OF THE NORMAL POSITION AND DUTIES OF THE UPPER CLASSES. GENERAL
STATEMENT OF THE LAND QUESTION.
_April 17, 1867._
136. In passing now to the statement of conditions affecting the
interests of the upper classes, I would rather have addressed these
closing letters to one of themselves than to you, for it is with their
own faults and needs that each class is primarily concerned. As,
however, unless I kept the letters private, this change of their
address would be but a matter of courtesy and form, not of any
true prudential use; and as besides I am now no more inclined to
reticence--prudent or otherwise; but desire only to state the facts
of our national economy as clearly and completely as may be, I pursue
the subject without respect of persons.
137. Before examining what the occupation and estate of the upper
classes ought, as far as may reasonably be conjectured, finally to
become, it will be well to set down in brief terms what they actually
have been in past ages: for this, in many respects, they must also
always be. The upper classes, broadly speaking, are originally
composed of the best-bred (in the mere animal sense of the term), the
most energetic, and most thoughtful, of the population, who either by
strength of arm seize the land from the rest, and make slaves of them,
or bring desert land into cultivation, over which they have therefore,
within certain limits, true personal right; or, by industry,
accumulate other property, or by choice devote themselves to
intellectual pursuits, and, though poor, obtain an acknowledged
superiority of position, shown by benefits conferred in discovery, or
in teaching, or in gifts of art. This is all in the simple course of
the law of nature; and the proper offices of the upper classes, thus
distinguished from the rest, become, therefore, in the main
threefold:--
138. (A) Those who are strongest of arm have for their proper
function the restraint and punishment of vice, and the general
maintenance of law and order; releasing only from its original
subjection to their power that which truly deserves to be emancipated.
(B) Those who are superior by forethought and industry, have for their
function to be the providences of the foolish, the weak, and the idle;
and to establish such systems of trade and distribution of goods as
shall preserve the lower orders from perishing by famine, or any other
consequence of their carelessness or folly, and to bring them all,
according to each man's capacity, at last into some harmonious
industry.
(C) The third class, of scholars and artists, of course, have for
function the teaching and delighting of the inferior multitude.
The office of the upper classes, then, as a body, is to keep order
among their inferiors, and raise them always to the nearest level with
themselves of which those inferiors are capable. So far as they are
thus occupied, they are invariably loved and reverenced intensely by
all beneath them, and reach, themselves, the highest types of human
power and beauty.
139. This, then, being the natural ordinance and function of
aristocracy, its corruption, like that of all other beautiful things
under the Devil's touch, is a very fearful one. Its corruption is,
that those who ought to be the rulers and guides of the people,
forsake their task of painful honorableness; seek their own pleasure
and pre-eminence only; and use their power, subtlety, conceded
influence, prestige of ancestry, and mechanical instrumentality of
martial power, to make the lower orders toil for them, and feed and
clothe them for nothing, and become in various ways their living
property, goods, and chattels, even to the point of utter
regardlessness of whatever misery these serfs may suffer through such
insolent domination, or they themselves, their masters, commit of
crime to enforce it.
140. And this is especially likely to be the case when means of
various and tempting pleasures are put within the reach of the upper
classes by advanced conditions of national commerce and knowledge: and
it is _certain_ to be the case as soon as position among those upper
classes becomes any way purchasable with money, instead of being the
assured measure of some kind of worth, (either strength of hand, or
true wisdom of conduct, or imaginative gift). It has been becoming
more and more the condition of the aristocracy of Europe, ever since
the fifteenth century; and is gradually bringing about its ruin, and
in that ruin, checked only by the power which here and there a good
soldier or true statesman achieves over the putrid chaos of its vain
policy, the ruin of all beneath it; which can be arrested only, either
by the repentance of that old aristocracy, (hardly to be hoped,) or by
the stern substitution of other aristocracy worthier than it.
141. Corrupt as it may be, it and its laws together, I would at this
moment, if I could, fasten every one of its institutions down with
bands of iron, and trust for all progress and help against its tyranny
simply to the patience and strength of private conduct. And if I had
to choose, I would tenfold rather see the tyranny of old Austria
triumphant in the old and new worlds, and trust to the chance (or
rather the distant certainty) of some day seeing a true Emperor born
to its throne, than, with every privilege of thought and act, run the
most distant risk of seeing the thoughts of the people of Germany and
England become like the thoughts of the people of America.
