It is due to my readers to state my reasons for raising the price, and
withdrawing the frontispieces, of Fors.
The cessation of the latter has nothing to do with the price. At least,
for the raised price I could easily afford the plates, and they would
help the sale; but I cannot spare my good assistant’s time in their
preparation, and find that, in the existing state of trade, I cannot
trust other people, without perpetual looking after them; for which I
have no time myself. Even last year the printing of my Fors
frontispieces prevented the publication of my Oxford lectures on
engraving; and it is absolutely necessary that my Oxford work should be
done rightly, whatever else I leave undone. Secondly, for the rise in
price. I hold it my duty to give my advice for nothing; but not to
write it in careful English, and correct press, for nothing. I like the
feeling of being paid for my true work as much as any other labourer;
and though I write Fors, not for money, but because I know it to be
wanted, as I would build a wall against the advancing sea for nothing,
if I couldn’t be paid for doing it; yet I will have proper pay from the
harbour-master, if I can get it. As soon as the book gives me and the
publisher what is right, the surplus shall go to the St. George’s fund.
The price will not signify ultimately;—sevenpence, or tenpence, or a
shilling, will be all the same to the public if the book is found
useful;—but I fix, and mean to keep to, tenpence, because I intend
striking for use on my farms the pure silver coin called in Florence
the ‘soldo,’ of which the golden florin was worth twenty; (the soldo
itself being misnamed from the Roman ‘solidus’) and this soldo will
represent the Roman denarius, and be worth ten silver pence; and this
is to be the price of Fors.
Then one further petty reason I have for raising the price. In all my
dealings with the public, I wish them to understand that my first price
is my lowest. They may have to pay more; but never a farthing less. And
I am a little provoked at not having been helped in the least by the
Working Men’s College, after I taught there for five years, or by any
of my old pupils there, whom I have lost sight of:—(three remain who
would always help me in anything,) and I think they will soon begin to
want Fors, now,—and they shall not have it for sevenpence.
The following three stray newspaper cuttings may as well be printed
now; they have lain some time by me. The first two relate to economy.
The last is, I hope, an exaggerated report; and I give it as an example
of the kind of news which my own journal will not give on hearsay. But
I know that things did take place in India which were not capable of
exaggeration in horror, and such are the results, remember, of our past
missionary work, as a whole, in India and China.
I point to them to-day, in order that I may express my entire
concurrence in all that I have seen reported of Professor Max Müller’s
lecture in Westminster Abbey, though there are one or two things I
should like to say in addition, if I can find time.
“Those who find fault with the present Government on account of its
rigid economy, and accuse it of shabbiness, have little idea of the
straits it is put to for money and the sacrifices it is obliged to
make in order to make both ends meet. The following melancholy
facts will serve to show how hardly pushed this great nation is to
find sixpence even for a good purpose. The Hakluyt Society was, as
some of our readers may know, formed in the year 1846 for the
purpose of printing in English for distribution among its members
rare and valuable voyages, travels, and geographical records,
including the more important early narratives of British
enterprise. For many years the Home Office, the Board of Trade, and
the Admiralty have been in the habit of subscribing for the
publications of this society; and considering that an annual
subscription of one guinea entitles each subscriber to receive
without further charge a copy of every work produced by the society
within the year subscribed for, it can hardly be said that the
outlay was ruinous to the Exchequer. But we live in an exceptional
period; and accordingly last year the society received a
communication from the Board of Trade to the effect that its
publications were no longer required. Then the Home Office wrote to
say that its subscription must be discontinued, and followed up the
communication by another, asking whether it might have a copy of
the society’s publications supplied to it gratuitously. Lastly, the
Admiralty felt itself constrained by the urgency of the times to
reduce its subscription, and asked to have only one instead of two
copies annually. It seems rather hard on the Hakluyt Society that
the Home Office should beg to have its publications for nothing,
and for the sake of appearance it seems advisable that the
Admiralty should continue its subscription for two copies, and lend
one set to its impoverished brother in Whitehall until the advent
of better times.”—Pall Mall Gazette.
