwater, nor air, these being the necessary sustenance of men's bodies\nand souls.\n\nYet all these may, on certain terms, be bound, or secured in\npossession, to particular persons under certain conditions. For\ninstance, it may be proper, at a certain time, to give a man\npermission to possess land, as you give him permission to marry; and\nfarther, if he wishes it and works for it, to secure to him the land\nneedful for his life; as you secure his wife to him; and make both\nutterly his own, without in the least admitting his right to buy other\npeople's wives, or fields, or to sell his own.\n\n151. And the right action of a State respecting its land is, indeed,\nto secure it in various portions to those of its citizens who deserve\nto be trusted with it, according to their respective desires and\nproved capacities; and after having so secured it to each, to exercise\nonly such vigilance over his treatment of it as the State must give\nalso to his treatment of his wife and servants; for the most part\nleaving him free, but interfering in cases of gross mismanagement or\nabuse of power. And in the case of great old families, which always\nought to be, and in some measure, however decadent, still truly are,\nthe noblest monumental architecture of the kingdom, living temples of\nsacred tradition and hero's religion, so much land ought to be granted\nto them in perpetuity as may enable them to live thereon with all\ncircumstances of state and outward nobleness; _but their income must\nin no wise be derived from the rents of it_, nor must they be occupied\n(even in the most distant or subordinately administered methods), in\nthe exaction of rents. That is not noblemen's work. Their income must\nbe fixed, and paid them by the State, as the King's is.\n\n152. So far from their land being to them a source of income, it\nshould be, on the whole, costly to them, great part of it being kept\nin conditions of natural grace, which return no rent but their\nloveliness; and the rest made, at whatever cost, exemplary in\nperfection of such agriculture as develops the happiest peasant\nlife;[A] agriculture which, as I will show you hereafter, must reject\nthe aid of all mechanism except that of instruments guided solely by\nthe human hand, or by animal, or directly natural forces; and which,\ntherefore, cannot compete for profitableness with agriculture carried\non by aid of machinery.\n\n    [A] Compare 'Fors Clavigera,' Letter XXI., page 22.\n\nAnd now for the occupation of this body of men, maintained at fixed\nperennial cost of the State.\n\n153. You know I said I should want no soldiers of special skill or\npugnacity, for all my boys would be soldiers. But I assuredly want\n_captains_ of soldiers, of special skill and pugnacity. And also, I\nsaid I should strongly object to the appearance of any lawyers in my\nterritory; meaning, however, by lawyers, people who live by arguing\nabout law,--not people appointed to administer law; and people who\nlive by eloquently misrepresenting facts--not people appointed to\ndiscover and plainly represent them.\n\nTherefore, the youth of this landed aristocracy would be trained, in\nmy schools, to these two great callings, not _by_ which, but _in_\nwhich, they are to live.\n\nThey would be trained, all of them, in perfect science of war, and in\nperfect science of essential law. And from their body should be chosen\nthe captains and the judges of England, its advocates, and generally\nits State officers, all such functions being held for fixed pay (as\nalready our officers of the Church and army are paid), and no function\nconnected with the administration of law ever paid by casual fee. And\nthe head of such family should, in his own right, having passed due\n(and high) examination in the science of law, and not otherwise, be a\njudge, law-ward or Lord, having jurisdiction both in civil and\ncriminal cases, such as our present judges have, after such case shall\nhave been fully represented before, and received verdict from, a jury,\ncomposed exclusively of the middle or lower orders, and in which no\nmember of the aristocracy should sit. But from the decision of these\njuries, or from the Lord's sentence, there should be a final appeal to\na tribunal, the highest in the land, held solely in the King's name,\nand over which, in the capital, the King himself should preside, and\ntherein give judgment on a fixed number of days in each year;--and, in\nother places and at other times, judges appointed by election (under\ncertain conditions) out of any order of men in the State (the election\nbeing national, not provincial): and all causes brought before these\njudges should be decided, without appeal, by their own authority; not\nby juries. This, then, recasting it for you into brief view, would be\nthe entire scheme of state authorities:--\n\n154. (1) The King: exercising, as part both of his prerogative and his\nduty, the office of a supreme judge at stated times in the central\ncourt of appeal of his kingdom.\n\n(2) Supreme judges appointed by national election; exercising sole\nauthority in courts of final appeal.\n\n(3) Ordinary judges, holding the office hereditarily under conditions;\nand with power to add to their number (and liable to have it increased\nif necessary by the King's appointment); the office of such judges\nbeing to administer the national laws under the decision of juries.\n\n(4) State officers charged with the direction of public agency in\nmatters of public utility.\n\n(5) Bishops, charged with offices of supervision and aid, to family by\nfamily, and person by person.\n\n(6) The officers of war, of various ranks.\n\n(7) The officers of public instruction, of various ranks.\n\nI have sketched out this scheme for you somewhat prematurely, for I\nwould rather have conducted you to it step by step, and as I brought\nforward the reasons for the several parts of it; but it is, on other\ngrounds, desirable that you should have it to refer to, as I go on.\n\n155. Without depending anywise upon nomenclature, yet holding it\nimportant as a sign and record of the meanings of things, I may tell\nyou further that I should call the elected supreme judges, \"Princes\";\nthe hereditary judges, \"Lords\"; and the officers of public guidance,\n\"Dukes\"; and that the social rank of these persons would be very\nclosely correspondent to that implied by such titles under our present\nconstitution; only much more real and useful. And in conclusion of\nthis letter, I will but add, that if you, or other readers, think it\nidle of me to write or dream of such things; as if any of them were in\nour power, or within possibility of any near realization, and above\nall, vain to write of them to a workman at Sunderland: you are to\nremember what I told you at the beginning, that I go on with this part\nof my subject in some fulfilment of my long-conceived plan, too large\nto receive at present any deliberate execution from my failing\nstrength; (being the body of the work to which 'Munera Pulveris' was\nintended merely as an introduction;) and that I address it to you\nbecause I know that the working men of England must, for some time,\nbe the only body to which we can look for resistance to the deadly\ninfluence of moneyed power.\n\nI intend, however, to write to you at this moment one more letter,\npartly explanatory of minor details necessarily omitted in this, and\nchiefly of the proper office of the soldier; and then I must delay the\ncompletion of even this poor task until after the days have turned,\nfor I have quite other work to do in the brightness of the full-opened\nspring.\n\n156. P.S.--As I have used somewhat strong language, both here and\nelsewhere, of the equivocations of the economists on the subject of\nrent, I had better refer you to one characteristic example. You will\nfind in paragraph 5th and 6th of Book II., chap. 2, of Mr. Mill's\n'Principles,' that the right to tenure of land is based, by his\nadmission, only on the proprietor's being its improver.\n\nWithout pausing to dwell on the objection that land cannot be improved\nbeyond a certain point, and that, at the reaching of that point,\nfarther claim to tenure would cease, on Mr. Mill's principle--take\neven this admission, with its proper subsequent conclusion, that \"in\nno sound theory of private property was it ever contemplated that the\nproprietor of land should be merely a sinecurist quartered on it.