"Mickle better not," answered Richie; "mickle better not. We are a'

frail creatures, and can judge better for ilk ither than in our own

cases. And for me--even myself--I have always observed myself to be much

more prudential in what I have done in your lordship's behalf, than even

in what I have been able to transact for my own interest--whilk last, I

have, indeed, always postponed, as in duty I ought."

"I do believe thou hast," answered Lord Nigel, "having ever found thee

true and faithful."

And his final success is entirely owing to his courage and fidelity, not

to his cunning.

To this subtlety both the men join considerable power of penetration

into the weaknesses of character; but Fairservice only sees the

surface-failings, and has no respect for any kind of nobleness; while

Richie watches the gradual lowering of his master's character and

reputation with earnest sorrow.

"My lord," said Richie, "to be round with you, the grace of God is

better than gold pieces, and, if they were my last words," he said,

raising his voice, "I would say you are misled, and are forsaking

the paths your honorable father trode in; and what is more, you are

going--still under correction--to the devil with a dishclout, for

ye are laughed at by them that lead you into these disordered

bypaths" (i. 282).

116. In the third place, note that the penetration of

Moniplies,--though, as aforesaid, more into faults than virtues,--being

yet founded on the truth of his own nature, is undeceivable. No rogue

can escape him for an instant; and he sees through all the machinations

of Lord Glenvarloch's enemies from the first; while Fairservice, shrewd

enough in detecting the follies of good people, is quite helpless before

knaves, and is deceived three times over by his own chosen

friends--first by the lawyer's clerk, Touthope (ii. 21), then by the

hypocrite MacVittie, and finally by his true blue Presbyterian friend

Laurie.

In these first elements of character the men are thus broadly

distinguished; but in the next, requiring analysis, the differences are

much more subtle. Both of them have, in nearly equal degree, the

peculiar love of doing or saying what is provoking, by an exact

contrariety to the wishes of the person they are dealing with, which is

a fault inherent in the rough side of uneducated Scottish character; but

in Andrew, the habit is checked by his self-interest, so that it is only

behind his master's back that we hear his opinion of him; and only when

he has lost his temper that the inherent provocativeness comes out--(see

the dark ride into Scotland).

On the contrary, Moniplies never speaks but in praise of his _absent_

master; but exults in mortifying him in direct colloquy: yet never

indulges this amiable disposition except with a really kind purpose, and

entirely knowing what he is about. Fairservice, on the other hand,

gradually falls into an unconscious fatality of varied blunder and

provocation; and at last causes the entire catastrophe of the story by

bringing in the candles when he has been ordered to stay downstairs.

117. We have next to remember that with Scott, Truth and Courage are

one. He somewhat overvalued _animal_ courage--holding it the basis of

all other virtue--in his own words, "Without courage there can be no

truth, and without truth no virtue." He would, however, sometimes allow

his villains to possess the basis, without the super-structure, and thus

Rashleigh, Dalgarno, Balfour, Varney, and other men of that stamp are to

be carefully distinguished from his erring _heroes_, Marmion, Bertram,

Christie of the Clinthill, or Nanty Ewart, in whom loyalty is always the

real strength of the character, and the faults of life are owing to

temporary passion or evil fate. Scott differs in this standard of

heroism materially from Byron,[104] in whose eyes mere courage, with

strong affections, are enough for admiration: while Bertram, and even

Marmion, though loyal to his country, are meant only to be pitied--not

honored. But neither Scott nor Byron will ever allow any grain of mercy

to a coward; and the final difference, therefore, between Fairservice

and Moniplies, which decides their fate in Scott's hands, is that

between their courage and cowardice. Fairservice is driven out at the

kitchen door, never to be heard of more, while Richie rises into Sir

Richie of Castle-Collop--the reader may perhaps at the moment think by

too careless grace on the King's part; which, indeed, Scott in some

measure meant;--but the grotesqueness and often evasiveness of Richie's

common manner make us forget how surely his bitter word is backed by his

ready blow, when need is. His first introduction to us (i. 33), is

because his quick temper overcomes his caution,--

"I thought to mysel', 'Ye are owre mony for me to mell with; but

let me catch ye in Barford's Park, or at the fit of the vennel, I

could gar some of ye sing another sang.' Sae, ae auld hirpling

deevil of a potter behoved just to step in my way and offer me a

pig, as he said, just to pit my Scotch ointment in, and _I gave him

a push, as but natural_, and the tottering deevil couped owre amang

his ain pigs, and damaged a score of them. And then the

reird[105] raise"--

while in the close of the events (ii. 365), he wins his wife by a piece

of hand-to-hand fighting, of the value of which his cool and stern

estimate, in answer to the gay Templar, is one of the great sentences

marking Scott's undercurrent of two feelings about war, in spite of his

love of its heroism.

"Bravo, Richie," cried Lowestoffe, "why, man, there lies Sin struck down

like an ox, and Iniquity's throat cut like a calf."

"I know not why you should upbraid me with my upbringing, Master

Lowestoffe," answered Richie, with great composure; "but I can tell you,

the shambles is not a bad place for training one to this work."

118. These then being the radical conditions of native character in the

two men, wholly irrespective of their religious persuasion, we have to

note what form their Presbyterian faith takes in each, and what effect

it has on their consciences.

In Richie, it has little to do; his conscience being, in the deep of it,

frank and clear. His religion commands him nothing which he is not at

once ready to do, or has not habitually done; and it forbids him nothing

which he is unwilling to forego. He pleads no pardon from it for known

faults; he seeks no evasions in the letter of it for violations of its

spirit. We are scarcely therefore aware of its vital power in him,

unless at moments of very grave feeling and its necessary expression.

"Wherefore, as the letter will not avail you with him to whom it is

directed, you may believe that Heaven hath sent it to _me_, who

have a special regard for the writer--have besides, as much mercy

and honesty within me as man can weel mak' his bread with, and am

willing to aid any distressed creature, that is my friend's

friend."

So, again, in the deep feeling which rebukes his master's careless ruin

of the poor apprentice--

"I say, then, as I am a true man, when I saw that puir creature

come through the ha' at that ordinary, whilk is accurst (Heaven

forgive me for swearing) of God and man, with his teeth set, and

his hands clenched, and his bonnet drawn over his brows...." He

stopped a moment, and looked fixedly in his master's face.

--and again in saving the poor lad himself when he takes the street to

his last destruction "with burning heart and bloodshot eye":

"Why do you stop my way?" he said fiercely.

"Because it is a bad one, Master Jenkin," said Richie.

"Nay, never start about it, man; you see you are known.

Alack-a-day! that an honest man's son should live to start at

hearing himself called by his own name."

"I pray you in good fashion to let me go," said Jenkin. "I am in

the humor to be dangerous to myself, or to anyone."

"I will abide the risk," said the Scot, "if you will but come with

me. You are the very lad in the world whom I most wish to

meet."[106]

"And you," answered Vincent, "or any of your beggarly countrymen,

are the last sight I should ever wish to see. You Scots are ever

fair and false."

"As to our poverty, friend," replied Richie, "that is as Heaven

pleases; but touching our falsity, I'll prove to you that a

Scotsman bears as leal and true a heart to his friend as ever beat

in an English doublet."

119. In these, and other such passages, it will be felt that I have done

Richie some injustice in classing him among the religionists who have

little sympathy! For all real distress, his compassion is instant; but

his doctrinal religion becomes immediately to him a cause of failure in

charity.

"Yon divine has another air from powerful Master Rollock, and Mess

David Black of North Leith, and sic like. Alack-a-day, wha can ken,

if it please your lordship, whether sic prayers as the Southrons

read out of their auld blethering black mess-book there, may not be

as powerful to invite fiends, as a right red-het prayer warm from

the heart may be powerful to drive them away; even as the evil

spirit was driven by the smell of the fish's liver from the bridal

chamber of Sara, the daughter of Raguel!"

The scene in which this speech occurs is one of Scott's most finished

pieces, showing with supreme art how far the weakness of Richie's

superstitious formality is increased by his being at the time partially

drunk!

It is on the other hand to be noted to his credit, for an earnest and

searching Bible-reader, that he quotes the Apocrypha. Not so gifted

Gilfillan,--

"But if your honor wad consider the case of Tobit--!"

"Tobit!" exclaimed Gilfillan with great heat; "Tobit and his dog

baith are altogether heathenish and apocryphal, and none but a

prelatist or a papist would draw them into question. I doubt I hae

been mista'en in you, friend."

Gilfillan and Fairservice are exactly alike, and both are distinguished

from Moniplies in their scornfully exclusive dogmatism, which is indeed

the distinctive plague-spot of the lower evangelical sect everywhere,

and the worst blight of the narrow natures, capable of its zealous

profession. In Blattergowl, on the contrary, as his name implies, the

_doctrinal_ teaching has become mere Blather, Blatter, or patter--a

string of commonplaces spoken habitually in performance of his clerical

function, but with no personal or sectarian interest in them on his

part.

"He said fine things on the duty o' resignation to the will of God--that

did he"; but his own mind is fixed under ordinary circumstances only on

the income and privilege of his position. Scott however indicates this

without severity as one of the weaknesses of an established church, to

the general principle of which, as to all other established and

monarchic law, he is wholly submissive, and usually affectionate (see

the description of Colonel Mannering's Edinburgh Sunday), so that

Blattergowl, _out of the pulpit_, does not fail in his serious pastoral

duty, but gives real comfort by his presence and exhortation in the

cottage of the Mucklebackits.

On the other hand, to all kinds of Independents and Nonconformists

(unless of Roderick Dhu type) Scott is adverse with all his powers; and

accordingly, Andrew and Gilfillan are much more sternly and scornfully

drawn than Blattergowl.

120. In all the three, however, the reader must not for an instant

suspect what is commonly called "hypocrisy." Their religion is no

assumed mask or advanced pretense. It is in all a confirmed and intimate

faith, mischievous by its error, in proportion to its sincerity (compare

"Ariadne Florentina," paragraph 87), and although by his cowardice,

petty larceny,[107] and low cunning, Fairservice is absolutely separated

into a different class of men from Moniplies--in his fixed religious

principle and primary conception of moral conduct, he is exactly like

him. Thus when, in an agony of terror, he speaks for once to his master

with entire sincerity, one might for a moment think it was a lecture by

Moniplies to Nigel.

"O, Maister Frank, a' your uncle's follies and your cousin's

fliskies, were nothing to this! Drink clean cap-out, like Sir

Hildebrand; begin the blessed morning with brandy-taps like Squire

Percy; rin wud among the lasses like Squire John; gamble like

Richard; win souls to the Pope and the deevil, like Rashleigh;

rive, rant, _break the Sabbath_, and do the Pope's bidding, like

them a' put thegither--but merciful Providence! tak' care o' your

young bluid, and gang na near Rob Roy."

I said, one might for a moment think it was a Moniplies' lecture to

Nigel. But not for two moments, if we indeed can think at all. We could

not find a passage more concentrated in expression of Andrew's total

character; nor more characteristic of Scott in the calculated precision

and deliberate appliance of every word.

121. Observe first, Richie's rebuke, quoted above, fastens Nigel's mind

instantly on the _nobleness_ of his father. But Andrew's to Frank

fastens as instantly on the _follies_ of his uncle and cousins.

Secondly, the sum of Andrew's lesson is--"do anything that is rascally,

if only you save your skin." But Richie's is summed in "the grace of God

is better than gold pieces."