My American friends, of whom one, Charles Eliot Norton, of Cambridge,
is the dearest I have in the world, tell me I know nothing about
America. It may be so, and they must do me the justice to observe that
I, therefore, usually _say_ nothing about America. But this much I
have said, because the Americans, as a nation, set their trust in
liberty and in equality, of which I detest the one, and deny the
possibility of the other; and because, also, as a nation, they are
wholly undesirous of Rest, and incapable of it; irreverent of
themselves, both in the present and in the future; discontented with
what they are, yet having no ideal of anything which they desire to
become.[A]
[A] Some following passages in this letter, containing
personal references which might, in permanence, have given
pain or offense, are now omitted--the substance of them being
also irrelevant to my main purpose. These few words about the
American war, with which they concluded, are, I think, worth
retaining:--"All methods of right government are to be
communicated to foreign nations by perfectness of example and
gentleness of patiently expanded power, not suddenly, nor at
the bayonet's point. And though it is the duty of every
nation to interfere, at bayonet point, if they have the
strength to do so, to save any oppressed multitude, or even
individual, from manifest violence, it is wholly unlawful to
interfere in such matter, except with sacredly pledged
limitation of the objects to be accomplished in the oppressed
person's favor, and with absolute refusal of all selfish
advantage and _increase of territory or of political power_
which might otherwise accrue from the victory."
142. But, however corrupted, the aristocracy of any nation may thus be
always divided into three great classes. First, the landed proprietors
and soldiers, essentially one political body (for the possession of
land can only be maintained by military power); secondly, the moneyed
men and leaders of commerce; thirdly, the professional men and masters
in science, art, and literature.
And we were to consider the proper duties of all these, and the laws
probably expedient respecting them. Whereupon, in the outset, we are
at once brought face to face with the great land question.
143. Great as it may be, it is wholly subordinate to those we have
hitherto been considering. The laws you make regarding methods of
labor, or to secure the genuineness of the things produced by it,
affect the entire moral state of the nation, and all possibility of
human happiness for them. The mode of distribution of the land only
affects their numbers. By this or that law respecting land you decide
whether the nation shall consist of fifty or of a hundred millions.
But by this or that law respecting work, you decide whether the given
number of millions shall be rogues, or honest men;--shall be wretches,
or happy men. And the question of numbers is wholly immaterial,
compared with that of character; or rather, its own materialness
depends on the prior determination of character. Make your nation
consist of knaves, and, as Emerson said long ago, it is but the case
of any other vermin--"the more, the worse." Or, to put the matter in
narrower limits, it is a matter of no final concern to any parent
whether he shall have two children, or four; but matter of quite final
concern whether those he has shall, or shall not, deserve to be
hanged. The great difficulty in dealing with the land question at all
arises from the false, though very natural, notion on the part of many
reformers, and of large bodies of the poor, that the division of the
land among the said poor would be an immediate and everlasting relief
to them. An _immediate_ relief it would be to the extent of a small
annual sum (you may easily calculate how little, if you choose) to
each of them; on the strength of which accession to their finances,
they would multiply into as much extra personality as the extra pence
would sustain, and at that point be checked by starvation, exactly as
they are now.
144. Any other form of pillage would benefit them only in like manner;
and, in reality, the difficult part of the question respecting
numbers, is, not where they shall be arrested, but what shall be the
method of their arrest.
An island of a certain size has standing room only for so many people;
feeding ground for a great many fewer than could stand on it. Reach
the limits of your feeding ground, and you must cease to multiply,
must emigrate or starve. The modes in which the pressure is gradually
brought to bear on the population depend on the justice of your laws;
but the pressure itself must come at last, whatever the distribution
of the land. And arithmeticians seem to me a little slow to remark the
importance of the old child's puzzle about the nails in the
horseshoe--when it is populations that are doubling themselves,
instead of farthings.
145. The essential land question, then, is to be treated quite
separately from that of the methods of restriction of population. The
land question is--At what point will you resolve to stop? It is
separate matter of discussion how you are to stop at it.
And this essential land question--"At what point will you stop?"--is
itself two-fold. You have to consider first, by what methods of land
distribution you can maintain the greatest number of healthy persons;
and secondly, whether, if, by any other mode of distribution and
relative ethical laws, you can raise their character, while you
diminish their numbers, such sacrifice should be made, and to what
extent? I think it will be better, for clearness' sake, to end this
letter with the putting of these two queries in their decisive form,
and to reserve suggestions of answer for my next.