\"\nNow, had that conclusion been farther followed, it would have\ncompelled the admission that all rent was unjustifiable which normally\nmaintained any person in idleness; which is indeed the whole truth of\nthe matter. But Mr. Mill instantly retreats from this perilous\nadmission; and after three or four pages of discussion (quite accurate\nfor _its_ part) of the limits of power in management of the land\nitself (which apply just as strictly to the peasant proprietor as to\nthe cottier's landlord), he begs the whole question at issue in one\nbrief sentence, slipped cunningly into the middle of a long one which\nappears to be telling all the other way, and in which the fatal\nassertion (of the right to rent) nestles itself, as if it had been\nalready proved,--thus--I italicize the unproved assertion in which the\nvenom of the entire falsehood is concentrated.\n\n\"Even in the case of cultivated land, a man whom, though only one\namong millions, the law permits to hold thousands of acres as his\nsingle share, is not entitled to think that all is given to him to use\nand abuse, and deal with it as if it concerned nobody but himself.\n_The rents or profits which he can obtain from it are his, and his\nonly_; but with regard to the land, in everything which he abstains\nfrom doing, he is morally bound, and should, whenever the case admits,\nbe legally compelled to make his interest and pleasure consistent with\nthe public good.\"\n\n157. I say, this sentence in italics is slipped _cunningly_ into the\nlong sentence, as if it were of no great consequence; and above I have\nexpressed my belief that Mr. Mill's equivocations on this subject are\nwilful. It is a grave accusation; but I cannot, by any stretch of\ncharity, attribute these misrepresentations to absolute dulness and\nbluntness of brain, either in Mr. Mill or his follower, Mr. Fawcett.\nMr. Mill is capable of immense involuntary error; but his involuntary\nerrors are usually owing to his seeing only one or two of the many\nsides of a thing; not to obscure sight of the side he _does_ see. Thus\nhis 'Essay on Liberty' only takes cognizance of facts that make for\nliberty, and of none that make for restraint. But in its statement of\nall that can be said for liberty, it is so clear and keen, that I have\nmyself quoted it before now as the best authority on that side. And,\nif arguing in favor of Rent, absolutely, and with clear explanation of\nwhat it was, he had then defended it with all his might, I should have\nattributed to him only the honest shortsightedness of partisanship;\nbut when I find his defining sentences full of subtle entanglement and\nreserve--and that reserve held throughout his treatment of this\nparticular subject,--I cannot, whether I utter the suspicion or not,\nkeep the sense of wilfulness in the misrepresentation from remaining\nin my mind. And if there be indeed ground for this blame, and Mr.\nMill, for fear of fostering political agitation,[A] _has_ disguised\nwhat he knows to be the facts about rent, I would ask him as one of\nthe leading members of the Jamaica Committee, which is the greater\ncrime, boldly to sign warrant for the sudden death of one man, known\nto be an agitator, in the immediate outbreak of such agitation, or, by\nequivocation in a scientific work, to sign warrants for the deaths of\nthousands of men in slow misery, for _fear_ of an agitation which has\nnot begun; and if begun, would be carried on by debate, not by the\nsword?\n\n    [A] With at last the natural consequences of\n    cowardice,--nitro-glycerine and fire-balls! Let the upper\n    classes speak the truth about themselves boldly, and they\n    will know how to defend themselves fearlessly. It is\n    equivocation in principle, and dereliction from duty, which\n    melt at last into tears in a mob's presence.--(Dec. 16th,\n    1867.)\n\n\n\n\nLETTER XXIV.\n\nTHE OFFICE OF THE SOLDIER.\n\n\n                                                   _April 22, 1867._\n\n158. I must once more deprecate your probable supposition that I bring\nforward this ideal plan of State government, either with any idea of\nits appearing, to our present public mind, practicable even at a\nremote period, or with any positive and obstinate adherence to the\nparticular form suggested. There are no wiser words among the many\nwise ones of the most rational and keen-sighted of old English men of\nthe world, than these:--\n\n  \"For forms of government let fools contest;\n  That which is best administered is best.\"\n\nFor, indeed, no form of government is of any use among bad men; and\nany form will work in the hands of the good; but the essence of all\ngovernment among good men is this, that it is mainly occupied in the\n_production and recognition of human worth_, and in the detection and\nextinction of human unworthiness; and every Government which produces\nand recognizes worth, will also inevitably use the worth it has found\nto govern with; and therefore fall into some approximation to such a\nsystem as I have described. And, as I told you, I do not contend for\nnames, nor particular powers--though I state those which seem to me\nmost advisable; on the contrary, I know that the precise extent of\nauthorities must be different in every nation at different times, and\nought to be so, according to their circumstances and character; and\nall that I assert with confidence is the necessity, within afterwards\ndefinable limits, of _some such_ authorities as these; that is to say,\n\n159. I. An _observant_ one:--by which all men shall be looked after\nand taken note of.\n\nII. A _helpful_ one, from which those who need help may get it.\n\nIII. A _prudential_ one, which shall not let people dig in wrong\nplaces for coal, nor make railroads where they are not wanted; and\nwhich shall also, with true providence, insist on their digging in\nright places for coal, in a safe manner, and making railroads where\nthey _are_ wanted.\n\nIV. A _martial_ one, which will punish knaves and make idle persons\nwork.\n\nV. An _instructive_ one, which shall tell everybody what it is their\nduty to know, and be ready pleasantly to answer questions if anybody\nasks them.\n\nVI. A _deliberate_ and _decisive_ one, which shall judge by law, and\namend or make law;\n\nVII. An _exemplary_ one, which shall show what is loveliest in the art\nof life.\n\nYou may divide or name those several offices as you will, or they may\nbe divided in practice as expediency may recommend; the plan I have\nstated merely puts them all into the simplest forms and relations.\n\n160. You see I have just defined the martial power as that \"which\npunishes knaves and makes idle persons work.\" For that is indeed the\nultimate and perennial soldiership; that is the essential warrior's\noffice to the end of time. \"There is no discharge in that war.\" To the\ncompelling of sloth, and the scourging of sin, the strong hand will\nhave to address itself as long as this wretched little dusty and\nvolcanic world breeds nettles, and spits fire. The soldier's office at\npresent is indeed supposed to be the defense of his country against\nother countries; but that is an office which--Utopian as you may think\nthe saying--will soon now be extinct. I say so fearlessly, though I\nsay it with wide war threatened, at this moment, in the East and West.\nFor observe what the standing of nations on their defense really\nmeans. It means that, but for such armed attitude, each of them would\ngo and rob the other; that is to say, that the majority of active\npersons in every nation are at present--thieves. I am very sorry that\nthis should still be so; but it will not be so long. National\nexhibitions, indeed, will not bring peace; but national education\nwill, and that is soon coming. I can judge of this by my own mind, for\nI am myself naturally as covetous a person as lives in this world, and\nam as eagerly-minded to go and steal some things the French have got,\nas any housebreaker could be, having clue to attractive spoons. If I\ncould by military incursion carry off Paul Veronese's \"Marriage in\nCana,\" and the \"Venus Victrix,\" and the \"Hours of St. Louis,\" it\nwould give me the profoundest satisfaction to accomplish the foray\nsuccessfully; nevertheless, being a comparatively educated person, I\nshould most assuredly not give myself that satisfaction, though there\nwere not an ounce of gunpowder, nor a bayonet, in all France. I have\nnot the least mind to rob anybody, however much I may covet what they\nhave got; and I know that the French and British public may and will,\nwith many other publics, be at last brought to be of this mind also;\nand to see farther that a nation's real strength and happiness do not\ndepend on properties and territories, nor on machinery for their\ndefense; but on their getting such territory as they _have_, well\nfilled with none but respectable persons. Which is a way of\n_infinitely_ enlarging one's territory, feasible to every potentate;\nand dependent no wise on getting Trent turned, or Rhine-edge reached.\n\n161. Not but that, in the present state of things, it may often be\nsoldiers' duty to seize territory, and hold it strongly; but only from\nbanditti, or savage and idle persons.