Thirdly, Richie takes little note of creeds, except when he is drunk,

but looks to conduct always; while Andrew clinches his catalogue of

wrong with "doing the Pope's bidding" and Sabbath-breaking; these

definitions of the unpardonable being the worst absurdity of all Scotch

wickedness to this hour--everything being forgiven to people who go to

church on Sunday, and curse the Pope. Scott never loses sight of this

marvelous plague-spot of Presbyterian religion, and the last words of

Andrew Fairservice are:--

"The villain Laurie! to betray an auld friend that sang aff the

same psalm-book wi' him _every Sabbath_ for twenty years,"

and the tragedy of these last words of his, and of his expulsion from

his former happy home--"a jargonelle pear-tree at one end of the

cottage, a rivulet and flower plot of a rood in extent in front, a

kitchen garden behind, and a paddock for a cow" (viii. 6, of the 1830

edition) can only be understood by the reading of the chapter he quotes

on that last Sabbath evening he passes in it--the 5th of Nehemiah.

122. For--and I must again and again point out this to the modern

reader, who, living in a world of affectation, suspects "hypocrisy" in

every creature he sees--the very plague of this lower evangelical piety

is that it is _not_ hypocrisy; that Andrew and Laurie _do_ both expect

to get the grace of God by singing psalms on Sunday, whatever rascality

they practice during the week. In the modern popular drama of

"School,"[108] the only religious figure is a dirty and malicious usher

who appears first reading Hervey's "Meditations," and throws away the

book as soon as he is out of sight of the company. But when Andrew is

found by Frank "perched up like a statue by a range of beehives in an

attitude of devout contemplation, with one eye watching the motions of

the little irritable citizens, and the other fixed on a book of

devotion," you will please observe, suspicious reader, that the devout

gardener has no expectation whatever of Frank's approach, nor has he any

design upon him, nor is he reading or attitudinizing for effect of any

kind on any person. He is following his own ordinary customs, and his

book of devotion has been already so well used that "much attrition had

deprived it of its corners, and worn it into an oval shape"; its

attractiveness to Andrew being twofold--the first, that it contains

doctrine to his mind; the second, that such sound doctrine is set forth

under figures properly belonging to his craft. "I was e'en taking a

spell o' worthy Mess John Quackleben's 'Flower of a Sweet Savour sown on

the Middenstead of this World'" (note in passing Scott's easy, instant,

exquisite invention of the name of author and title of book); and it is

a question of very curious interest how far these sweet "spells" in

Quackleben, and the like religious exercises of a nature compatible with

worldly business (compare Luckie Macleary, "with eyes employed on

Boston's 'Crook in the Lot,' while her ideas were engaged in summing up

the reckoning"--Waverley, i. 112)--do indeed modify in Scotland the

national character for the better or the worse; or, not materially

altering, do at least solemnize and confirm it in what good it may be

capable of. My own Scottish nurse described in "Fors Clavigera" for

April, 1873, would, I doubt not, have been as faithful and affectionate

without her little library of Puritan theology; nor were her minor

faults, so far as I could see, abated by its exhortations; but I cannot

but believe that her uncomplaining endurance of most painful disease,

and steadiness of temper under not unfrequent misapprehension by those

whom she best loved and served, were in great degree aided by so much of

Christian faith and hope as she had succeeded in obtaining, with little

talk about it.

123. I knew however in my earlier days a right old Covenanter in my

Scottish aunt's house, of whom, with Mause Hedrigg and David Deans, I

may be able perhaps to speak further in my next paper.[109] But I can

only now write carefully of what bears on my immediate work: and must

ask the reader's indulgence for the hasty throwing together of materials

intended, before my illness last spring, to have been far more

thoroughly handled. The friends who are fearful for my reputation as an

"écrivain" will perhaps kindly recollect that a sentence of "Modern

Painters" was often written four or five times over in my own hand, and

tried in every word for perhaps an hour--perhaps a forenoon--before it

was passed for the printer. I rarely now fix my mind on a sentence, or a

thought, for five minutes in the quiet of morning, but a telegram comes

announcing that somebody or other will do themselves the pleasure of

calling at eleven o'clock, and that there's two shillings to pay.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 98: October 1881.]

[Footnote 99: "Jean François Millet." Twenty Etching's and Woodcuts

reproduced in Facsimile, and Biographical Notice by William Ernest

Henley. London, 1881.]

[Footnote 100: I am sorry to find that my former allusion to the boating

expedition in this novel has been misconstrued by a young authoress of

promise into disparagement of her own work; not supposing it possible

that I could only have been forced to look at George Eliot's by a

friend's imperfect account of it.]

[Footnote 101: I am ashamed to exemplify the miserable work of "review"

by mangling and mumbling this noble closing chapter of the "Monastery,"

but I cannot show the web of work without unweaving it.]

[Footnote 102: With ludicrously fatal retouch in the later edition "was

deprived of" his sword.]

[Footnote 103: Again I am obliged, by review necessity, to omit half the

points of the scene.]

[Footnote 104: I must deeply and earnestly express my thanks to my

friend Mr. Hale White for his vindication of Goethe's real opinion of

Byron from the mangled representation of it by Mr. Matthew Arnold

(_Contemporary Review_, August, 1881).]

[Footnote 105: "Reirde, rerde, Anglo-Saxon reord, lingua, sermo, clamor,

shouting" (Douglas glossary). No Scottish sentence in the Scott novels

should be passed without examining every word in it, his dialect, as

already noticed, being always pure and classic in the highest degree,

and his meaning always the fuller, the further it is traced.]

[Footnote 106: The reader must observe that in quoting Scott for

illustration of particular points I am obliged sometimes to alter the

succession and omit much of the context of the pieces I want, for Scott

never lets you see his hand, nor get at his points without remembering

and comparing far-away pieces carefully. To collect the evidence of any

one phase of character, is like pulling up the detached roots of a

creeper.]

[Footnote 107: Note the "wee business of my ain," i. 213.]

[Footnote 108: Its "hero" is a tall youth with handsome calves to his

legs, who shoots a bull with a fowling-piece, eats a large lunch, thinks

it witty to call Othello a "nigger," and, having nothing to live on, and

being capable of doing nothing for his living, establishes himself in

lunches and cigars forever, by marrying a girl with a fortune. The

heroine is an amiable governess, who, for the general encouragement of

virtue in governesses, is rewarded by marrying a lord.]

[Footnote 109: The present paper was, however, the last.--ED.]

FAIRY STORIES.[110]

124. Long since, longer ago than the opening of some fairy tales, I was

asked by the publisher who has been rash enough, at my request, to

reprint these my favorite old stories in their earliest English form, to

set down for him my reasons for preferring them to the more polished

legends, moral and satiric, which are now, with rich adornment of every

page by very admirable art, presented to the acceptance of the Nursery.

But it seemed to me to matter so little to the majestic independence of

the child-public, who, beside themselves, liked, or who disliked, what

they pronounced entertaining, that it is only on strict claims of a

promise unwarily given that I venture on the impertinence of eulogy; and

my reluctance is the greater, because there is in fact nothing very

notable in these tales, unless it be their freedom from faults which for

some time have been held to be quite the reverse of faults by the

majority of readers.

125. In the best stories recently written for the young, there is a

taint which it is not easy to define, but which inevitably follows on

the author's addressing himself to children bred in schoolrooms and

drawing-rooms, instead of fields and woods--children whose favorite

amusements are premature imitations of the vanities of elder people, and

whose conceptions of beauty are dependent partly on costliness of dress.

The fairies who interfere in the fortunes of these little ones are apt

to be resplendent chiefly in millinery and satin slippers, and appalling

more by their airs than their enchantments.

The fine satire which, gleaming through every playful word, renders some

of these recent stories as attractive to the old as to the young, seems

to me no less to unfit them for their proper function. Children should

laugh, but not mock; and when they laugh, it should not be at the

weaknesses and the faults of others. They should be taught, as far as

they are permitted to concern themselves with the characters of those

around them, to seek faithfully for good, not to lie in wait maliciously

to make themselves merry with evil: they should be too painfully

sensitive to wrong to smile at it; and too modest to constitute

themselves its judges.

126. With these minor errors a far graver one is involved. As the

simplicity of the sense of beauty has been lost in recent tales for

children, so also the simplicity of their conception of love. That word

which, in the heart of a child, should represent the most constant and

vital part of its being; which ought to be the sign of the most solemn

thoughts that inform its awakening soul and, in one wide mystery of pure

sunrise, should flood the zenith of its heaven, and gleam on the dew at

its feet; this word, which should be consecrated on its lips, together

with the Name which it may not take in vain, and whose meaning should

soften and animate every emotion through which the inferior things and

the feeble creatures, set beneath it in its narrow world, are revealed

to its curiosity or companionship; this word, in modern child-story, is

too often restrained and darkened into the hieroglyph of an evil

mystery, troubling the sweet peace of youth with premature gleams of

uncomprehended passion, and flitting shadows of unrecognized sin.

These great faults in the spirit of recent child-fiction are connected

with a parallel folly of purpose. Parents who are too indolent and

self-indulgent to form their children's characters by wholesome

discipline, or in their own habits and principles of life are conscious

of setting before them no faultless example, vainly endeavor to

substitute the persuasive influence of moral precept, intruded in the

guise of amusement, for the strength of moral habit compelled by

righteous authority:--vainly think to inform the heart of infancy with

deliberative wisdom, while they abdicate the guardianship of its

unquestioning innocence; and warp into the agonies of an immature

philosophy of conscience the once fearless strength of its unsullied and

unhesitating virtue.

127. A child should not need to choose between right and wrong. It

should not be capable of wrong; it should not conceive of wrong.

Obedient, as bark to helm, not by sudden strain or effort, but in the

freedom of its bright course of constant life; true, with an

undistinguished, praiseless, unboastful truth, in a crystalline

household world of truth; gentle, through daily entreatings of

gentleness, and honorable trusts, and pretty prides of child-fellowship

in offices of good; strong, not in bitter and doubtful contest with

temptation, but in peace of heart, and armor of habitual right, from

which temptation falls like thawing hail; self-commanding, not in sick

restraint of mean appetites and covetous thoughts, but in vital joy of

unluxurious life, and contentment in narrow possession, wisely esteemed.

Children so trained have no need of moral fairy tales; but they will

find in the apparently vain and fitful courses of any tradition of old

time, honestly delivered to them, a teaching for which no other can be

substituted, and of which the power cannot be measured; animating for

them the material world with inextinguishable life, fortifying them

against the glacial cold of selfish science, and preparing them

submissively, and with no bitterness of astonishment, to behold, in

later years, the mystery--divinely appointed to remain such to all human

thought--of the fates that happen alike to the evil and the good.

128. And the effect of the endeavor to make stories moral upon the

literary merit of the work itself, is as harmful as the motive of the

effort is false. For every fairy tale worth recording at all is the

remnant of a tradition possessing true historical value;--historical, at

least in so far as it has naturally arisen out of the mind of a people

under special circumstances, and risen not without meaning, nor removed

altogether from their sphere of religious faith. It sustains afterwards

natural changes from the sincere action of the fear or fancy of

successive generations; it takes new color from their manner of life,

and new form from their changing moral tempers. As long as these changes

are natural and effortless, accidental and inevitable, the story remains

essentially true, altering its form, indeed, like a flying cloud, but

remaining a sign of the sky; a shadowy image, as truly a part of the

great firmament of the human mind as the light of reason which it seems

to interrupt. But the fair deceit and innocent error of it cannot be

interpreted nor restrained by a willful purpose, and all additions to it

by act do but defile, as the shepherd disturbs the flakes of morning

mist with smoke from his fire of dead leaves.

