THE NATURE OF THEFT BY UNJUST PROFITS.--CRIME CAN FINALLY BE ARRESTED
ONLY BY EDUCATION.
_29th March._
81. The first methods of polite robbery, by dishonest manufacture and
by debt, of which we have been hitherto speaking, are easily enough to
be dealt with and ended, when once men have a mind to end them. But
the third method of polite robbery, by dishonest _acquisition_, has
many branches, and is involved among honest arts of acquisition, so
that it is difficult to repress the one without restraining the other.
Observe, first, large fortunes cannot honestly be made by the work of
any _one_ man's hands, or head. If his work benefits multitudes, and
involves position of high trust, it may be (I do not say that it _is_)
expedient to reward him with great wealth or estate; but fortune of
this kind is freely given in gratitude for benefit, not as repayment
for labor. Also, men of peculiar genius in any art, if the public can
enjoy the product of their genius, may set it at almost any price they
choose; but this, I will show you when I come to speak of art, is
unlawful on their part and ruinous to their own powers. Genius must
not be sold; the sale of it involves, in a transcendental, but
perfectly true, sense, the guilt both of simony and prostitution. Your
labor only may be sold; your soul must not.
82. Now, by fair pay for fair labor, according to the rank of it, a
man can obtain means of comfortable, or if he needs it, refined life.
But he cannot obtain large fortune. Such fortunes as are now the
prizes of commerce can be made only in one of three ways:--
(1.) By obtaining command over the labor of multitudes of other men
and taxing it for our own profit.
(2.) By treasure-trove,--as of mines, useful vegetable products, and
the like,--in circumstances putting them under our own exclusive
control.
(3.) By speculation, (commercial gambling).
The first two of these means of obtaining riches are, in some forms
and within certain limits, lawful, and advantageous to the State. The
third is entirely detrimental to it; for in all cases of profit
derived from speculation, at best, what one man gains another loses;
and the net results to the State is zero, (pecuniarily,) with the loss
of the time and ingenuity spent in the transaction; besides the
disadvantage involved in the discouragement of the losing party, and
the corrupted moral natures of both. This is the result of speculation
at its best. At its worst, not only B loses what A gains (having taken
his fair risk of such loss for his fair chance of gain), but C and D,
who never had any chance at all, are drawn in by B's fall, and the
final result is that A sets up his carriage on the collected sum
which was once the means of living to a dozen families.
83. Nor is this all. For while real commerce is founded on real
necessities or uses, and limited by these, speculation, of which the
object is merely gain, seeks to excite imaginary necessities and
popular desires, in order to gather its temporary profit from the
supply of them. So that not only the persons who lend their money to
it will be finally robbed, but the work done with their money will be,
for the most part, useless, and thus the entire body of the public
injured as well as the persons concerned in the transaction. Take, for
instance, the architectural decorations of railways throughout the
kingdom,--representing many millions of money for which no farthing of
dividend can ever be forthcoming. The public will not be induced to
pay the smallest fraction of higher fare to Rochester or Dover because
the ironwork of the bridge which carries them over the Thames is
covered with floral cockades, and the piers of it edged with
ornamental cornices. All that work is simply put there by the builders
that they may put the percentage upon it into their own pockets; and,
the rest of the money being thrown into that floral form, there is an
end of it, as far as the shareholders are concerned. Millions upon
millions have thus been spent, within the last twenty years, on
ornamental arrangements of zigzag bricks, black and blue tiles,
cast-iron foliage, and the like; of which millions, as I said, not a
penny can ever return into the shareholders' pockets, nor contribute
to public speed or safety on the line. It is all sunk forever in
ornamental architecture, and (trust me for this!) _all that
architecture is bad_. As such, it had incomparably better not have
been built. Its only result will be to corrupt what capacity of taste
or right pleasure in such work we have yet left to us! And consider a
little, what other kind of result than that might have been attained
if all those millions had been spent usefully: say, in buying land for
the people, or building good houses for them, or (if it had been
imperatively required to be spent decoratively) in laying out gardens
and parks for them,--or buying noble works of art for their permanent
possession,--or, best of all, establishing frequent public schools and
libraries. Count what those lost millions would have so accomplished
for you! But you left the affair to "supply and demand," and the
British public had not brains enough to "demand" land, or lodging, or
books. It "demanded" cast-iron cockades and zigzag cornices, and is
"supplied" with them, to its beatitude for evermore.