\n\nThus, both Calabria and Greece ought to have been irresistibly\noccupied long ago. Instead of quarreling with Austria about Venice,\nthe Italians ought to have made a truce with her for ten years, on\ncondition only of her destroying no monuments, and not taxing Italians\nmore than Germans; and then thrown the whole force of their army on\nCalabria, shot down every bandit in it in a week, and forced the\npeasantry of it into honest work on every hill-side, with stout and\nimmediate help from the soldiers in embanking streams, building walls,\nand the like; and Italian finance would have been a much pleasanter\nmatter for the King to take account of by this time; and a fleet might\nhave been floating under Garganus strong enough to sweep every hostile\nsail out of the Adriatic, instead of a disgraced and useless remnant\nof one, about to be put up to auction.\n\nAnd similarly, _we_ ought to have occupied Greece instantly, when they\nasked us, whether Russia liked it or not; given them an English king,\nmade good roads for them, and stout laws; and kept them, and their\nhills and seas, with righteous shepherding of Arcadian fields, and\nrighteous ruling of Salaminian wave, until they could have given\nthemselves a Greek king of men again; and obeyed him, like men.\n\n\n                                                         _April 24._\n\n162. It is strange that just before I finish work for this time, there\ncomes the first real and notable sign of the victory of the principles\nI have been fighting for, these seven years. It is only a newspaper\nparagraph, but it means much. Look at the second column of the 11th\npage of yesterday's 'Pall Mall Gazette,' The paper has taken a\nwonderful fit of misprinting lately (unless my friend John Simon has\nbeen knighted on his way to Weimar, which would be much too right and\ngood a thing to be a likely one); but its straws of talk mark which\nway the wind blows perhaps more early than those of any other\njournal--and look at the question it puts in that page, \"Whether\npolitical economy be the sordid and materialistic science some\naccount it, or almost the noblest on which thought can be employed?\"\nMight not you as well have determined that question a little while\nago, friend Public? and known what political economy _was_, before you\ntalked so much about it?\n\nBut, hark, again--\"Ostentation, parental pride and a host of moral\"\n(immoral?) \"qualities must be recognized as among the springs of\nindustry; political economy should not ignore these, but, to discuss\nthem, _it must abandon its pretensions to the precision of a pure\nscience_.\"\n\n163. Well done the 'Pall Mall'! Had it written \"Prudence and parental\naffection,\" instead of \"Ostentation and parental pride,\" \"must be\nrecognized among the springs of industry,\" it would have been still\nbetter; and it would then have achieved the expression of a part of\nthe truth, which I put into clear terms in the first sentence of 'Unto\nthis Last,' in the year 1862--which it has thus taken five years to\nget half way into the public's head.\n\n\"Among the delusions which at different periods have possessed\nthemselves of the minds of large masses of the human race, perhaps the\nmost curious--certainly the least creditable--is the modern\n_soi-disant_ science of political economy, based on the idea that an\nadvantageous code of social action may be determined, irrespectively\nof the influence of social affection.\"\n\nLook also at the definition of skill, p. 87.\n\n\"Under the term 'skill' I mean to include the united force of\nexperience, intellect, and passion, in their operation on manual\nlabor, and under the term 'passion' to include the entire range of the\nmoral feelings.\"\n\n164. I say half way into the public's head, because you see, a few\nlines further on, the 'Pall Mall' hopes for a pause \"half way between\nthe rigidity of Ricardo and the sentimentality of Ruskin.\"\n\nWith one hand on their pocket, and the other on their heart! Be it so\nfor the present; we shall see how long this statuesque attitude can be\nmaintained; meantime, it chances strangely--as several other things\nhave chanced while I was writing these notes to you--that they should\nhave put in that sneer (two lines before) at my note on the meaning of\nthe Homeric and Platonic Sirens, at the very moment when I was\ndoubting whether I would or would not tell you the significance of the\nlast song of Ariel in 'The Tempest.'\n\nI had half determined not, but now I shall. And this was what brought\nme to think of it:--\n\n165. Yesterday afternoon I called on Mr. H. C. Sorby, to see some of\nthe results of an inquiry he has been following all last year, into\nthe nature of the coloring matter of leaves and flowers.\n\nYou most probably have heard (at all events, may with little trouble\nhear) of the marvelous power which chemical analysis has received in\nrecent discoveries respecting the laws of light.\n\nMy friend showed me the rainbow of the rose, and the rainbow of the\nviolet, and the rainbow of the hyacinth, and the rainbow of forest\nleaves being born, and the rainbow of forest leaves dying.\n\nAnd, last, he showed me the rainbow of blood. It was but the\nthree-hundredth part of a grain, dissolved in a drop of water; and it\ncast its measured bars, for ever recognizable now to human sight, on\nthe chord of the seven colors. And no drop of that red rain can now be\nshed, so small as that the stain of it cannot be known, and the voice\nof it heard out of the ground.\n\n166. But the seeing these flower colors, and the iris of blood\ntogether with them, just while I was trying to gather into brief space\nthe right laws of war, brought vividly back to me my dreaming fancy of\nlong ago, that even the trees of the earth were \"capable of a kind of\nsorrow, as they opened their innocent leaves in vain for men; and\nalong the dells of England her beeches cast their dappled shades only\nwhere the outlaw drew his bow, and the king rode his careless chase;\namidst the fair defiles of the Apennines, the twisted olive-trunks hid\nthe ambushes of treachery, and on their meadows, day by day, the\nlilies, which were white at the dawn, were washed with crimson at\nsunset.\"\n\nAnd so also now this chance word of the daily journal, about the\nSirens, brought to my mind the divine passage in the Cratylus of\nPlato, about the place of the dead.\n\n\"And none of those who dwell there desire to depart thence,--no, not\neven the Sirens; but even they, the seducers, are there themselves\nbeguiled, and they who lulled all men, themselves laid to rest--they,\nand all others--such sweet songs doth death know how to sing to them.\"\n\nSo also the Hebrew.\n\n\"And desire shall fail, because man goeth to his long home.\" For you\nknow I told you the Sirens were not pleasures, but desires; being\nalways represented in old Greek art as having human faces, with birds'\nwings and feet; and sometimes with eyes upon their wings; and there\nare not two more important passages in all literature, respecting the\nlaws of labor and of life, than those two great descriptions of the\nSirens in Homer and Plato,--the Sirens of death, and Sirens of eternal\nlife, representing severally the earthly and heavenly desires of men;\nthe heavenly desires singing to the motion of circles of the spheres,\nand the earthly on the rocks of fatalest shipwreck. A fact which may\nindeed be regarded \"sentimentally,\" but it is also a profoundly\nimportant politico-economical one.\n\nAnd now for Shakespeare's song.\n\n167. You will find, if you look back to the analysis of it, given in\n'Munera Pulveris,' Sec. 134, that the whole play of 'The Tempest' is an\nallegorical representation of the powers of true, and therefore\nspiritual, Liberty, as opposed to true, and therefore carnal and\nbrutal Slavery. There is not a sentence nor a rhyme, sung or uttered\nby Ariel or Caliban, throughout the play, which has not this\nunder-meaning.\n\n168. Now the fulfilment of all human liberty is in the peaceful\ninheritance of the earth, with its \"herb yielding seed, and fruit tree\nyielding fruit\" after his kind; the pasture, or arable, land, and the\nblossoming, or wooded and fruited, land uniting the final elements of\nlife and peace, for body and soul. Therefore, we have the two great\nHebrew forms of benediction, \"His eyes shall be red with wine, and his\nteeth white with milk,\" and again, \"Butter and honey shall he eat,\nthat he may know to refuse the evil and choose the good.\" And as the\nwork of war and sin has always been the devastation of this blossoming\nearth, whether by spoil or idleness, so the work of peace and virtue\nis also that of the first day of Paradise, to \"Dress it and to keep\nit.