129. There is also a deeper collateral mischief in this indulgence of

licentious change and retouching of stories to suit particular tastes,

or inculcate favorite doctrines. It directly destroys the child's power

of rendering any such belief as it would otherwise have been in his

nature to give to an imaginative vision. How far it is expedient to

occupy his mind with ideal forms at all may be questionable to many,

though not to me; but it is quite beyond question that if we do allow of

the fictitious representation, that representation should be calm and

complete, possessed to the full, and read down its utmost depth. The

little reader's attention should never be confused or disturbed, whether

he is possessing himself of fairy tale or history. Let him know his

fairy tale accurately, and have perfect joy or awe in the conception of

it as if it were real; thus he will always be exercising his power of

grasping realities: but a confused, careless, or discrediting tenure of

the fiction will lead to as confused and careless reading of fact. Let

the circumstances of both be strictly perceived and long dwelt upon, and

let the child's own mind develop fruit of thought from both. It is of

the greatest importance early to secure this habit of contemplation, and

therefore it is a grave error, either to multiply unnecessarily, or to

illustrate with extravagant richness, the incidents presented to the

imagination. It should multiply and illustrate them for itself; and, if

the intellect is of any real value, there will be a mystery and

wonderfulness in its own dreams which would only be thwarted by external

illustration. Yet I do not bring forward the text or the etchings in

this volume as examples of what either ought to be in works of the kind:

they are in many respects common, imperfect, vulgar; but their vulgarity

is of a wholesome and harmless kind. It is not, for instance, graceful

English, to say that a thought "popped into Catherine's head"; but it

nevertheless is far better, as an initiation into literary style, that a

child should be told this than that "a subject attracted Catherine's

attention." And in genuine forms of minor tradition, a rude and more or

less illiterate tone will always be discernible; for all the best fairy

tales have owed their birth, and the greater part of their power, to

narrowness of social circumstances; they belonged properly to districts

in which walled cities are surrounded by bright and unblemished country,

and in which a healthy and bustling town life, not highly refined, is

relieved by, and contrasted with, the calm enchantment of pastoral and

woodland scenery, either under humble cultivation by peasant masters, or

left in its natural solitude. Under conditions of this kind the

imagination is enough excited to invent instinctively (and rejoice in

the invention of) spiritual forms of wildness and beauty, while yet it

is restrained and made cheerful by the familiar accidents and relations

of town life, mingling always in its fancy humorous and vulgar

circumstances with pathetic ones, and never so much impressed with its

supernatural fantasies as to be in danger of retaining them as any part

of its religious faith. The good spirit descends gradually from an

angel into a fairy, and the demon shrinks into a playful grotesque of

diminutive malevolence, while yet both keep an accredited and vital

influence upon the character and mind. But the language in which such

ideas will be usually clothed, must necessarily partake of their

narrowness; and art is systematically incognizant of them, having only

strength under the conditions which awake them to express itself in an

irregular and gross grotesque, fit only for external architectural

decoration.

130. The illustrations of this volume are almost the only exceptions I

know to the general rule. They are of quite sterling and admirable art,

in a class precisely parallel in elevation to the character of the tales

which they illustrate; and the original etchings, as I have before said

in the Appendix to my "Elements of Drawing," were quite unrivaled in

masterfulness of touch since Rembrandt (in some qualities of delineation

unrivaled even by him). These copies have been so carefully executed,

that at first I was deceived by them, and supposed them to be late

impressions from the plates (and what is more, I believe the master

himself was deceived by them, and supposed them to be his own); and

although on careful comparison with the first proofs they will be found

no exception to the terrible law that literal repetition of entirely

fine work shall be, even to the hand that produced it,--much more to any

other,--forever impossible, they still represent, with sufficient

fidelity to be in the highest degree instructive, the harmonious light

and shade, the manly simplicity of execution, and the easy, unincumbered

fancy, of designs which belonged to the best period of Cruikshank's

genius. To make somewhat enlarged copies of them, looking at them

through a magnifying glass, and never putting two lines where Cruikshank

has put only one, would be an exercise in decision and severe drawing

which would leave afterwards little to be learnt in schools, I would

gladly also say much in their praise as imaginative designs; but the

power of genuine imaginative work, and its difference from that which is

compounded and patched together from borrowed sources, is of all

qualities of art the most difficult to explain; and I must be content

with the simple assertions of it.

And so I trust the good old book, and the honest work that adorns it, to

such favor as they may find with children of open hearts and lowly

lives.

DENMARK HILL, _Easter_, 1868.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 110: This paper forms the introduction to a volume entitled

"German Popular Stories, with Illustrations after the original designs

of George Cruikshank, edited by Edgar Taylor, with Introduction by John

Ruskin, M.A." London: Chatto and Windus, 1868. The book is a reprint of

Mr. Edgar Taylor's original (1823) selections of the "Hausmärchen," or

"German Popular Stories" of the Brothers Grimm. The original selections

were in two octavo volumes; the reprint in one of smaller size, it being

(the publisher states in his preface) "Mr. Ruskin's wish that the new

edition should appeal to young readers rather than to adults."--ED.]

* * * * *

ECONOMY.

HOME, AND ITS ECONOMIES.

(_Contemporary Review, May_ 1873.)

USURY. A REPLY AND A REJOINDER.

(_Contemporary Review, February_ 1880.)

USURY. A PREFACE.

(_Pamphlet_, 1885.)

* * * * *

HOME, AND ITS ECONOMIES.[111]

131. In the March number of the _Contemporary Review_ appeared two

papers,[112] by writers of reputation, which I cannot but hope their

authors will perceive upon reflection to have involved errors only the

more grave in that they have become, of late, in the minds of nearly all

public men, facile and familiar. I have, therefore, requested the

editor's permission to offer some reply to both of these essays, their

subjects being intimately connected.

The first of which I speak was Mr. Herbert Spencer's, which appeared

under the title of "The Bias of Patriotism." But the real subject of the

paper (discussed in its special extent, with singular care and equity)

was only the bias of National vanity; and the debate was opened by this

very curious sentence,--"Patriotism is nationally, that which Egoism is

individually."

Mr. Spencer would not, I think, himself accept this statement, if put

into the clear form, "What is Egoism in one man, is Patriotism in two or

more, and the vice of an individual, the virtue of a multitude."[113]

But it is strange,--however strictly Mr. Spencer may of late have

confined his attention to metaphysical or scientific subjects,

disregarding the language of historical or imaginative literature--it

is strange, I repeat, that so careful a student should be unaware that

the term "patriotism" cannot, in classical usage, be extended to the

action of a multitude. No writer of authority ever speaks of a nation as

having felt, or acted, patriotically. Patriotism is, by definition, a

virtue of individuals; and so far from being in those individuals a mode

of egoism, it is precisely in the sacrifice of their egoism that it

consists. It is the temper of mind which determines them to defer their

own interests to those of their country.

132. Supposing it possible for any parallel sentiment to animate a

nation as one body, it could have reference only to the position it held

among other families of the world. The name of the emotion would then be

properly "Cosmism," and would signify the resolution of such a people to

sacrifice its own special interests to those of Mankind. Cosmism

hitherto has indeed generally asserted itself only in the desire of the

Cosmic nation that all others should adopt its theological opinions, and

permit it to adopt their personal property; but Patriotism has truly

existed, and even as a dominant feeling, in the minds of many persons

who have been greatly influential on the fates of their races, and that

one of our leading philosophers should be unconscious of the nature of

this sentiment, and ignorant of its political power, is to be noted as

painfully characteristic of the present state of England itself.

It does not indeed follow that a feeling of which we are unaware is

necessarily extinguished in us; and the faculties of perception and

analysis are always so paralyzed by the lingual ingenuities of logic

that it is impossible to say, of any professed logician, whether he may

not yet be acting under the real force of ideas of which he has lost

both the consciousness and conception. No man who has once entangled

himself in what Mr. Spencer defines, farther on, as the "science of the

relations implied by the conclusions, exclusions, and overlappings of

classes," can be expected during the rest of his life to perceive more

of any one thing than that it is included, excluded, or overlapped by

something else; which is in itself a sufficiently confused state of

mind, and especially harmful in that it permits us to avoid considering

whether our intellectual linen is itself clean, while we concern

ourselves only to ascertain whether it is included, excluded, or

overlapped by our coat collar. But it is a grave phenomenon of the time

that patriotism--of all others--should be the sentiment which an English

logician is not only unable to define, but attempts to define as its

precise contrary. In every epoch of decline, men even of high

intellectual energy have been swept down in the diluvium of public life,

and the crystalline edges of their minds worn away by friction with

blunted ones; but I had not believed that the whole weight of the

depraved mob of modern England, though they have become incapable alike

of fidelity to their own country, and alliance with any other, could so

far have perplexed one of our exactest students as to make him confuse

heroism with conceit, and the loves of country and of home with the

iniquities of selfishness. Can it be only a quarter of a century since

the Last Minstrel died--and have we already answered his "Lives there a

man?" with the calm assertion that there live no other than such; and

that the "wretch concentered all in self "is the "Patriot" of our

generation?

133. Be it so. Let it even be admitted that egoism is the only power

conceivable by a modern metaphysician to be the spring of mental energy;

just as chemical excitement may be the only power traceable by the

modern physician as the source of muscular energy. And still Mr.

Spencer's subsequent analysis is inaccurate, and unscholarly. For egoism

does not necessarily imply either misapprehension or mismeasurement.

There are modes of the love of our country which are definitely selfish,

as a cat's of the hearthrug, yet entirely balanced and calm in judicial

faculty; passions which determine conduct, but have no influence on

opinion. For instance, I have bought for my own exclusive gratification,

the cottage in which I am writing, near the lake-beach on which I used

to play when I was seven years old. Were I a public-spirited scientific

person, or a benevolently pious one, I should doubtless, instead, be

surveying the geographical relations of the Mountains of the Moon, or

translating the Athanasian Creed into Tartar-Chinese. But I hate the

very name of the public, and labor under no oppressive anxiety either

for the advancement of science, or the salvation of mankind. I therefore

prefer amusing myself with the lake-pebbles, of which I know nothing but

that they are pretty; and conversing with people whom I can understand

without pains, and who, so far from needing to be converted, seem to me

on the whole better than myself. This is moral egoism, but it is not

intellectual error. I never form, much less express, any opinion as to

the relative beauties of Yewdale crag and the Mountains of the Moon; nor

do I please myself by contemplating, in any exaggerated light, the

spiritual advantages which I possess in my familiarity with the

Thirty-nine Articles. I know the height of my neighboring mountains to a

foot; and the extent of my real possessions, theological and material,

to an article. Patriotic egoism attaches me to the one; personal egoism

satisfies me in the other; and the calm selfishness with which Nature

has blessed all her unphilosophical creatures, blinds me to the

attractions--as to the faults--of things with which I have no concern,

and saves me at once from the folly of contempt, and the discomfort of

envy. I might have written, as accurately, "The discomfort of contempt";

for indeed the forms of petulant rivalry and self-assertion which Mr.