“We make a present of a suggestion to Professor Beesly, Mr.
Frederic Harrison, and the artisans who are calling upon the
country to strike a blow for France. They must appoint a Select
Committee to see what war really means. Special commissioners will
find out for them how many pounds, on an average, have been lost by
the families whose breadwinners have gone to Paris with the King,
or to Le Mans with Chanzy. Those hunters of facts will also let the
working men know how many fields are unsown round Metz and on the
Loire. Next, the Select Committee will get an exact return of the
killed and wounded from Count Bismarck and M. Gambetta. Some
novelist or poet—a George Eliot or a Browning—will then be asked to
lavish all the knowledge of human emotion in the painting of one
family group out of the half-million which the returns of the
stricken will show. That picture will be distributed broadcast
among the working men and their wives. Then the Select Committee
will call to its aid the statisticians and the political
economists—the Leone Levis and the John Stuart Mills. Those
authorities will calculate what sum the war has taken from the
wages fund of France and Germany; what number of working men it
will cast out of employment, or force to accept lower wages, or
compel to emigrate.” (I do not often indulge myself in the study of
the works of Mr. Levi or Mr. Mill;—but have they really never done
anything of this kind hitherto?) “Thus the facts will be brought
before the toiling people, solidly, simply, truthfully. Finally,
Professor Beesly and Mr. Harrison will call another meeting, will
state the results of the investigation, will say, ‘This is the
meaning of war,’ and will ask the workmen whether they are prepared
to pay the inevitable price of helping Republican France. The
answer, we imagine, would at once shock and surprise the scholarly
gentlemen to whom the Democrats are indebted for their logic and
their rhetoric. Meanwhile Mr. Ruskin and the Council of the
Workmen’s National Peace Society have been doing some small measure
of the task which we have mapped out. The Council asks the
bellicose section of the operative classes a number of questions
about the cost and the effect of battles. Some, it is true, are not
very cogent, and some are absurd; but, taken together, they press
the inquiry whether war pays anybody, and in particular whether it
pays the working man. Mr. Ruskin sets forth the truth much more
vividly in the letter which appeared in our impression of Thursday.
‘Half the money lost by the inundation of the Tiber,’ etc., (the
Telegraph quotes the letter to the end).
“Before stating what might have been done with the force which has
been spent in the work of mutual slaughter, Mr. Ruskin might have
explained what good it has undone, and how. Take, first, the
destruction of capital. Millions of pounds have been spent on
gunpowder, bombs, round shot, cannon, needle guns, chassepôts, and
mitrailleuses. But for the war, a great part of the sum would have
been expended in the growing of wheat, the spinning of cloth, the
building of railway bridges, and the construction of ships. As the
political economists say, the amount would have been spent
productively, or, to use the plain words of common speech, would
have been so used that, directly or indirectly, it would have added
to the wealth of the country, and increased the fund to be
distributed among the working people. But the wealth has been blown
away from the muzzle of the cannon, or scattered among the woods
and forts of Paris in the shape of broken shells and dismounted
guns. Now, every shot which is fired is a direct loss to the
labouring classes of France and Germany. King William on the one
side, and General Trochu on the other, really load their guns with
gold. They put the wages of the working people into every shell.
The splinters of iron that strew the fields represent the pay which
would have gone to the farm labourers of Alsace, the mechanics of
Paris and Berlin, and the silk weavers of Lyons. If the political
economist were some magician, he would command the supernatural
agent to transform the broken gun-carriages, the fragments of
bombs, and the round shot into loaves of bread, bottles of wine,
fields of corn, clothes, houses, cattle, furniture, books, the
virtue of women, the health of children, the years of the aged. The
whole field would become alive with the forms, the wealth, the
beauty, the bustle of great cities. If working men ever saw such a
transformation, they would rise up from end to end of Europe, and
execrate the King or Emperor who should let loose the dogs of war.