\" And that will always be the song of perfectly accomplished\nLiberty, in her industry, and rest, and shelter from troubled thoughts\nin the calm of the fields, and gaining, by migration, the long\nsummer's day from the shortening twilight:--\n\n  \"Where the bee sucks, there lurk I;\n  In a cowslip's bell I lie;\n  There I couch when owls do cry.\n  On the bat's back I do fly\n  After summer merrily:\n  Merrily, merrily, shall I live now\n  Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.\"\n\nAnd the security of this treasure to all the poor, and not the ravage\nof it down the valleys of the Shenandoah, is indeed the true warrior's\nwork. But, that they may be able to restrain vice rightly, soldiers\nmust themselves be first in virtue; and that they may be able to\ncompel labor sternly, they must themselves be first in toil, and their\nspears, like Jonathan's at Bethaven, enlighteners of the eyes.\n\n\n\n\nLETTER XXV.\n\nOF INEVITABLE DISTINCTION OF RANK, AND NECESSARY SUBMISSION TO\nAUTHORITY. THE MEANING OF PURE-HEARTEDNESS. CONCLUSION.\n\n\n169. I was interrupted yesterday, just as I was going to set my\nsoldiers to work; and to-day, here comes the pamphlet you promised me,\ncontaining the Debates about Church-going, in which I find so\ninteresting a text for my concluding letter that I must still let my\nsoldiers stand at ease for a little while. Look at its twenty-fifth\npage, and you will find, in the speech of Mr. Thomas, (carpenter,)\nthis beautiful explanation of the admitted change in the general\npublic mind, of which Mr. Thomas, for his part, highly approves, (the\ngetting out of the unreasonable habit of paying respect to anybody.)\nThere were many reasons to Mr. Thomas's mind why the working classes\ndid not attend places of worship: one was, that \"the parson was\nregarded as an object of reverence. In the little town he came from,\nif a poor man did not make a bow to the parson he was a marked man.\nThis was no doubt wearing away to a great extent\" (the base habit of\nmaking bows), \"because, the poor man was beginning to get education,\nand to think for himself. It was only while the priest kept the press\nfrom him that he was kept ignorant, and was compelled to bow, as it\nwere, to the parson.... It was the case all over England. The\nclergyman seemed to think himself something superior. Now he (Mr.\nThomas) did not admit there was any inferiority\" (laughter, audience\nthroughout course of meeting mainly in the right), \"except, perhaps,\non the score of his having received a classical education, which the\npoor man could not get.\"\n\nNow, my dear friend, here is the element which is the veriest devil of\nall that have got into modern flesh; this infidelity of the nineteenth\ncentury St. Thomas in there being anything better than himself\nalive;[A] coupled, as it always is, with the farther resolution--if\nunwillingly convinced of the fact,--to seal the Better living thing\ndown again out of his way, under the first stone handy. I had not\nintended, till we entered on the second section of our inquiry,\nnamely, into the influence of gentleness (having hitherto, you see,\nbeen wholly concerned with that of justice), to give you the clue out\nof our dilemma about equalities produced by education; but by the\nspeech of our superior carpenter, I am driven into it at once, and it\nis perhaps as well.\n\n    [A] Compare 'Crown of Wild Olive,' Sec. 136.\n\n170. The speech is not, observe, without its own root of truth at the\nbottom of it, nor at all, as I think, ill intended by the speaker; but\nyou have in it a clear instance of what I was saying in the sixteenth\nof these letters,--that education _was desired by the lower orders\nbecause they thought it would make them upper orders_, and be a\nleveler and effacer of distinctions. They will be mightily astonished,\nwhen they really get it, to find that it is, on the contrary, the\nfatalest of all discerners and enforcers of distinctions; piercing,\neven to the division of the joints and marrow, to find out wherein\nyour body and soul are less, or greater, than other bodies and souls,\nand to sign deed of separation with unequivocal seal.\n\n171. Education is, indeed, of all differences not divinely appointed,\nan instant effacer and reconciler. Whatever is undivinely poor, it\nwill make rich; whatever is undivinely maimed, and halt, and blind, it\nwill make whole, and equal, and seeing. The blind and the lame are to\nit as to David at the siege of the Tower of the Kings, \"hated of\nDavid's soul.\" But there are other divinely-appointed differences,\neternal as the ranks of the everlasting hills, and as the strength of\ntheir ceaseless waters. And these, education does _not_ do away with;\nbut measures, manifests, and employs.\n\nIn the handful of shingle which you gather from the sea-beach, which\nthe indiscriminate sea, with equality of fraternal foam, has only\neducated to be, every one, round, you will see little difference\nbetween the noble and mean stones. But the jeweler's trenchant\neducation of them will tell you another story. Even the meanest will\nbe better for it, but the noblest so much better that you can class\nthe two together no more. The fair veins and colors are all clear now,\nand so stern is nature's intent regarding this, that not only will the\npolish show which is best, but the best will take most polish. You\nshall not merely see they have more virtue than the others, but see\nthat more of virtue more clearly; and the less virtue there is, the\nmore dimly you shall see what there is of it.\n\n172. And the law about education, which is sorrowfulest to vulgar\npride, is this--that all its gains are at compound interest; so that,\nas our work proceeds, every hour throws us farther behind the greater\nmen with whom we began on equal terms. Two children go to school hand\nin hand, and spell for half an hour over the same page. Through all\ntheir lives, never shall they spell from the same page more. One is\npresently a page ahead,--two pages, ten pages,--and evermore, though\neach toils equally, the interval enlarges--at birth nothing, at death,\ninfinite.\n\n173. And by this you may recognize true education from false. False\neducation is a delightful thing, and warms you, and makes you every\nday think more of yourself. And true education is a deadly cold thing\nwith a Gorgon's head on her shield, and makes you every day think\nworse of yourself.\n\nWorse in two ways, also, more's the pity. It is perpetually increasing\nthe personal sense of ignorance and the personal sense of fault. And\nthis last is the truth which is at the bottom of the common\nevangelical notion about conversion, and which the Devil has got hold\nof, and hidden, until, instead of seeing and confessing personal\nignorance and fault, as compared with the sense and virtue of others,\npeople see nothing but corruption in human nature, and shelter their\nown sins under accusation of their race (the worst of all assertions\nof equality and fraternity). And so they avoid the blessed and\nstrengthening pain of finding out wherein they are fools, as compared\nwith other men, by calling everybody else a fool too; and avoid the\npain of discerning their own faults, by vociferously claiming their\nshare in the great capital of original sin.\n\nI must also, therefore, tell you here what properly ought to have\nbegun the next following section of our subject--the point usually\nunnoticed in the parable of the Prodigal Son.\n\n174. First, have you ever observed that all Christ's main teachings,\nby direct order, by earnest parable, and by His own permanent emotion,\nregard the use and misuse of _money_? We might have thought, if we had\nbeen asked what a divine teacher was most likely to teach, that he\nwould have left inferior persons to give directions about money; and\nhimself spoken only concerning faith and love, and the discipline of\nthe passions, and the guilt of the crimes of soul against soul. But\nnot so. He speaks in general terms of these. But He does not speak\nparables about them for all men's memory, nor permit Himself fierce\nindignation against them, in all men's sight. The Pharisees bring Him\nan adulteress. He writes her forgiveness on the dust of which He had\nformed her. Another, despised of all for known sin, He recognized as a\ngiver of unknown love. But He acknowledges no love in buyers and\nsellers in His house. One should have thought there were people in\nthat house twenty times worse than they;--Caiaphas and his like--false\npriests, false prayer-makers, false leaders of the people--who needed\nputting to silence, or to flight, with darkest wrath. But the scourge\nis only against the _traffickers and thieves_. The two most intense of\nall the parables: the two which lead the rest in love and terror (this\nof the Prodigal, and of Dives), relate, both of them, to management of\nriches. The practical order given to the only seeker of advice, of\nwhom it is recorded that Christ \"loved him,\" is briefly about his\nproperty. \"Sell that thou hast.