Spencer assumes to be developments of egoism, are merely its diseases;

(taking the word "disease" in its most literal meaning). A man of sense

is more an egoist in modesty than a blockhead is in boasting; and it is

neither pride nor self-respect, but only ignorance and ill-breeding,

that either disguise the facts of life, or violate its courtesies.

134. It will not, I trust, be thought violation of courtesy to a writer

of Mr. Spencer's extending influence, if I urge on his attention the

danger under which metaphysicians are always placed of supposing that

the investigation of the processes of thought will enable them to

distinguish its forms. 'As well might the chemist, who had exhaustively

examined the conditions of vitreous fusion, imagine himself therefore

qualified to number or class the vases bent by the breath of Venice. Mr.

Spencer has determined, I believe, to the satisfaction of his readers,

in what manner thoughts and feelings are constructed; it is time for him

now to observe the results of the construction, whether native to his

own mind, or discoverable in other intellectual territories. Patriotism

is, however, perhaps the last emotion he can now conveniently study in

England, for the temper which crowns the joy of life with the sweetness

and decorum of death can scarcely be manifested clearly in a country

which is fast rendering herself one whose peace is pollution, and whose

battle, crime; within whose confines it is loathsome to live, and in

whose cause it is disgraceful to die.

135. The chief causes of her degradation were defended, with delicate

apology, in the second paper to which I have above referred; the

modification by Mr. W. R. Greg of a letter which he had addressed, on

the subject of luxurious expenditure and its economical results, to the

_Pall Mall Gazette_; and which Mr. Greg states to have given rise in

that journal to a controversy in which four or five combatants took

part, the looseness of whose notions induced him to express his own more

coherent ones in the _Contemporary Review_.[114]

I am sorry to find that Mr. Greg looked upon my own poor part in that

correspondence as controversial. I merely asked him a question which he

declared to be insidious and irrelevant (not considering that if it were

the one, it could not be the other), and I stated a few facts respecting

which no controversy was possible, and which Mr. Greg, in his own terms,

"sedulously abstained" from noticing.

But Mr. Greg felt my question to be insidious because it made him partly

conscious that he had only examined one half of the subject he was

discussing, and even that half without precision.

Mr. Goldwin Smith had spoken of a rich man as consuming the means of

living of the poor. Mr. Greg, in reply, pointed out how beneficially the

rich man spent what he had got. Upon which I ventured to inquire "how he

got it"; which is indeed precisely the first of all questions to be

asked when the economical relations of any man with his neighbor are to

be examined.

Dick Turpin is blamed--suppose--by some plain-minded person for

consuming the means of other people's living. "Nay," says Dick to the

plain-minded person, "observe how beneficently and pleasantly I spend

whatever I get!"

"Yes, Dick," persists the plain-minded person; "but how do you get it?"

"The question," says Dick, "is insidious and irrelevant."

Do not let it be supposed that I mean to assert any irregularity or

impropriety in Dick's profession--I merely assert the necessity for Mr.

Greg's examination, if he would be master of his subject, of the manner

of Gain in every case, as well as the manner of Expenditure. Such

accounts must always be accurately rendered in a well-regulated society.

136. "Le lieutenant adressa la parole au capitaine, et lui dit

qu'il venait d'enlever ces mannequins, remplis de sucre, de

cannelle, d'amandes, et de raisins sees, à un épicier de Bénavente.

Après qu'il eut rendu compte de son expédition au bureau, les

dépouilles de l'épicier furent portées dans l'office. Alors il ne

fut plus question que de se réjouir; je débutai par le buffet, que

je parai de plusieurs bouteilles de ce bon vin que le Seigneur

Rolando m'avoit vanté."

Mr. Greg strictly confines himself to an examination of the benefits

conferred on the public by this so agreeable festivity; but he must not

be surprised or indignant that some inquiry should be made as to the

resulting condition of the épicier de Bénavente.

And it is all the more necessary that such inquiry be instituted when

the captain of the expedition is a minion, not of the moon, but of the

sun; and dazzling, therefore, to all beholders. "It is heaven which

dictates what I ought to do upon this occasion,"[115] says Henry of

Navarre; "my retreat out of this city,[116] before I have made myself

master of it, will be the retreat of my soul out of my body."

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

de Rosny, "after which the inhabitants, finding themselves no longer

able to resist, laid down their arms, and the city was given up to

plunder. My good fortune threw a small iron chest in my way, in which I

found about four thousand gold crowns."

I cannot doubt that the Baron's expenditure of this sum would be in the

highest degree advantageous to France and to the Protestant religion.

But complete economical science must study the effect of its abstraction

on the immediate prosperity of the town of Cahors; and even beyond

this--the mode of its former acquisition by the town itself, which

perhaps, in the economies of the nether world, may have delegated some

of its citizens to the seventh circle.[117]

137. And the most curious points in the partiality of modern economical

science are that while it always waives this question of ways and means

with respect to rich persons, it studiously pushes it in the case of

poor ones; and while it asserts the consumption of such an article of

luxury as wine (to take that which Mr. Greg himself instances) to be

economically expedient, when the wine is drunk by persons who are not

thirsty, it asserts the same consumption to be altogether inexpedient,

when the privilege is extended to those who are. Thus Mr. Greg

dismisses, in one place, with compassionate disdain, the extremely

vulgar notion "that a man who drinks a bottle of champagne worth five

shillings, while his neighbor is in want of actual food, is in some way

wronging his neighbor"; and yet Mr. Greg himself, elsewhere,[118]

evidently remains under the equally vulgar impression that the

twenty-four millions of such thirstier persons who spend fifteen per

cent of their incomes in drink and tobacco, are wronging their neighbors

by that expenditure.

138. It cannot, surely, be the difference in degree of refinement

between malt liquor and champagne which causes Mr. Greg's undefined

sensation of moral delinquency and economical error in the one case, and

of none in the other; if that be all, I can relieve him from his

embarrassment by putting the cases in more parallel form. A clergyman

writes to me, in distress of mind, because the able-bodied laborers who

come begging to him in winter, drink port wine out of buckets in summer.

Of course Mr. Greg's logical mind will at once admit (as a consequence

of his own very just _argumentum ad hominem_ in a previous page[119])

that the consumption of port wine out of buckets must be as much a

benefit to society in general as the consumption of champagne out of

bottles; and yet, curiously enough, I am certain he will feel my

question, "Where does the drinker get the means for his drinking?" more

relevant in the case of the imbibers of port than in that of the

imbibers of champagne. And although Mr. Greg proceeds, with that lofty

contempt for the dictates of nature and Christianity which radical

economists cannot but feel, to observe that "while the natural man and

the Christian would have the champagne drinker forego his bottle, and

give the value of it to the famishing wretch beside him, the radical

economist would condemn such behavior as distinctly criminal and

pernicious," he would scarcely, I think, carry out with the same

triumphant confidence the conclusions of the unnatural man and the

anti-christian, with respect to the laborer as well as the idler; and

declare that while the extremely simple persons who still believe in the

laws of nature, and the mercy of God, would have the port-drinker forego

his bucket, and give the value of it to the famishing wife and child

beside him, "the radical economist would condemn such behavior as

distinctly criminal and pernicious."

Mr. Greg has it indeed in his power to reply that it is proper to

economize for the sake of one's own wife and children, but not for the

sake of anybody else's. But since, according to another exponent of the

principles of Radical Economy, in the _Cornhill Magazine_,[120] a

well-conducted agricultural laborer must not marry till he is

forty-five, his economies, if any, in early life, must be as offensive

to Mr. Greg on the score of their abstract humanity, as those of the

richest bachelor about town.

139. There is another short sentence in this same page, of which it is

difficult to overrate the accidental significance.

"The superficial observer," says Mr. Greg, "recollects a text which he

heard in his youth, but of which he never considered the precise

applicability--'He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath

none.'"

The assumptions that no educated Englishman can ever have heard that

text except in his youth, and that those who are old enough to remember

having heard it, "never considered its precise applicability," are

surely rash, in the treatment of a scientific subject. I can assure Mr.

Greg that a few gray-headed votaries of the creed of Christendom still

read--though perhaps under their breath--the words which early

associations have made precious to them; and that in the bygone days,

when that Sermon on the Mount was still listened to with respect by many

not illiterate persons, its meaning was not only considered, but very

deliberately acted upon. Even the readers of the _Contemporary Review_

may perhaps have some pleasure in retreating from the sunshine of

contemporary science, for a few quiet moments, into the shadows of that

of the past, and hearing in the following extracts from two letters of

Scott's (the first describing the manner of life of his mother, whose

death it announces to a friend, the second, anticipating the verdict of

the future on the management of his estate by a Scottish nobleman) what

relations between rich and poor were possible, when philosophers had not

yet even lisped in the sweet numbers of Radical Sociology.

* * * * *

140. "She was a strict economist, which she said, enabled her to be

liberal; out of her little income of about £300 a year she bestowed at

least a third in well-chosen charities, and with the rest, lived like a

gentlewoman, and even with hospitality more general than seemed to suit

her age; yet I could never prevail on her to accept of any assistance.

You cannot conceive how affecting it was to me to see the little

preparations of presents which she had assorted for the New Year, for

she was a great observer of the old fashions of her period--and to think

that the kind heart was cold which delighted in all these arts of kindly

affection."

141. "The Duke is one of those retired and high-spirited men who will

never be known until the world asks what became of the huge oak that

grew on the brow of the hill, and sheltered such an extent of ground.

During the late distress, though his own immense rents remained in

arrears, and though I know he was pinched for money, as all men were,

but more especially the possessors of entailed estates, he absented

himself from London in order to pay, with ease to himself, the laborers

employed on his various estates. These amounted (for I have often seen

the roll and helped to check it) to nine hundred and fifty men, working

at day wages, each of whom on a moderate average might maintain three

persons, since the single men have mothers, sisters, and aged or very

young relations to protect and assist. Indeed it is wonderful how much

even a small sum, comparatively, will do in supporting the Scottish

laborer, who in his natural state is perhaps one of the best, most

intelligent, and kind-hearted of human beings; and in truth I have

limited my other habits of expense very much since I fell into the habit

of employing mine honest people. I wish you could have seen about a

hundred children, being almost entirely supported by their fathers' or

brothers' labor, come down yesterday to dance to the pipes, and get a

piece of cake and bannock, and pence apiece (no very deadly largess) in

honor of hogmanay. I declare to you, my dear friend, that when I thought

the poor fellows, who kept these children so neat, and well taught, and

well behaved, were slaving the whole day for eighteen pence or twenty

pence at most, I was ashamed of their gratitude, and of their becks and

bows. But after all, one does what one can, and it is better twenty

families should be comfortable according to their wishes and habits,

than that half that number should be raised above their situation."

* * * * *

142. I must pray Mr. Greg farther to observe, if he has condescended to

glance at these remains of almost prehistoric thought, that although the

modern philosopher will never have reason to blush for any man's

gratitude, and has totally abandoned the romantic idea of making even so

much as one family comfortable according to their wishes and habits, the

alternative suggested by Scott, that half "the number should be raised

above their situation" may become a very inconvenient one if the

doctrines of Modern Equality and competition should render the other

half desirous of parallel promotion.