And yet such a scene would represent only a small part of the real
havoc. For every man whom Germany takes away from the field or the
workshop to place in the barrack or the camp, she must sustain as
certain a loss as if she were to cast money into the sea. The loss
may be necessary as an insurance against still greater injury; but
nevertheless the waste does take place, and on the working people
does it mainly fall. The young recruit may have been earning thirty
shillings a week or a day, and that sum is lost to himself or his
friends. Hitherto he has supported himself; now he must be
maintained by the State—that is, by his fellow-subjects. Hitherto
he has added to the national wealth by ploughing the fields,
building houses, constructing railways. A skilful statistician
could state, with some approach to accuracy, the number of pounds
by which the amount of his yearly productive contribution could be
estimated. It might be thirty, or a hundred, or a thousand. Well,
he ceases to produce the moment that he becomes a soldier. He is
then a drone. He is as unproductive as a pauper. The millions of
pounds spent in feeding and drilling the army as clearly represent
a dead loss as the millions spent on workhouses. Nor are these the
only ways in which war destroys wealth. Hundreds of railway bridges
have been broken down; the communications between different parts
of the country have been cut off; hundreds of thousands have lost
their means of livelihood; and great tracts of country are wasted
like a desert. Thus the total destruction of wealth has been
appalling. A considerable time ago Professor Leone Levi calculated
that Germany alone had lost more than £300,000,000; France must
have lost much more; and, even if we make a liberal discount from
so tremendous a computation, we may safely say that the war has
cost both nations at least half as much as the National Debt of
England.
“A large part of that amount, it is true, would have been spent
unproductively, even if the war had not taken place. A vast sum
would have been lavished on the luxuries of dress and the table, on
the beauties of art, and on the appliances of war. But it is safe
to calculate that at least half of the amount would have been so
expended as to bring a productive return. Two or three hundred
millions would have been at the service of peace; and Mr. Ruskin’s
letter points the question, What could have been done with that
enormous total? If it were at the disposal of an English statesman
as farseeing in peace as Bismarck is in war, what might not be done
for the England of the present and the future? The prospect is
almost millennial. Harbours of refuge might be built all round the
coast; the fever dens of London, Manchester, and Liverpool might
give place to abodes of health; the poor children of the United
Kingdom might be taught to read and write; great universities might
be endowed; the waste lands might be cultivated, and the Bog of
Allen drained; the National Debt could be swiftly reduced; and a
hundred other great national enterprises would sooner or later be
fulfilled. But all this store of human good has been blown away
from the muzzles of the Krupps and the chassepôts. It has literally
been transformed into smoke. We do not deny that such a waste may
be necessary in order to guard against still further destruction.
Wars have often been imperative. It would frequently be the height
of national wickedness to choose an ignoble peace. Nevertheless war
is the most costly and most wasteful of human pursuits. When the
working class followers of Professor Beesly ask themselves what is
the price of battle, what it represents, and by whom the chief part
is paid, they will be better able to respond to the appeal for
armed intervention than they were on Tuesday night.”—Daily
Telegraph, January 14th, 1871.
“The story of the massacre of Tientsin, on the 21st June last, is
told in a private letter dated Cheefoo, June 30th, published in
Thursday’s Standard, but the signature of which is not given. The
horrors narrated are frightful, and remembering how frequently
stories of similar horrors in the Mutiny melted away on close
investigation,—though but too many were true,—we may hope that the
writer, who does not seem to have been in Tientsin at the time, has
heard somewhat exaggerated accounts. Yet making all allowances for
this, there was evidently horror enough. The first attack was on
the French Consul, who was murdered, the Chinese mandarins refusing
aid. Then the Consulate was broken open, and two Catholic priests
murdered, as well as M. and Madame Thomassin, an attaché to the
Legation at Pekin and his bride. Then came the worst part. The mob,
acting with regular Chinese soldiers, it is said, whom their
officers did not attempt to restrain, attacked the hospital of the
French Sisters of Charity, stripped them, exposed them to the mob,
plucked out their eyes, mutilated them in other ways, and divided
portions of their flesh among the infuriated people, and then set
fire to the hospital, in which a hundred orphan children, who were
the objects of the sisters’ care, were burnt to death.”—The
Spectator, September 3, 1870.