\"\n\nAnd the arbitrament of the day of the Last Judgment is made to rest\nwholly, neither on belief in God, nor in any spiritual virtue in man,\nnor on freedom from stress of stormy crime, but on this only, \"I was\nan hungered and ye gave me drink; naked, and ye clothed me; sick, and\nye came unto me.\"\n\n175. Well, then, the first thing I want you to notice in the parable\nof the Prodigal Son (and the last thing which people usually _do_\nnotice in it), is--that it is about a Prodigal! He begins by asking\nfor his share of his father's goods; he gets it, carries it off, and\nwastes it. It is true that he wastes it in riotous living, but you are\nnot asked to notice in what kind of riot; he spends it with\nharlots--but it is not the harlotry which his elder brother accuses\nhim of mainly, but of having devoured his father's living. Nay, it is\nnot the sensual life which he accuses himself of--or which the manner\nof his punishment accuses him of. But the _wasteful_ life. It is not\nsaid that he had become debauched in soul, or diseased in body, by his\nvice; but that at last he would fain have filled his belly with husks,\nand could not. It is not said that he was struck with remorse for the\nconsequences of his evil passions, but only that he remembered there\nwas bread enough and to spare, even for the servants, at home.\n\nNow, my friend, do not think I want to extenuate sins of passion\n(though, in very truth, the sin of Magdalene is a light one compared\nto that of Judas); but observe, sins of passion, if of _real_ passion,\nare often the errors and backfalls of noble souls; but prodigality is\nmere and pure selfishness, and essentially the sin of an ignoble or\nundeveloped creature; and I would rather, ten times rather, hear of a\nyouth that (certain degrees of temptation and conditions of resistance\nbeing understood) he had fallen into any sin you chose to name, of all\nthe mortal ones, than that he was in the habit of running bills which\nhe could not pay.\n\nFarther, though I hold that the two crowning and most accursed sins of\nthe society of this present day are the carelessness with which it\nregards the betrayal of women, and the brutality with which it suffers\nthe neglect of children, both these head and chief crimes, and all\nothers, are rooted first in abuse of the laws, and neglect of the\nduties concerning wealth. And thus the love of money, with the\nparallel (and, observe, _mathematically commensurate_ looseness in\nmanagement of it), the \"mal tener,\" followed necessarily by the \"mal\ndare,\" is, indeed, the root of all evil.\n\n176. Then, secondly, I want you to note that when the prodigal comes\nto his senses, he complains of nobody but himself, and speaks of no\nunworthiness but his own. He says nothing against any of the women\nwho tempted him--nothing against the citizen who left him to feed on\nhusks--nothing of the false friends of whom \"no man gave unto\nhim\"--above all, nothing of the \"corruption of human nature,\" or the\ncorruption of things in general. He says that _he himself_ is\nunworthy, as distinguished from honorable persons, and that _he\nhimself_ has sinned, as distinguished from righteous persons. And\n_that_ is the hard lesson to learn, and the beginning of faithful\nlessons. All right and fruitful humility, and purging of heart, and\nseeing of God, is in that. It is easy to call yourself the chief of\nsinners, expecting every sinner round you to decline--or return--the\ncompliment; but learn to measure the real degrees of your own relative\nbaseness, and to be ashamed, not in heaven's sight, but in man's\nsight; and redemption is indeed begun. Observe the phrase, I have\nsinned \"_against_ heaven,\" against the great law of that, and _before_\nthee, visibly degraded before my human sire and guide, unworthy any\nmore of being esteemed of his blood, and desirous only of taking the\nplace I deserve among his servants.\n\n177. Now, I do not doubt but that I shall set many a reader's teeth on\nedge by what he will think my carnal and material rendering of this\n\"beautiful\" parable. But I am just as ready to spiritualize it as he\nis, provided I am sure first that we understand it. If we want to\nunderstand the parable of the sower, we must first think of it as of\nliteral husbandry; if we want to understand the parable of the\nprodigal, we must first understand it as of literal prodigality. And\nthe story has also for us a precious lesson in this literal sense of\nit, namely this, which I have been urging upon you throughout these\nletters, that all redemption must begin in subjection and in the\nrecovery of the sense of Fatherhood and authority, as all ruin and\ndesolation begin in the loss of that sense. The lost son began by\nclaiming his rights. He is found when he resigns them. He is lost by\nflying from his father, when his father's authority was only paternal.\nHe is found by returning to his father, and desiring that his\nauthority may be absolute, as over a hired stranger.\n\nAnd this is the practical lesson I want to leave with you, and all\nother working men.\n\n178. You are on the eve of a great political crisis; and every rascal\nwith a tongue in his head will try to make his own stock out of you.\nNow this is the test you must try them with. Those that say to you,\n\"Stand up for your rights--get your division of living--be sure that\nyou are as well off as others, and have what they have!--don't let any\nman dictate to you--have not you all a right to your opinion?--are you\nnot all as good as everybody else?--let us have no governors, or\nfathers--let us all be free and alike.\" Those, I say, who speak thus\nto you, take Nelson's rough order for--and hate them as you do the\nDevil, for they _are_ his ambassadors. But those, the few, who have\nthe courage to say to you, \"My friends, you and I, and all of us, have\nsomehow got very wrong; we've been hardly treated, certainly; but here\nwe are in a piggery, mainly by our own fault, hungry enough, and for\nourselves, anything but respectable: we _must_ get out of this; there\nare certainly laws we may learn to live by, and there are wiser people\nthan we are in the world, and kindly ones, if we can find our way to\nthem; and an infinitely wise and kind Father, above all of them and\nus, if we can but find our way to _Him_, and ask Him to take us for\nservants, and put us to any work He will, so that we may never leave\nHim more.\" The people who will say that to you, and (for by _no_\nsaying, but by their fruits, only, you shall finally know them) who\nare themselves orderly and kindly, and do their own business\nwell,--take _those_ for your guides, and trust them; on ice and rock\nalike, tie yourselves well together with them, and with much scrutiny,\nand cautious walking (perhaps nearly as much back as forward, at\nfirst), you will verily get off the glacier, and into meadow land, in\nGod's time.\n\n179. I meant to have written much to you respecting the meaning of\nthat word \"hired servants,\" and to have gone on to the duties of\nsoldiers, for you know \"Soldier\" means a person who is paid to fight\nwith regular pay--literally with \"soldi\" or \"sous\"--the \"penny a day\"\nof the vineyard laborers; but I can't now: only just this much, that\nour whole system of work must be based on the nobleness of\nsoldiership--so that we shall all be soldiers of either plowshare or\nsword; and literally all our actual and professed soldiers, whether\nprofessed for a time only, or for life, must be kept to hard work of\nhand, when not in actual war; their honor consisting in being set to\nservice of more pain and danger than others; to life-boat service; to\nredeeming of ground from furious rivers or sea--or mountain ruin; to\nsubduing wild and unhealthy land, and extending the confines of\ncolonies in the front of miasm and famine, and savage races.\n\nAnd much of our harder home work must be done in a kind of\nsoldiership, by bands of trained workers sent from place to place and\ntown to town; doing, with strong and sudden hand, what is needed for\nhelp, and setting all things in more prosperous courses for the\nfuture.\n\nOf all which I hope to speak in its proper place after we know what\noffices the higher arts of gentleness have among the lower ones of\nforce, and how their prevalence may gradually change spear to\npruning-hook, over the face of all the earth.