143. It is now just sixteen years since Mr. Greg's present philosophy of

Expenditure was expressed with great precision by the Common Councilmen

of New York, in their report on the commercial crisis of 1857, in the

following terms:--[121]

"Another erroneous idea is that luxurious living, extravagant

dressing, splendid turn-outs and fine houses, are the cause of

distress to a nation, No more erroneous impression could exist.

Every extravagance that the man of 100.000 or 1,000,000 dollars

indulges in, adds to the means, the support, the wealth of ten or a

hundred who had little or nothing else but their labor, their

intellect, or their taste. If a man of 1,000,000 dollars spends

principal and interest in ten years, and finds himself beggared at

the end of that time, he has actually made a hundred who have

catered to his extravagance, employers or employed, so much richer

by the division of his wealth. He may be ruined, but the nation is

better off and richer, for one hundred minds and hands, with 10,000

dollars apiece, are far more productive than one with the whole."

Now that is precisely the view also taken of the matter by a large

number of Radical Economists in England as well as America; only they

feel that the time, however short, which the rich gentleman takes to

divide his property among them in his own way, is practically wasted;

and even worse, because the methods which the gentleman himself is

likely to adopt for the depression of his fortune will not, in all

probability, be conducive to the elevation of his character. It appears,

therefore, on moral as well as economical grounds, desirable that the

division and distribution should at once be summarily effected; and the

only point still open to discussion in the views of the Common

Councilmen is to what degree of minuteness they would think it advisable

to carry the subsequent subdivision.

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

Greg is desirous that the general Anti-Christian public should adopt;

and in that case, as I see by his paper in the last number of the

_Contemporary_,[122] that he considers the Christian life itself

virtually impossible, may I recommend his examination of the manners of

the Pre-Christian? For I can certify him that this important subject,

of which he has only himself imperfectly investigated one side, had been

thoroughly investigated on all sides, at least seven hundred years

before Christ; and from that day to this, all men of wit, sense, and

feeling have held precisely the same views on the subjects of economy

and charity, in all nations under the sun. It is of no consequence

whether Mr. Greg chooses the experience of Boeotia, Lombardy, or

Yorkshire, nor whether he studies the relation of work to-day or under

Hesiod, Virgil, or Sydney Smith. But it is desirable that at least he

should acquaint himself with the opinions of some such persons, as well

as with those of the Common Councilmen of New York; for though a man of

superior sagacity may be pardoned for thinking, with the friends of Job,

that Wisdom will die with him, it can only be through neglect of the

existing opportunities of general culture that he remains distinctly

under the impression that she was born with him.

145. It may perhaps be well that in conclusion, I should state briefly

the causes and terms of the economical crisis of our own day, which has

been the subject of the debate between Mr. Goldwin Smith and Mr. Greg.

No man ever became, or can become, largely rich merely by labor and

economy.[123] All large fortunes (putting treasure-trove and gambling

out of consideration) are founded either on occupation of land, usury,

or taxation of labor. Whether openly or occultly, the landlord,

money-lender, and capitalist employer, gather into their possession a

certain quantity of the means of existence which other people produce by

the labor of their hands. The effect of this impost upon the condition

of life of the tenant, borrower, and workman, is the first point to be

studied;--the results, that is to say, of the mode in which Captain

Roland fills his purse.

Secondly, we have to study the effects of the mode in which Captain

Roland empties his purse. The landlord, usurer, or labor-master, does

not, and cannot, himself consume all the means of life he collects. He

gives them to other persons, whom he employs for his own behoof--growers

of champagne, jockeys, footmen, jewelers, builders, painters, musicians,

and the like. The division of the labor of these persons from the

production of food to the production of articles of luxury is very

frequently, and at the present day, very grievously the cause of famine.

But when the luxuries are produced, it becomes a quite separate question

who is to have them, and whether the landlord and capitalist are

entirely to monopolize the music, the painting, the architecture, the

hand-service, the horse-service, and the sparkling champagne of the

world.

146. And it is gradually, in these days, becoming manifest to the

tenants, borrowers, and laborers, that instead of paying these large

sums into the hands of the landlords, lenders, and employers, for them

to purchase music, painting, etc., with, the tenants, borrowers, and

workers had better buy a little music and painting for themselves. That,

for instance, instead of the capitalist-employer paying three hundred

pounds for a full-length portrait of himself, in the attitude of

investing his capital, the united workmen had better themselves pay the

three hundred pounds into the hands of the ingenious artist, for a

painting in the antiquated manner of Leonardo or Raphael, of some

subject more religiously or historically interesting to them; and placed

where they can always see it. And again instead of paying three hundred

pounds to the obliging landlord, for him to buy a box at the opera with,

whence to study the refinements of music and dancing, the tenants are

beginning to think that they may as well keep their rents to themselves,

and therewith pay some Wandering Willie to fiddle at their own doors, or

bid some gray-haired minstrel

"Tune, to please a peasant's ear,

The harp a king had loved to hear."

And similarly the dwellers in the hut of the field and garret of the

city are beginning to think that instead of paying half a crown for the

loan of half a fire-place, they had better keep their half-crown in

their pockets till they can buy for themselves a whole one.

147. These are the views which are gaining ground among the poor; and it

is entirely vain to endeavor to repress them by equivocations. They are

founded on eternal laws; and although their recognition will long be

refused, and their promulgation, resisted as it will be, partly by

force, partly by falsehood, can only be through incalculable confusion

and misery, recognized they must be eventually; and with these three

ultimate results:--that the usurer's trade will be abolished

utterly,--that the employer will be paid justly for his superintendence

of labor, but not for his capital, and the landlord paid for his

superintendence of the cultivation of land, when he is able to direct it

wisely: that both he, and the employer of mechanical labor, will be

recognized as beloved masters, if they deserve love, and as noble guides

when they are capable of giving discreet guidance; but neither will be

permitted to establish themselves any more as senseless conduits through

which the strength and riches of their native land are to be poured into

the cup of the fornication of its capital.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 111: _Contemporary Review_, May 1873.]

[Footnote 112: These were, first, Mr. Herbert Spencer's "Bias of

Patriotism," being the ninth chapter of his "Study of Sociology," first

published in the _Contemporary Review_; and, secondly, Mr. W. R. Greg's

"What is culpable luxury?" See below, p. 303, § 135.--ED.]

[Footnote 113: I take due note that Mr. Spencer partly means by his

adverbial sentence that Patriotism is individual Egoism, expecting its

own central benefit through the Nation's circumferent benefit, as

through a funnel: but, throughout, Mr. Spencer confuses this sentiment,

which he calls "reflex egoism," with the action of "corporate

conscience."]

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

(reprinted from the _Pall Mall_) in "Arrows of the Chace," vol. ii.,

where the origin of the discussion is explained.--ED.]

[Footnote 115: I use the current English of Mrs. Lennox's translation,

but Henry's real saying was (see the first--green leaf--edition of

Sully), "It is written above what is to happen to me on every occasion."

"Toute occasion" becomes "cette occasion" in the subsequent editions,

and finally "what is to happen to me" (ce que doit être fait de moi)

becomes "what I ought to do" in the English.]

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

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

[Footnote 117: Where violence and brutality are punished. See Dante's

"Inferno," Canto xii.--ED.]

[Footnote 118: See the _Contemporary Review_ at pp. 618 and

624.--ED.]

[Footnote 119: Viz.:--That if the expenditure of an income of £30,000 a

year upon luxuries is to rob the poor, so _pro tanto_ is the expenditure

of so much of an income of £300 as is spent on anything beyond "the

simplest necessaries of life."--ED.]

[Footnote 120: Referring to two anonymous articles on "The Agricultural

Laborer," in the _Cornhill Magazine_, vol. 27, Jan. and June 1873, pp.

215 and 307.--ED.]

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

[Footnote 122: "Is a Christian life feasible in these

days?"--ED.]

[Footnote 123: See _Munera Pulveris_, § 139: "No man can become largely

rich by his personal will.... It is only by the discovery of some method

of taxing the labor of others that he can become opulent." And see also

_Time and Tide_, § 81.--ED.]

USURY.[124]

A REPLY AND A REJOINDER.

148. I have been honored by the receipt of a letter from the Bishop of

Manchester, which, with his Lordship's permission, I have requested the

editor of the _Contemporary Review_ to place before the large circle of

his readers, with a brief accompanying statement of the circumstances by

which the letter has been called forth, and such imperfect reply as it

is in my power without delay to render.

J. RUSKIN.

MANCHESTER, _December_ 8, 1879.

DEAR SIR,--In a letter from yourself to the Rev. F. A.

Malleson,[125] published in the _Contemporary Review_ of the current

month, I observe the following passage:--"I have never yet heard so much

as _one_ (preacher) heartily proclaiming against all those 'deceivers

with vain words,' that no 'covetous person, which is an idolater, hath

_any_ inheritance in the Kingdom of Christ and of God;' and on myself

personally and publicly challenging the Bishops of England generally,

and by name the Bishop of Manchester, to say whether usury was, or was

not, according to the will of God, I have received no answer from any

one of them." I confess, for myself, that until I saw this passage in

print a few days ago, I was unaware of the existence of such challenge,

and therefore I could not answer it. It appears to have been delivered

(A) in No. 82 of a series of letters which, under the title of _Fors

Clavigera_, you have for some time been addressing to the working

classes of England, but which, from the peculiar mode of their

publication, are not easily accessible to the general reader and which I

have only caught a glimpse of, on the library-table of the Athenæum

Club, on the rare occasions when I am able to use my privileges as a

member of that Society. I have no idea why I had the honor of being

specially mentioned by name (B); but I beg to assure you that my silence

did not arise from any discourtesy towards my challenger, nor from that

discretion which, some people may think, is usually the better part of

episcopal valor, and which consists in ignoring inconvenient questions

from a sense of inability to answer them; but simply from the fact that

I was not conscious that your lance had touched my shield.

149. The question you have asked is just one of those to which

Aristotle's wise caution applies: "We must distinguish and define such

words, if we would know how far, and in what sense, the opposite views

are true" (_Eth. Nic._, ix, c. viii. § 3). What do you mean by "usury"?

(C) Do you comprehend under it _any_ payment of money as interest for

the use of borrowed capital? or only exorbitant, inequitable, grinding

interest, such as the money-lender, Fufidius, extorted?

Quinas hic capiti mercedes exsecat, atque

Quanto perditior quisque est, tanto acrius urget:

Nomina sectatur modo sumta veste virili

Sub patribus duris tironum. Maxime, quis non,

Jupiter, exclamat, simul atque audivit?

--_Hor. Sat._ i. 2, 14-18.

Usury, in itself, is a purely neutral word, carrying with it, in its

primary meaning, neither praise nor blame; and a "usurer" is defined in

our dictionaries as "a person accustomed to lend money and take interest

for it"--which is the ordinary function of a banker, without whose

help great commercial undertakings could not be carried out; though it

is obvious how easily the word may pass into a term of reproach, so that

to have been "called a usurer" was one of the bitter memories that

rankled most in Shylock's catalogue of his wrongs.