84. Now, the theft we first spoke of, by falsity of workmanship or
material, is, indeed, so far worse than these thefts by dishonest
acquisition, that there is no possible excuse for it on the ground of
self-deception; while many speculative thefts are committed by persons
who really mean to do no harm, but think the system on the whole a
fair one, and do the best they can in it for themselves. But in the
real fact of the crime, when consciously committed, in the numbers
reached by its injury, in the degree of suffering it causes to those
whom it ruins, in the baseness of its calculated betrayal of implicit
trust, in the yet more perfect vileness of the obtaining such trust
by misrepresentation, only that it may be betrayed, and in the
impossibility that the crime should be at all committed, except by
persons of good position and large knowledge of the world--what manner
of theft is so wholly unpardonable, so inhuman, so contrary to every
law and instinct which binds or animates society?
And then consider farther, how many of the carriages that glitter in
our streets are driven, and how many of the stately houses that gleam
among our English fields are inhabited, by this kind of thief!
85. I happened to be reading this morning (29th March) some portions
of the Lent services, and I came to a pause over the familiar words,
"And with Him they crucified two thieves." Have you ever considered
(I speak to you now as a professing Christian), why, in the
accomplishment of the "numbering among transgressors," the
transgressors chosen should have been especially thieves--not
murderers, nor, as far as we know, sinners by any gross violence? Do
you observe how the sin of theft is again and again indicated as the
chiefly antagonistic one to the law of Christ? "This he said, not that
he cared for the poor, but because he was a thief, and had the bag"
(of Judas). And again, though Barabbas was a leader of sedition, and a
murderer besides,--(that the popular election might be in all respects
perfect)--yet St. John, in curt and conclusive account of him, fastens
again on the theft. "Then cried they all again saying, Not this man,
but Barabbas. Now Barabbas was a robber." I believe myself the reason
to be that theft is indeed, in its subtle forms, the most complete and
excuseless of human crimes. Sins of violence usually are committed
under sudden or oppressive temptation: they may be the madness of
moments; or they may be apparently the only means of extrication from
calamity. In other cases, they are the diseased acts or habits of
lower and brutified natures.[A] But theft involving deliberative
intellect, and absence of passion, is the purest type of wilful
iniquity, in persons capable of doing right. Which being so, it seems
to be fast becoming the practice of modern society to crucify its
Christ indeed, as willingly as ever, in the persons of His poor; but
by no means now to crucify its thieves beside Him! It elevates its
thieves after another fashion; sets them upon a hill, that their light
may shine before men and that all may see their good works, and
glorify their Father, in--the Opposite of Heaven.
[A] See the analysis of the moral system of Dante, respecting
punishment, given in 'Fors Clavigera,' Letter XXIII.
86. I think your trade parliament will have to put an end to this kind
of business somehow! But it cannot be done by laws merely, where the
interests and circumstances are so extended and complex. Nay, even as
regards lower and more defined crimes, the assigned punishment is not
to be thought of as a preventive means; but only as the seal of
opinion set by society on the fact. Crime cannot be hindered by
punishment; it will always find some shape and outlet, unpunishable or
unclosed. Crime can only be truly hindered by letting no man grow up a
criminal--by taking away the _will_ to commit sin; not by mere
punishment of its commission. Crime, small and great, can only be
truly stayed by education--not the education of the intellect only,
which is, on some men, wasted, and for others mischievous; but
education of the heart, which is alike good and necessary for all. So,
on this matter, I will try in my next letter to say one or two things
of which the silence has kept my own heart heavy this many a day.