\n\n180. And now--but one word more--either for you, or any other readers\nwho may be startled at what I have been saying, as to the peculiar\nstress laid by the Founder of our religion on right dealing with\nwealth. Let them be assured that it is with no fortuitous choice among\nthe attributes or powers of evil, that \"Mammon\" is assigned for the\ndirect adversary of the Master whom they are bound to serve. You\ncannot, by any artifice of reconciliation, be God's soldier, and his.\nNor while the desire of gain is within your heart, can any true\nknowledge of the Kingdom of God come there. No one shall enter its\nstronghold,--no one receive its blessing, except, \"he that hath clean\nhands and a pure heart;\" clean hands that have done no cruel\ndeed,--pure heart, that knows no base desire. And, therefore, in the\nhighest spiritual sense that can be given to words, be assured, not\nrespecting the literal temple of stone and gold, but of the living\ntemple of your body and soul, that no redemption, nor teaching, nor\nhallowing, will be anywise possible for it, until these two verses\nhave been, for it also, fulfilled:--\n\n\"And He went into the temple, and began to cast out them that sold\ntherein, and them that bought. And He taught daily in the temple.\"\n\n\n\n\nAPPENDICES.\n\n\n\n\nAPPENDIX I.\n\nPage 21.--_Expenditure on Science and Art._\n\n\nThe following is the passage referred to. The fact it relates is so\ncurious, and so illustrative of our national interest in science, that\nI do not apologize for the repetition:--\n\n\"Two years ago there was a collection of the fossils of Solenhofen to\nbe sold in Bavaria; the best in existence, containing many specimens\nunique for perfectness, and one, unique as an example of a species (a\nwhole kingdom of unknown living creatures being announced by that\nfossil). This collection, of which the mere market worth, among\nprivate buyers, would probably have been some thousand or twelve\nhundred pounds, was offered to the English nation for seven hundred:\nbut we would not give seven hundred, and the whole series would have\nbeen in the Munich museum at this moment, if Professor Owen[A] had\nnot, with loss of his own time, and patient tormenting of the British\npublic in the person of its representatives, got leave to give four\nhundred pounds at once, and himself become answerable for the other\nthree!--which the said public will doubtless pay him eventually, but\nsulkily, and caring nothing about the matter all the while; only\nalways ready to cackle if any credit comes of it. Consider, I beg of\nyou, arithmetically, what this fact means. Your annual expenditure for\npublic purposes (a third of it for military apparatus) is at least\nfifty millions. Now seven hundred pounds is to fifty million pounds,\nroughly, as seven pence to two thousand pounds. Suppose, then, a\ngentleman of unknown income, but whose wealth was to be conjectured\nfrom the fact that he spent two thousand a year on his park walls and\nfootmen only, professes himself fond of science; and that one of his\nservants comes eagerly to tell him that an unique collection of\nfossils, giving clue to a new era of creation, is to be had for the\nsum of sevenpence sterling; and that the gentleman who is fond of\nscience, and spends two thousand a year on his park, answers, after\nkeeping his servant waiting several months, 'Well, I'll give you\nfourpence for them, if you will be answerable for the extra threepence\nyourself till next year.'\"\n\n    [A] I originally stated this fact without Professor Owen's\n    permission; which, of course, he could not with propriety\n    have granted, had I asked it; but I considered it so\n    important that the public should be aware of the fact, that I\n    did what seemed to me right, though rude.\n\n\n\n\nAPPENDIX II.\n\nPage 33.--_Legislation of Frederick the Great._\n\n\nThe following are the portions of Mr. Dixon's letters referred to:--\n\n\"Well, I am now busy with Frederick the Great; I am not now astonished\nthat Carlyle calls him Great, neither that this work of his should\nhave had such a sad effect upon him in producing it, when I see the\nnumber of volumes he must have had to wade through to produce such a\nclear terse set of utterances; and yet I do not feel the work as a\nbook likely to do a reader of it the good that some of his other books\nwill do. It is truly awful to read these battles after battles, lies\nafter lies, called Diplomacy; it's fearful to read all this, and one\nwonders how he that set himself to this--He, of all men--could have\nthe rare patience to produce such a labored, heart-rending piece of\nwork. Again, when one reads of the stupidity, the shameful waste of\nour moneys by our forefathers, to see our National Debt (the curse to\nour labor now, the millstone to our commerce, to our fair chance of\ncompetition in our day) thus created, and for what? Even Carlyle\ncannot tell; then how are we to tell? Now, who will deliver us? that\nis the question; who will help us in these days of _idle or no work_,\nwhile our foreign neighbors have plenty and are actually selling their\nproduce to our men of capital cheaper than we can make it? House-rent\ngetting dearer, taxes getting dearer, rates, clothing, food, etc. Sad\ntimes, my master, do seem to have fallen upon us. And the cause of\nnearly all this lies embedded in that Frederick; and yet, so far as I\nknow of it, no critic has yet given an exposition of such laying\nthere. For our behoof, is there no one that will take this, that there\nlies so woven in with much other stuff so sad to read, to any man that\ndoes not believe man was made to fight alone, to be a butcher of his\nfellow-man? Who will do this work, or piece of work, so that all who\ncare may know how it is that our debt grew so large, and a great deal\nmore that we ought to know?--that clearly is one great reason why the\nbook was written and was printed. Well, I hope some day all this will\nbe clear to our people, and some man or men will arise and sweep us\nclear of these hindrances, these sad drawbacks to the vitality of our\nwork in this world.\"\n\n\n                         \"57, Nile Street, Sunderland, Feb. 7, 1867.\n\n\"DEAR SIR,--\n\n\"I beg to acknowledge the receipt of two letters as additions to your\nbooks, which I have read with deep interest, and shall take care of\nthem, and read them over again, so that I may thoroughly comprehend\nthem, and be able to think of them for future use. I myself am not\nfully satisfied with our co-operation, and never have been; it is too\nmuch tinged with the very elements that they complain of in our\npresent systems of trade--selfishness. I have for years been trying to\ndirect the attention of the editor of the _Co-operator_ to such evils\nthat I see in it. Now further, I may state that I find you and Carlyle\nseem to agree quite on the idea of the _Masterhood_ qualification.\nThere again I find you both feel and write as all working men consider\njust. I can assure you there is not an honest, noble working man that\nwould not by far serve under such _master_-hood, than be the employe\nor workman of a co-operative store. Working men do not as a rule make\ngood masters; neither do they treat each other with that courtesy as a\nnoble master treats his working man. George Fox shadows forth some\nsuch treatment that Friends ought to make law and guidance for their\nworking men and slaves, such as you speak of in your letters. I will\nlook the passage up, as it is quite to the point, so far as I now\nremember it. In Vol. VI. of _Frederick the Great_, I find a great deal\nthere that I feel quite certain, if our Queen or Government could make\nlaw, thousands of English working men would hail it with such a shout\nof joy and gladness as would astonish the Continental world. These\nchanges suggested by Carlyle and placed before the thinkers of\nEngland, are the noblest, the truest utterances on real kinghood, that\nI have ever read; the more I think over them, the more I feel the\ntruth, the justness, and also the fitness of them, to our nation's\npresent dire necessities; yet this is the man, and these are the\nthoughts of his, that our critics seem never to see, or if seen, don't\nthink worth printing or in any way wisely directing the attention of\nthe public thereto, alas! All this and much more fills me with such\nsadness that I am driven almost to despair. I see from the newspapers,\nYorkshire, Lancashire, and other places are sternly endeavoring to\ncarry out the short time movement until such times as trade revives,\nand I find the masters and men seem to adopt it with a good grace and\nfriendly spirit. I also beg to inform you I see a Mr. Morley, a large\nmanufacturer at Nottingham, has been giving pensions to all his old\nworkmen. I hope such a noble example will be followed by other wealthy\nmasters. It would do more to make a master loved, honored, and cared\nfor, than thousands of pounds expended in other ways. The Government\nSavings Banks is one of the wisest acts of late years done by our\nGovernment. I, myself, often wish the Government held all our banks\ninstead of private men; that would put an end to false speculations,\nsuch as we too often in the provinces suffer so severely by, so I hail\nwith pleasure and delight the shadowing forth by you of these noble\nplans for the future: I feel glad and uplifted to think of the good\nthat such teaching will do for us all.