150. I do not believe that anything has done more harm to the practical

efficacy of religions sanctions than the extravagant attempts that are

frequently made to impose them in cases which they never originally

contemplated, or to read into "ordinances," evidently "imposed for a

time"--[Greek: dikaiômata mechri kairou] (Heb. ix. 10)--a law of

eternal and immutable obligation. Just as we are told (D) not to expect

to find in the Bible a scheme of physical science, so I do not expect to

find there a scheme of political economy. What I do expect to find, in

relation to my duty to my neighbor, are those unalterable principles of

equity, fairness, truthfulness, honesty (E), which are the indispensable

bases of civil society. I am sure I have no need to remind you that,

while a Jew was forbidden by his law to take usury--_i.e._, interest for

the loan of money--from his brother, if he were waxen poor and fallen

into decay with him, and this generous provision was extended even to

strangers and sojourners in the land (Lev. xxv. 35-38), and the

interesting story in Nehemiah (v. 1-13), tells us how this principle was

recognized in the latest days of the commonwealth--still in that old law

there is no denunciation of usury in general, and it was expressly

permitted in the case of ordinary strangers[126] (Deut. xxiii. 20).

It seems to me plain also that our Blessed Lord's precept about

"lending, hoping for nothing again" (Luke vi. 35), has the same, or a

similar, class of circumstances in view, and was intended simply to

govern a Christian man's conduct to the poor and needy, and "such as

have no helper," and cannot, without a violent twist (F), be construed

into a general law determining forever and in all cases the legitimate

use of capital. Indeed, on another occasion, and in a very memorable

parable, the great Founder of Christianity recognizes, and impliedly

sanctions, the practice of lending money at interest. "Thou oughtest,"

says the master, addressing his unprofitable servant, "thou

oughtest"--[Greek: edei se]--"to have put my money to the exchangers;

and then, at my coming, I should have received mine own _with usury_."

151. "St. Paul, no doubt, denounces the covetous." (G) But who is the

[Greek: pleonektês]? Not the man who may happen to have money out on

loan at a fair rate of interest; but, as Liddell and Scott give the

meaning of the word, "one who has or claims _more than his share_;

hence, greedy, grasping, selfish." Of such men, whose affections are

wholly set on things of the earth, and who are not very scrupulous how

they gratify them, it may, perhaps, not improperly be said (H) that they

"have no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God." But here,

again, it would be a manifest "wresting" of the words to make them apply

to a case which we have no proof that the Apostle had in contemplation

when he uttered them. Rapacity, greed of gain, harsh and oppressive

dealing, taking unfair advantage of our own superior knowledge and

another's ignorance, shutting up the bowels of compassion towards a

brother who we see has need--all these and the like things are forbidden

by the very spirit of Christianity, and are manifestly "_not_ according

to the will of God," for they are all of them forms of injustice or

wrong. But money may be lent at interest without one of these bad

passions being brought in to play, and in these cases I confess my

inability to see where, either in terms or in spirit, such use of money

is condemned either by the Christian code of charity, or by that natural

law of conscience which we are told (I) is written on the hearts of men.

152. Let me take two or three simple instances by way of illustration.

The following has happened to myself. All my life through--from the time

when my income was not a tenth part of what it is now--I have felt it a

duty, while endeavoring to discharge all proper claims, to live within

that income, so to adjust my expenditure to it that there should be a

margin on the right side. This margin, of course, accumulated, and

reached in time, say, £1000. Just then, say, the London and

North-Western Railway Company proposed to issue Debenture Stock,

bearing four per cent. interest, for the purpose of extending the

communications, and so increasing the wealth, of the country. Whom in

the world am I injuring--what conceivable wrong am I doing--where or how

am I thwarting "the Will of God"--if I let the Company have my £1000,

and have been receiving from them £40 a year for the use of it ever

since? Unless the money had been forthcoming from some quarter or other,

a work which was absolutely necessary for the prosperity of the nation,

and which finds remunerative employment (K) for an immense number of

Englishmen, enabling them to bring up their families in respectability

and comfort, would never have been accomplished. Will you tell me that

this method of carrying out great commercial enterprises, sanctioned by

experience (L) as the most, if not the only, practicable one, is "not

according to the Will of God"?

153. Take another instance. In Lancashire a large number of cotton mills

have been erected on the joint-stock principle with limited liability.

The thing has been pushed too far probably, and at one time there was a

good deal of unwholesome speculation in floating companies. But that is

not the question before us; and the enterprises gave working men an

opportunity of investing their savings, which was a great stimulus to

thrift, and, so far, an advantage to the country. In a mill, which it

would perhaps cost £50,000 to build and fit with machinery, the

subscribed capital, which would be entitled to a division of profits

after all other demands had been satisfied, would not amount probably to

more than £20,000. The rest would be borrowed at rates of interest

varying according to the conditions of the market. You surely would not

maintain that those who lent their money for such a purpose, and were

content with 5 or 6 per cent, for the use of it, thus enabling, in good

times, the shareholders to realize 20 or 25 per cent, on their

subscribed capital, were doing wrong either to the shareholders or

anyone else, or could in any sense be charged with acting "not according

to the will of God"?

154. Take yet one case more. A farmer asks his landlord to drain his

land. "Gladly," says his squire, "if you will pay me five per cent on

the outlay." In other words, "if you will let me share the increased

profits to this extent." The bargain is agreeable to both sides; the

productiveness of the land is largely increased; who is wronged? Surely

such a transaction could not fairly be described as "not according to

the will of God"; surely, unless the commerce and productive industries

of the country are to be destroyed, and, with the destruction, its

population is to be reduced to what it was in the days of Elizabeth,

these and similar transactions--which can be kept entirely clear of the

sin of covetousness, and rest upon the well-understood basis of mutual

advantage, each and all being gainers by them--are not only legitimate,

but inevitable (M). And now that I have taken up your challenge, and, so

far as my ability goes, answered it, may I, without staying to inquire

how far your charge against the clergy can be substantiated, that they

"generally patronize and encourage all the iniquity of the world by

steadily preaching away the penalties of it" (N), be at least allowed to

demur to your wholesale denunciation of the great cities of the earth,

which you say "have become loathsome centers of fornication and

covetousness, the smoke of their sin going up into the face of Heaven,

like the furnace of Sodom, and the pollution of it rotting and raging

through the bones and souls of the peasant people round them, as if they

were each a volcano, whose ashes brake out in blains upon man and

beast."[127] Surely, Sir, your righteous indignation at evil has caused

you to overcharge your language. No one can have lived in a great city,

as I have for the last ten years, without being aware of its sins and

its pollutions. But unless you can prevent the aggregation of human

beings into great cities, these are evils which must necessarily exist;

at any rate, which always have existed. The great cities of to-day are

not worse than great cities always have been (O). In one capital

respect, I believe they are better. There is an increasing number of

their citizens who are aware of these evils, and who are trying their

best, with the help of God, to remedy them. In Sodom there was but one

righteous man who "vexed his soul" at the unlawful deeds that he

witnessed day by day, on every side; and he, apparently, did no more

than vex his soul. In Manchester, the men and women, of all ranks and

persuasions, who are actively engaging in some Christian or

philanthropic work, to battle against these gigantic evils, are to be

reckoned by hundreds. Nowhere have I seen more conspicuous instances of

Christian effort, and of single-hearted devotion to the highest

interests of mankind. And though, no doubt, if these efforts were better

organized, more might be achieved, and elements, which one could wish

absent, sometimes mingle with and mar the work, still a great city, even

"with the smoke of its sin going up into the face of Heaven," is the

noblest field of the noblest virtues, because it gives the amplest scope

for the most varied exercise of them.

If you will teach us clergy how better to discharge our office as

ministers of a Kingdom of Truth and Righteousness, we shall all owe you

a deep debt of gratitude; which no one will be more forward to

acknowledge than, my dear Sir, yours faithfully and with much respect,

J. MANCHESTER.

JOHN RUSKIN, Esq.

155. The foregoing letter, to which I would fain have given my undivided

and unwearied attention, reached my hands, as will be seen by its date,

only in the close of the year, when my general correspondence always far

overpasses my powers of dealing with it, and my strength--such as now is

left me--had been spent, nearly to lowest ebb, in totally unexpected

business arising out of the threatened mischief at Venice. But I am

content that such fragmentary reply as, under this pressure, has been

possible to me, should close the debate as far as I am myself concerned.

The question at issue is not one of private interpretation; and the

interests concerned are too vast to allow its decision to be long

delayed.

The Bishop will, I trust, not attribute to disrespect the mode of reply

in the form of notes attached to special passages, indicated by

inserted letters, which was adopted in _Fors Clavigera_ in all cases of

important correspondence, as more clearly defining the several points

under debate.

156. (A) "The challenge appears to have been delivered." May I

respectfully express my regret that your lordship should not have read

the letter you have honored me by answering. The number of _Fors_

referred to does not deliver--it only reiterates--the challenge given in

the _Fors_ for January 1st, 1875, with reference to the prayer "Have

mercy upon all Jews, Turks, infidels, and heretics, and so fetch them

home, blessed Lord, to Thy flock, that they may be saved among the

remnant of the true Israelites," in these following terms: "Who _are_

the true Israelites, my Lord of Manchester, on your Exchange? Do they

stretch their cloth, like other people?--have they any underhand

dealings with the liable-to-be-damned false Israelites--Rothschilds and

the like? or are they duly solicitous about those wanderers' souls? and

how often, on the average, do your Manchester clergy preach from the

delicious parable, savoriest of all Scripture to rogues (at least since

the eleventh century, when I find it to have been specially headed with

golden title in my best Greek MS.) of the Pharisee and Publican,--and

how often, on the average, from those objectionable First and Fifteenth

Psalms?"

(B) "I have no idea why I had the honor of being specially mentioned by

name." By diocese, my Lord; not name, please observe; and for this very

simple reason: that I have already fairly accurate knowledge of the

divinity of the old schools of Canterbury, York, and Oxford; but I

looked to your Lordship as the authoritative exponent of the more

advanced divinity of the school of Manchester, with which I am not yet

familiar.

157. (C) "What do you mean by usury?" What _I_ mean by that word, my

Lord, is surely of no consequence to anyone but my few readers, and

fewer disciples. What David and his Son meant by it I have prayed your

Lordship to tell your flock, in the name of the Church which dictates

daily to them the songs of the one, and professes to interpret to them

the commands of the other.

And although I can easily conceive that a Bishop at the court of the

Third Richard might have paused in reply to a too curious layman's

question of what was meant by "Murder"; and can also conceive a Bishop

at the court of the Second Charles hesitating as to the significance of

the word "Adultery"; and farther, in the present climacteric of the

British Constitution, an elder of the Church of Glasgow debating within

himself whether the Commandment which was severely prohibitory of Theft

might not be mildly permissive of Misappropriation;--at no time, nor

under any conditions, can I conceive any question existing as to the

meaning of the words [Greek: tokos], _foenus_; _usura_, or usury: and

I trust that your Lordship will at once acquit me of wishing to attach

any other significance to the word than that which it was to the full

intended to convey on every occasion of its use by Moses, by David, by

Christ, and by the Doctors of the Christian Church, down to the

seventeenth century.

Nor, even since that date, although the commercial phrase "interest" has

been adopted in order to distinguish an open and unoppressive rate of

usury from a surreptitious and tyrannical one, has the debate of

lawfulness or unlawfulness ever turned seriously on that distinction. It

is neither justified by its defenders only in its mildness, nor

condemned by its accusers only in its severity. Usury in any degree is

asserted by the Doctors of the early Church to be sinful, just as theft

and adultery are asserted to be sinful, though neither may have been

accompanied with violence; and although the theft may have been on the

most splendid scale, and the fornication of the most courtly refinement.