\n\n                                          \"Yours truly,\n                                                     \"THOMAS DIXON.\"\n\n\n                        \"57, Nile Street, Sunderland, Feb. 24, 1867.\n\n\"DEAR SIR,--\n\n\"I now give you the references to _Frederick the Great_. Vol. VI.:\nLand Question, 365 page, where he increases the number of small\nfarmers to 4,000 (202, 204). English soldiers and T. C.'s remarks on\nour system of purchase, etc. His law, (620, 623, 624). State of Poland\nand how he repaired it, (487, 488, 489, 490). I especially value the\nway he introduced all kinds of industries therein, and so soon changed\nthe chaos into order. Again, the school-masters also are given (not\nyet in England, says T. C.). Again the use he made of 15,000_l._\nsurplus in Brandenburg; how it was applied to better his staff of\nmasters. To me, the Vol. VI. is one of the wisest pieces of modern\nthought in our language. I only wish I had either your power, C.\nKingsley, Maurice, or some such able pen-generalship, to illustrate\nand show forth all the wise teaching on law, government, and social\nlife I see in it, and shining like a star through all its pages.[A] I\nfeel also the truth of all you have written, and will do all I can to\nmake such men or women that care for such thoughts, see it, or read\nit. I am copying the letters as fast and as well as I can, and will\nuse my utmost endeavor to have them done that justice to they merit.\n\n                                          \"Yours truly,\n                                                     \"THOMAS DIXON.\"\n\n    [A] I have endeavored to arrange some of the passages to\n    which Mr. Dixon here refers, in a form enabling the reader to\n    see their bearing on each other more distinctly, as a sequel\n    to the essay on War in the 'Crown of Wild Olive.'\n\n\n\n\nAPPENDIX III.\n\nPage 33.--_Effect of Modern Entertainments on the Mind of Youth._\n\n\nThe letter of the _Times'_ correspondent referred to contained an\naccount of one of the most singular cases of depravity ever brought\nbefore a criminal court; but it is unnecessary to bring any of its\ndetails under the reader's attention, for nearly every other number of\nour journals has of late contained some instances of atrocities before\nunthought of, and, it might have seemed, impossible to humanity.\nThe connection of these with the modern love of excitement in the\nsensational novel and drama may not be generally understood, but it is\ndirect and constant; all furious pursuit of pleasure ending in actual\ndesire of horror and delight in death. I entered into some fuller\nparticulars on this subject in a lecture given in the spring at the\nRoyal Institution.\n\n[Any part of the Lecture referred to likely to be of permanent\ninterest will be printed, somewhere, in this series.]\n\n\n\n\nAPPENDIX IV.\n\nPage 76.--_Drunkenness as the Cause of Crime._\n\n\nThe following portions of Mr. Dixon's letter referred to, will be\nfound interesting:--\n\n\n\"DEAR SIR,--\n\n\"Your last letter, I think, will arouse the attention of thinkers more\nthan any of the series, it being on topics they in general feel more\ninterested in than the others, especially as in these you do not\nassail their pockets so much as in the former ones. Since you seem\ninterested with the notes or rough sketches on gin, G * * * of Dublin\nwas the man I alluded to as making his money by drink, and then giving\nthe results of such traffic to repair the Cathedral of Dublin. It was\nthousands of pounds. I call such charity robbing Peter to pay Paul!\nImmense fortunes are made in the _Liquor Traffic_, and I will tell you\nwhy; it is all paid for in cash, at least such as the poor people buy;\nthey get credit for clothes, butchers' meat, groceries, etc., while\nthey give the gin-palace keeper _cash_; they never begrudge the price\nof a glass of gin or beer, they never haggle over _its_ price, never\nonce think of doing that; but in the purchase of almost every other\narticle they haggle and begrudge its price. To give you an idea of its\nprofits--there are houses here whose average weekly takings in cash at\ntheir bars is 50_l._, 60_l._, 70_l._, 80_l._, 90l_._, to 150_l._, per\nweek. Nearly all the men of intelligence in it, say it is the curse of\nthe working classes. Men whose earnings are, say 20_s._ to 30_s._ per\nweek, spend on the average 3_s._ to 6_s._ per week (some even 10_s._).\nIt's my mode of living to supply these houses with corks that makes me\nsee so much of the drunkenness; and that is the cause why I never\nreally cared for _my trade_, seeing the misery that was entailed on my\nfellow men and women by the use of this stuff. Again, a house with a\nlicense to sell spirits, wine, and ale, to be consumed on the\npremises, is worth two to three times more money than any other class\nof property. One house here worth nominally 140_l._ sold the other day\nfor 520_l._; another one worth 200_l._ sold for 800_l._ I know\npremises with a license that were sold for 1,300_l._, and then sold\nagain two years after for 1,800_l._; another place was rented for\n50_l._, now rents at 100_l._--this last is a house used by working men\nand laborers chiefly! No, I honor men like _Sir W. Trevelyan_, that\nare teetotalers, or total abstainers, as an example to poor men, and,\nto prevent his work-people being tempted, will not allow any\npublic-house on his estate. If our land had a few such men it would\nhelp the cause. We possess one such a man here, a banker. I feel sorry\nto say the progress of temperance is not so great as I would like to\nsee it. The only religious body that approaches to your ideas of\npolitical economy is Quakerism as taught by George Fox. Carlyle seems\ndeeply tinged with their teachings. _Silence_ to them is as valuable\nto him. Again, why should people howl and shriek over the law that the\nAlliance is now trying to carry out in our land called the Permissive\nBill? If we had just laws we then would not be so miserable or so much\nannoyed now and then with cries of Reform and cries of Distress. I\nsend you two pamphlets;--one gives the working man's reasons why he\ndon't go to church; in it you will see a few opinions expressed very\nmuch akin to those you have written to me. The other gives an account\nhow it is the poor Indians have died of _Famine_, simply because they\nhave destroyed the very system of Political Economy, or one having\nsome approach to it, that you are now endeavoring to direct the\nattention of thinkers to in our country. The _Sesame and Lilies_ I\nhave read as you requested. I feel now fully the aim and object you\nhave in view in the Letters, but I cannot help directing your\nattention to that portion where you mention or rather exclaim against\nthe Florentines pulling down their _Ancient Walls_ to build a\n_Boulevard_. That passage is one that would gladden the hearts of all\ntrue _Italians_, especially men that love _Italy and Dante_!\"\n\n\n\n\nAPPENDIX V.\n\nPage 78.--_Abuse of Food._\n\n\nParagraphs cut from 'Manchester Examiner' of March 16, 1867:--\n\n\n\"A PARISIAN CHARACTER.--A celebrated character has disappeared from\nthe Palais Royal. Rene Lartique was a Swiss, and a man of about sixty.\nHe actually spent the last fifteen years in the Palais Royal--that is\nto say, he spent the third of his life at dinner. Every morning at ten\no'clock he was to be seen going into a restaurant (usually Tissat's),\nand in a few moments was installed in a corner, which he only quitted\nabout three o'clock in the afternoon, after having drunk at least six\nor seven bottles of different kinds of wine. He then walked up and\ndown the garden till the clock struck five, when he made his\nappearance again at the same restaurant, and always at the same place.\nHis second meal, at which he drank quite as much as at the first,\ninvariably lasted till half-past nine. Therefore, he devoted nine\nhours a day to eating and drinking. His dress was most wretched--his\nshoes broken, his trousers torn, his paletot without any lining and\npatched, his waistcoat without buttons, his hat a rusty red from old\nage, and the whole surmounted by a dirty white beard. One day he went\nup to the _comptoir_, and asked the presiding divinity there to allow\nhim to run in debt for one day's dinner. He perceived some hesitation\nin complying with the request, and immediately called one of the\nwaiters, and desired him to follow him. He went into the office,\nunbuttoned a certain indispensable garment, and, taking off a broad\nleather belt, somewhat startled the waiter by displaying two hundred\ngold pieces, each worth one hundred francs. Taking up one of them, he\ntossed it to the waiter, and desired him to pay whatever he owed. He\nnever again appeared at that restaurant, and died a few days ago of\nindigestion.\"\n\n\n\"REVENGE IN A BALL-ROOM.--A distressing event lately took place at\nCastellaz, a little commune of the Alpes-Maritimes, near Mentone. All\nthe young people of the place being assembled in a dancing-room, one\nof the young men was seen to fall suddenly to the ground, whilst a\nyoung woman, his partner, brandished a poniard, and was preparing to\ninflict a second blow on him, having already desperately wounded him\nin the stomach. The author of the crime was at once arrested. She\ndeclared her name to be Marie P----, twenty-one years of age, and\nadded that she had acted from a motive of revenge, the young man\nhaving led her astray formerly with a promise of marriage, which he\nhad never fulfilled. In the morning of that day she had summoned him\nto keep his word, and, upon his refusal, had determined on making the\ndancing-room the scene of her revenge. She was at first locked up in\nthe prison of Mentone, and afterwards sent on to Nice. The young man\ncontinues in an alarming state.\"\n\n\n\n\nAPPENDIX VI.\n\nPage 94.--_Regulations of Trade._\n\n\nI print portions of two letters of Mr. Dixon's in this place; one\nreferring to our former discussion respecting the sale of votes:--\n\n\n                       \"57, Nile Street, Sunderland, March 21, 1867.\n\n\"I only wish I could write in some tolerable good style, so that I\ncould idealize, or rather realize to folks, the life and love, and\nmarriage of a working man and his wife. It is in my opinion a working\nman that really does know what a true wife is, for his every want, his\nevery comfort in life depends on her; and his children's home, their\ndaily lives and future lives, are shaped by her. Napoleon wisely said,\n'France needs good mothers more than brave men. Good mothers are the\nmakers or shapers of good and brave men.' I cannot say that these are\nthe words, but it is the import of his speech on the topic. We have a\nsaying amongst us: 'The man may spend and money lend, if his wife be\n_ought_,'--_i. e._ good wife;--'but he may work and try to save, but\nwill have _nought_, if his wife be nought,'--_i. e._ bad or thriftless\nwife.\n\n\"Now, since you are intending to treat of the working man's parliament\nand its duties, I will just throw out a few suggestions of what I\nconsider should be the questions or measures that demand an early\ninquiry into and debate on. That guilds be established in every town,\nwhere masters and men may meet, so as to avoid the temptations of the\npublic-house and _drink_. And then, let it be made law that every lad\nshould serve an apprenticeship of not less than seven years to a trade\nor art, before he is allowed to be a member of such guild; also, that\nall wages be based on a rate of so much _per hour_, and not day, as at\npresent; and let every man prove his workmanship before such a guild,\nand then allow to him such payment per hour as his craft merits. Let\nthere be three grades, and then let there be trials of skill in\nworkmanship every year; and then, if the workman of the third grade\nprove that he has made progress in his craft, reward him accordingly.\nThen, before a lad is put to any trade, why not see what he is\nnaturally fitted for? Combe's book, entitled _The Constitution of\nMan_, throws a good deal of truth on to these matters. Now, here are\ntwo branches of the science of life that, so far, have never once been\ngiven trial of in this way. We certainly use them after a _crime_ has\nbeen committed, but not till then.\n\n\"Next to that, cash, payment for all and everything needed in life.\n_Credit is a curse_ to him that gives it, and that takes it. He that\nlives by credit lives in general carelessly. If there was no credit,\npeople then would have to live on what they earned! Then, after that,\nthe Statute of Limitations of Fortune you propose. By the hour system,\nnot a single man _need be idle_; it would give employment to all, and\neven two hours per day would realize more to a man than _breaking\nstones_. Thus you would make every one self-dependent--also no fear of\nbeing out of work altogether. Then let there be a Government fund for\nall the savings of the working man. I am afraid you will think this a\nwild, discursive sort of a letter.\n\n                                          \"Yours truly,\n                                                     \"THOMAS DIXON.\"\n\n\n\"I have read your references to the _Times_ on 'Bribery.' Well, that\nhas long been my own opinion; they simply have a vote to sell, and\nsell it the same way as they sell potatoes, or a coat, or any other\nsalable article. Voters generally say, 'What does this gentleman want\nin Parliament? Why, to help himself and his family or friends; he does\nnot spend all the money he spends over his election for pure good of\nhis country! No: it's to benefit his pocket, to be sure. Why should I\nnot make a penny with my vote, as well as he does with his in\nParliament?' I think that if the system of canvassing or election\nagents were done away with, and all personal canvassing for votes\nentirely abolished, it would help to put down bribery. Let each\ngentleman send to the electors his political opinions in a circular,\nand then let papers be sent, or cards, to each elector, and then let\nthem go and record their votes in the same way they do for a\ncouncillor in the Corporation. It would save a great deal of expense,\nand prevent those scenes of drunkenness so common in our towns during\nelections. _Bewick's opinions_ of these matters are quite to the\npurpose, I think (_see page 201 of Memoir_). Again, respecting the\nParis matter referred to in your last letter, I have read it. Does it\nnot manifest plainly enough that Europeans are also in a measure\npossessed with that same _demoniacal spirit like the Japanese_?\"\n\n\n\n\nAPPENDIX VII.\n\n\nThe following letter did not form part of the series written to Mr.\nDixon; but is perhaps worth reprinting. I have not the date of the\nnumber of the _Gazette_ in which it appeared, but it was during the\ntailors' strike in London.\n\n\n  \"TO THE EDITOR OF THE _Pall Mall Gazette_.\n\n\"Sir,--\n\n\"In your yesterday's article on strikes you have very neatly and\ntersely expressed the primal fallacy of modern political economy--to\nwit, that 'the value of any piece of labor cannot be defined'--and\nthat 'all that can be ascertained is simply whether any man can be got\nto do it for a certain sum.' Now, sir, the 'value' of any piece of\nlabor, that is to say, the quantity of food and air which will enable\na man to perform it without losing actually any of his flesh or his\nnervous energy, is as absolutely fixed a quantity as the weight of\npowder necessary to carry a given ball a given distance. And within\nlimits varying by exceedingly minor and unimportant circumstances, it\nis an ascertainable quantity. I told the public this five years\nago--and under pardon of your politico-economical contributors--it is\nnot a 'sentimental,' but a chemical fact.\n\n\"Let any half-dozen of recognized London physicians state in precise\nterms the quantity and kind of food, and space of lodging, they\nconsider approximately necessary for the healthy life of a laborer in\nany given manufacture, and the number of hours he may, without\nshortening his life, work at such business daily, if so sustained.\n\n\"And let all masters be bound to give their men a choice between an\norder for that quantity of food and lodging, or such wages as the\nmarket may offer for that number of hours' work.\n\n\"Proper laws for the maintenance of families would require further\nconcession--but, in the outset, let but _this_ law of wages be\nestablished, and if then we have any more strikes you may denounce\nthem without one word of remonstrance either from sense or\nsensibility.\n\n                                  \"I am, Sir,\n                                         \"Your obedient servant,\n                                                      \"JOHN RUSKIN.\"","title":"Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne: Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":47156}