So also, in modern days, though the voice of the Bank of England in

Parliament declares a loan without interest to be a monster,[128] and a

loan made below the current rate of interest, a monster in its degree,

the increase of dividends above that current rate is not, as far as I

am aware, shunned by shareholders with an equally religious horror.

158. But--this strange question being asked--I give its simple and broad

answer in the words of Christ: "The taking up that thou layedst not

down;"--or, in explained and literal terms, usury is any money paid, or

other advantage given, for the loan of anything which is restored to its

possessor uninjured and undiminished. For simplest instance, taking a

cabman the other day on a long drive, I lent him a shilling to get his

dinner. If I had kept thirteen pence out of his fare, the odd penny

would have been usury.

Or again. I lent one of my servants, a few years ago, eleven hundred

pounds, to build a house with, and stock its ground. After some years he

paid me the eleven hundred pounds back. If I had taken eleven hundred

pounds and a penny, the extra penny would have been usury.

I do not know whether by the phrase, presently after used by your

Lordship, "religious sanctions," I am to understand the Law of God which

David loved, and Christ fulfilled, or whether the splendor, the

commercial prosperity, and the familiar acquaintance with all the

secrets of science and treasures of art, which we admire in the City of

Manchester, must in your Lordship's view be considered as "cases" which

the intelligence of the Divine Lawgiver could not have originally

contemplated. Without attempting to disguise the narrowness of the

horizon grasped by the glance of the Lord from Sinai, nor the

inconvenience of the commandments which Christ has directed those who

love Him to keep, am I too troublesome or too exigent in asking from one

of those whom the Holy Ghost has made our overseers, at least a distinct

chart of the Old World as contemplated by the Almighty; and a clear

definition of even the inappropriate tenor of the orders of Christ: if

only that the modern scientific Churchman may triumph more securely in

the circumference of his heavenly vision, and accept more gratefully the

glorious liberty of the free-thinking children of God?

159. To take a definite, and not impertinent, instance, I observe in

the continuing portion of your letter that your Lordship recognizes in

Christ Himself, as doubtless all other human perfections, so also the

perfection of an usurer; and that, confidently expecting one day to hear

from His lips the convicting sentence, "Thou knewest that I was an

austere man," your Lordship prepares for yourself, by the disposition of

your capital no less than of your talents, a better answer than the

barren, "Behold, there thou hast that is thine!" I would only observe in

reply, that although the conception of the Good Shepherd, which in your

Lordship's language is "implied" in this parable, may indeed be less

that of one who lays down his life for his sheep, than of one who takes

up his money for them, the passages of our Master's instruction, of

which the meaning is not implicit, but explicit, are perhaps those which

His simpler disciples will be safer in following. Of which I find, early

in His teaching, this, almost, as it were, in words of one syllable:

"Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee

turn not thou away."

There is nothing more "implied" in this sentence than the probable

disposition to turn away, which might be the first impulse in the mind

of a Christian asked to lend for nothing, as distinguished from the

disciple of the Manchester school, whose principal care is rather to

find, than to avoid, the enthusiastic and enterprising "him that would

borrow of thee." We of the older tradition, my Lord, think that

prudence, no less than charity, forbids the provocation or temptation of

others into the state of debt, which some time or other we might be

called upon, not only to allow the payment of without usury, but even

altogether to forgive.

160. (D) "Just as we are told." Where, my Lord, and by whom? It is

possible that some of the schemers in physical science, of whom, only a

few days since, I heard one of the leading doctors explain to a pleased

audience that serpents once had legs, and had dropped them off in the

process of development, may have advised the modern disciple of progress

of a new meaning in the simple phrase, "upon thy belly shalt thou go";

and that the wisdom of the serpent may henceforth consist, for true

believers of the scientific Gospel, in the providing of meats for that

spiritual organ of motion. It is doubtless also true that we shall look

vainly among the sayings of Solomon for any expression of the opinions

of Mr. John Stuart Mill; but at least this much of Natural science,

enough for our highest need, we may find in the Scriptures--that by the

Word of the Lord were the heavens made, and all the host of them by the

breath of His mouth;--and this much of Political, that the Blessing of

the Lord, _it_ maketh rich--and He addeth no sorrow with it.

(E) "What I do expect to find." Has your Lordship _no_ expectations

loftier than these, from severer scrutiny of the Gospel? As for

instance, of some ordinance of Love, built on the foundation of Honesty?

161. (F) "Cannot without a violent twist." I have never myself found any

person sincerely desirous of obeying the Word of the Lord, who had the

least wish, or occasion, to twist it; nay, even those who study it only

that they may discover methods of pardonable disobedience, recognize the

unturnable edge of its sword--and in the worst extremity of their need,

strive not to avert, but to evade. The utmost deceivableness of

unrighteousness cannot deceive itself into satisfactory

misinterpretation; it is reduced always to a tremulous omission of the

texts it is resolved to disobey. But a little while since, I heard an

entirely well-meaning clergyman, taken by surprise in the course of

family worship in the house of a wealthy friend, and finding himself

under the painful necessity of reading the fifteenth Psalm, omit the

first sentence of the closing verse. I chanced afterwards to have an

opportunity of asking him why he had done so, and received for answer,

that the lowliness of Christian attainment was not yet "up" to that

verse. The harmonies of iniquity are thus curiously perfect:--the

economies of spiritual nourishment approve the same methods of

adulteration which are found profitable in the carnal; until the prudent

pastor follows the example of the well-instructed dairyman; and

provides for his new-born babes the _in_sincere Milk of the Word, that

they may _not_ grow thereby.

162. (G) "St. Paul, no doubt, denounces the covetous." Am I to

understand your Lordship as considering this undeniable denunciation an

original and peculiar view taken by the least of the Apostles--perhaps,

in this particular opinion, not worthy to be called an Apostle? The

traditions of my earlier days were wont to refer me to an earlier source

of the idea; which does not, however, appear to have occurred to your

Lordship's mind--else the reference to the authority of Liddell and

Scott, for the significance of the noun [Greek: pleonektês], ought to

have been made also for that of the verb [Greek: epithumeô] And your

Lordship's frankness in referring me to the instances of your own

practice in the disposal of your income, must plead my excuse for what

might have otherwise seemed impertinent--in noting that the

blamelessness of episcopal character, even by that least of the

Apostles, required in his first Epistle to Timothy, consists not merely

in contentment with an episcopal share of Church property, but in being

in no respect either [Greek: aischrokordês]--a taker of gain in a base

or vulgar manner, or [Greek: philarguros]--a "lover of silver," this

latter word being the common and proper word for covetous, in the

Gospels and Epistles; as of the Pharisees in Luke xvi. 14; and

associated with the other characters of men in perilous times, 2 Timothy

iii. 2, and its relative noun [Greek: philarguria, given in sum for the

root of _all_ evil in 2 Timothy vi. 10, while even the authority of

Liddell and Scott in the interpretation of [Greek: pleonexia] itself as

only the desire of getting more than our share, may perhaps be bettered

by the authority of the teacher, who, declining the appeal made to him

as an equitable [Greek: meristês] (Luke xii. 14-46), tells his disciples

to beware of coveteousness, simply as the desire of getting more than we

have got. "For a man's life consisteth not in the _abundance_ of the

things which he possesseth."

163. Believe me, my Lord, it is not without some difficulty that I check

my natural impulse to follow you, as a scholar, into the interesting

analysis of the distinctions which may be drawn between Rapacity and

Acquisitiveness; between the Avarice, or the prudent care, of

possession; between the greed, and the modest expectation, of gain;

between the love of money, which is the root of all evil; and the

commercial spirit, which is in England held to be the fountain of all

good. These delicate adjustments of the balance, by which we strive to

weigh to a grain the relative quantities of devotion which we may render

in the service of Mammon and of God, are wholly of recent invention and

application; nor have they the slightest bearing, either on the

spiritual purport of the final commandment of the Decalogue, or on the

distinctness of the subsequent prohibition of practical usury.

It must be remembered, also, how difficult it has become to define the

term "filthy" with precision, in the present state, moral and physical,

of the English atmosphere; and still more so, to judge how far, in that

healthy element, a moderate and delicately sanctified appetite for gold

may be developed into livelier qualms of hunger for righteousness. It

may be matter of private opinion how far the lucre derived by your

Lordship from commission on the fares and refreshments of the passengers

by the North-Western may be odoriferous or precious, in the same sense

as the ointment on the head of Aaron; or how far that received by the

Primate of England in royalties on the circulation of improving

literature[129] may enrich--as with perfumes out of broken

alabaster--the empyreal air of Addington. But the higher class of

laborers in the Lord's vineyard might surely, with true grace, receive,

from the last unto the first, the reflected instruction so often given

by the first unto the last, "Be content with your wages."

(H) "It may, perhaps, not improperly be said," The Bible Society will

doubtless in future gratefully prefix this guarantee to their

publications.

(I) "Which we are told." Can we then no more find for ourselves this

writing on our hearts--or has it ceased to be legible?

164. (K) "Remunerative employment." I cannot easily express the

astonishment with which I find a man of your Lordship's intelligence

taking up the common phrase of "giving employment," as if, indeed, labor

were the best gift which the rich could bestow on the poor. Of course,

every idle vagabond, be he rich or poor, "gives employment" to some

otherwise enough burdened wretch, to provide his dinner and clothes for

him; and every vicious vagabond, in the destructive power of his vice,

gives sorrowful occupation to the energies of resisting and renovating

virtue. The idle child who litters its nursery and tears its frock,

gives employment to the housemaid and seamstress; the idle woman, who

litters her drawing-room with trinkets, and is ashamed to be seen twice

in the same dress, is, in your Lordship's view, the enlightened

supporter of the arts and manufactures of her country. At the close of

your letter, my Lord, you, though in measured terms, indignantly dissent

from my statement of the power of great cities for evil, and indeed I

have perhaps been led, by my prolonged study of the causes of the Fall

of Venice, into clearer recognition of some of these urban influences

than may have been possible to your Lordship in the center of the

virtues and proprieties which have been blessed by Providence in the

rise of Manchester. But the Scriptural symbol of the power of temptation

in the hand of the spiritual Babylon--"all kings have been drunk with

the wine of her Fornication"--is perfectly literal in its exposition of

the special influence of cities over a vicious, that is to say, a

declining, people. They are the foci of its fornication, and the

practical meaning is that the lords of the soil take the food and labor

of the peasants, who are their slaves, and spend them especially in

forms of luxury perfected by the definitely so-called "women of the

_town_" who, whether East-cheap Doll, or West--much the reverse of

cheap--Nell, are, both in the color which they give to the Arts, and in

the tone which they give to the Manners, of the State, a literal plague,

pestilence and burden to it, quite otherwise malignant and maleficent

than the poor country lassie who loses her snood among the heather. And

when, at last, _real_ political economy shall exhibit the exact sources

and consequences of the expenditure of the great capitals of

civilization on their own indulgences, your Lordship will be furnished,

in the statistics of their most splendid and most impious pleasure, with

record of precisely the largest existing source of "remunerative

employment"--(if _that_ were all the poor had to ask for), next after

the preparation and practice of war. I believe it is, indeed, probable

that "facility of intercourse" gives the next largest quantity of

occupation; and, as your Lordship rightly observes, to most respectable

persons. And if the entire population of Manchester lost the use of its

legs, your Lordship would similarly have the satisfaction of observing,

and might share in the profits of providing, the needful machinery of

porterage and stretchers. But observe, my Lord--and observe as a final

and inevitable truth--that whether you lend your money to provide an

invalided population with crutches, stretchers, hearses, or the railroad

accommodation which is so often synonymous with the three, the _tax on

the use_ of these, which constitutes the shareholder's dividend, is a

permanent burden upon them, exacted by avarice, and by no means an aid

granted by benevolence.

165. (L) "Sanctioned by experience." The experience of twenty-three

years, my Lord, and with the following result:--

"We have now had an opportunity of practically testing the theory. Not

more than seventeen" (now twenty-three--I quote from a letter dated

1875) "years have passed since" (by the final abolition of the Usury

laws) "all restraint was removed from the growth of what Lord Coke calls

'this pestilent weed,'" and we see Bacon's words verified--"the rich

becoming richer, and the poor poorer, throughout the civilized world."

Letter from Mr. R. Sillar, quoted in _Fors Clavigera_, No. 43.

(M) "Inevitable." Neither "impossible" nor "inevitable" were words of

old Christian Faith. But see the closing paragraph of my letter.

(N) Before you call on me to substantiate this charge, my Lord, I

should like to insert after the words, "steadily preaching," the phrase,

"and politely explaining"--with the Pauline qualification, "whether by

word, or our epistle."

166. (O) "The great cities of to-day are not worse than great cities

always have been," I do not remember having said that they were, my

Lord; I have never anticipated for Manchester a worse fate than that of

Sardis or Sodom; nor have I yet observed any so mighty works shown forth

in her by her ministers, as to make her impenitence less pardonable than

that of Sidon or Tyre. But I used the particular expression which your

Lordship supposes me to have overcharged in righteous indignation, "a

boil breaking forth with blains on man and beast," because that

particular plague was the one which Moses was ordered, in the Eternal

Wisdom, to connect with the ashes of the Furnace--literally, no less

than spiritually, when he brought the Israelites forth out of Egypt,

_from the midst of the Furnace of Iron_. How literally, no less than in

faith and hope, the smoke of "the great city, which spiritually is

called Sodom and Egypt," has poisoned the earth, the waters, and the

living creatures, flocks and herds, and the babes that know not their

right hand from their left--neither Memphis, Gomorrah, nor Cahors are

themselves likely to recognize: but, as I pause in front of the

infinitude of the evil that I cannot find so much as thought to

follow--how much less words to speak!--a letter is brought to me which

gives what perhaps may be more impressive in its single and historical

example, than all the general evidence gathered already in the pages of

_Fors Clavigera_.

* * * * *

167. "I could never understand formerly what you meant about usury, and

about its being wrong to take interest. I said, truly, then that I

'trusted you,' meaning I knew that in such matters you did not

'opine'--and that innumerable things were within your horizon which had

no place within mine.

"But as I did not understand I could only watch and ponder. Gradually I

came to see a little--as when I read current facts about India--about

almost every country, and about our own trade, etc. Then (one of several

circumstances that could be seen more closely) among my mother's kindred

in the north, I watched the ruin of two lives. They began married life

together, with good prospects and sufficient means, in a lovely little

nest among the hills, beyond the Rochdale smoke. Soon this became too

narrow. 'A splendid trade,' more mills, frequent changes into even finer

dwellings, luxurious living, ostentation, extravagance, increasing year

by year, all, as now appears, made possible by usury--borrowed capital.

The wife was laid in her grave lately, and her friends are _thankful_.

The husband, with ruin threatening his affairs, is in a worse, and

living, grave of evil habits."

"These are some of the loopholes through which light has fallen

upon your words, giving them a new meaning, and making me wonder

how I could have missed seeing it from the first. Once alive to it,

I recognize the evil on all sides, and how we are entangled by it;

and though I am still puzzled at one or two points, I am very clear

about the principle--that usury is a deadly thing,"

Yes; and deadly always with the vilest forms of destruction both to soul

and body.

168. It happens strangely, my Lord, that although throughout the seven

volumes of _Fors Clavigera_, I never have set down a sentence without

chastising it first into terms which could be _literally_ as well as in

their widest bearing justified against all controversy, you could

perhaps not have found in the whole book, had your Lordship read it for

the purpose, any saying quite so literally and terrifically demonstrable

as this which you have chanced to select for attack. For, in the first

place, of all the calamities which in their apparently merciless

infliction paralyzed the wavering faith of mediæval Christendom, the

"boil breaking forth into blains," in the black plagues of Florence and

London, was the fatalest messenger of the fiends: and, in the second

place, the broad result of the Missionary labors of the cities of

Madrid, Paris, and London, for the salvation of the wild tribes of the

New World, since the vaunted discovery of it, may be summed in the stem

sentence--Death, by drunkenness and smallpox.

The beneficent influence of recent commercial enterprise in the

communication of such divine grace, and divine blessing (not to speak of

other more dreadful and shameful conditions of disease), may be studied

to best advantage in the history of the two great French and English

Companies, who have enjoyed the monopoly of clothing the nakedness of

the Old World with coats of skins from the New.

The charter of the English one, obtained from the Crown in 1670, was in

the language of modern Liberalism--" wonderfully liberal,"[130]

comprising not only the grant of the exclusive trade, but also of full

territorial possession, to all perpetuity, of the vast lands within the

watershed of Hudson's Bay. The Company at once established some forts

along the shores of the great inland sea from which it derived its name,

and opened a very lucrative trade with the Indians, _so that it never

ceased paying rich dividends_ to the fortunate shareholders, until

towards the close of the last century.

Up to this time, with the exception of the voyage of discovery which

Herne (1770-71) made under its auspices to the mouth of the Coppermine

River, it had done but little for the promotion of geographical

discovery in its vast territory.

169. Meanwhile, the Canadian (French) fur traders had become so hateful

to the Indians, that these savages formed a conspiracy for their total

extirpation. _Fortunately for the white men_, the smallpox broke out

about this time among the redskins, and swept them away as the fire

consumes the parched grass of the prairies. Their unburied corpses were

torn by the wolves and wild dogs, and the survivors were too weak and

dispirited to be able to undertake anything against the foreign

intruders. The Canadian fur traders now also saw the necessity of

combining their efforts for their mutual benefit, instead of ruining

each other by an insane competition; and consequently formed in 1783 a

society which, under the name of the North-West Company of Canada,

ruled over the whole continent from the Canadian lakes to the Rocky

Mountains, and in 1806 it even crossed the barrier and established its

forts on the northern tributaries of the Columbia river. To the north it

likewise extended its operations, encroaching more and more upon the

privileges of the Hudson's Bay Company, which, roused to energy, now

also pushed on its posts further and further into the interior, and

established, in 1812, a colony on the Red River to the south of Winnipeg

Lake, thus driving, as it were, a sharp thorn into the side of its

rival. But a power like the North-West Company, which had no less than

50 agents, 70 interpreters, and 1120 "voyageurs" in its pay, and whose

chief managers used to appear at their annual meetings at Fort William,

on the banks of Lake Superior, with all the pomp and pride of feudal

barons, was not inclined to tolerate this encroachment; and thus, after

many quarrels, a regular war broke out between the two parties, which,

after two years' duration, led to the expulsion of the Red River

colonists, and the murder of their governor Semple. This event took

place in the year 1816, and is but one episode of the bloody feuds which

continued to reign between the two rival Companies until 1821.

170. The dissension's of the fur traders had most deplorable

consequences for the redskins; for both Companies, to swell the number

of their adherents, lavishly distributed spirituous liquors--a

temptation which no Indian can resist. The whole of the meeting-grounds

of the Saskatchewan and Athabasca were but one scene of revelry and

bloodshed. Already decimated by the smallpox, the Indians now became the

victims of drunkenness and discord, and it was to be feared that if the

war and its consequent demoralization continued, the most important

tribes would soon be utterly swept away.

At length wisdom prevailed over passion, and the enemies came to a

resolution which, if taken from the very beginning, would have saved

them both a great deal of treasure and many crimes. Instead of

continuing to swing the tomahawk, they now smoked the calumet, and

amalgamated in 1821, under the name of "Hudson's Bay Company," and

under the wing of the Charter.

The British Government, as a dowry to the impoverished couple, presented

them with a license of exclusive trade throughout the whole of that

territory which, under the name of the "Hudson's Bay and North-West

territories," extends from Labrador to the Pacific, and from the Red

River to the Polar Ocean.

171. Such, my Lord, have been the triumphs of the modern Evangel of

Usury, Competition, and Private Enterprise, in a perfectly clear

instance of their action, chosen I hope with sufficient candor, since

"History," says Professor Hind, "does not furnish another example of an

association of private individuals exerting a powerful influence over so

large an extent of the earth's surface and administering their affairs

with such consummate skill, and unwavering devotion to the original

objects of their incorporation."

That original object being, of course, that poor naked America, having

yet in a manner two coats, might be induced by these Christian merchants

to give to him that had none?

In like manner, may any Christian householder, who has two houses or

perchance two parks, ever be induced to give to him that hath none? My

temper and my courtesy scarcely serve me, my Lord, to reply to your

assertion of the "inevitableness" that, while half of Great Britain is

laid out in hunting-grounds for sport more savage than the Indians, the

poor of our cities must be swept into incestuous heaps; or into dens and

caves which are only tombs disquieted, so changing the whiteness of

Jewish sepulchers into the blackness of Christian ones, in which the

hearts of the rich and the homes of the poor are alike as graves that

appear not;--only their murmur, that sayeth "it is not enough," sounds

deeper beneath us every hour; nay, the whole earth, and not only the

cities of it, sends forth that ghastly cry; and her fruitful plains have

become slime-pits, and her fair estuaries, gulfs of death; for _us_, the

Mountain of the Lord has become only Golgotha, and the sound of the new

song before the Throne is drowned in the rolling death-rattle of the

nations, "Oh Christ; where is thy victory?"

These are thy glorious works, Mammon parent of Good,--and this the true

debate, my Lord of Manchester, between the two Angels of your

Church,--whether the "Dreamland" of its souls be now, or

hereafter,--now, the firelight in the cave, or hereafter, the sunlight

of Heaven.

172. How, my Lord, am I to receive, or reply to, the narrow concessions

of your closing sentence? The Spirit of Truth was breathed even from the

Athenian Acropolis, and the Law of Justice thundered even from the

Cretan Sinai; but for _us_, He who said, "I am the Truth," said also, "I

am the Way, and the Life;" and for _us_, He who reasoned of

Righteousness, reasoned also of Temperance and Judgment to come. Is this

the sincere milk of the Word, which takes the hope from the Person of

Christ, and the fear from the charge of His apostle, and forbids to

English heroism the perilous vision of Immortality? God be with you, my

Lord, and exalt your teaching to that quality of Mercy which, distilling

as the rain from Heaven--not strained as through channels from a sullen

reservoir-may soften the hearts of your people to receive the New

Commandment, that they Love one another. So, round the cathedral of your

city, shall the merchant's law be just, and his weights true; the table

of the money-changer not overthrown, and the bench of the money-lender

unbroken.

And to as many as walk according to this rule, Peace shall be on them,

and Mercy, and upon the Israel of God.

* * * * *