is his own almoner: let it be so. But may it not be at this season
permitted you to strengthen his hands in this capacity? Will not the
money which your economy here will leave at his disposal, find its
way, think you, into the hands and mouths and hungry stomachs, if not
of Irish, yet of English labourers? We shall find, I think, soon, some
reason to believe that for the sake of all it is at this present time
most incumbent on all, if not to give, at any rate not to consume. Why
are operatives out of work in Yorkshire and Lancashire? Why are farm
labourers receiving in these midland and southern counties wages at
all times small, at this time and with these prices of corn, barely
enough to keep soul and body together? why is not work, more and
more than enough, provided, as was expected, by railways? _Pendent
opera interrupta._ Why--why is it, or how? Not because there is no
useful work to be done; no orders from abroad for cotton goods; no
agricultural improvements possible; no lines of railway worth the
making. No. Why indeed, or how, but because there is not money to
pay the expenses of the working; to buy cotton for the operatives to
turn into calicoes; to buy tiles for draining; or iron and bricks and
mortar for railways. God, by a sudden visitation, has withdrawn from
the income He yearly sends us in the fruits of His earth, sixteen
millions sterling. Withdrawn it, and from whom? On whom falls the loss?
Not on the rich and luxurious, but on those whose labour makes the
rich man rich and gives the luxurious his luxury. Shall not we then,
the affluent and indulgent, spare somewhat of our affluence, curtail
somewhat of our indulgence, that these (for our wealth too and our
indulgence in the end) may have food while they work, and have work to
gain them food? He who at this moment saves money (I say not to send to
Skibbereen, but) to lay out in some profitable investment, to lend to
master manufacturers for buying cotton, or landlords for draining, or
railway companies for excavating--yes, he who but buys into the funds,
does more a great deal--yea, more, as something is more than nothing,
as _plus_ is more than _minus_, than he who spends, albeit for the
benefit of the trade, in wines, and ices, and waistcoats.
So is it, as a general rule, and must be; he who eats his cake cannot
have it; he who saves it may change it for bread, and that bread
may maintain men at work. So is it as a general rule: yet there are
surely modifications. And here we come to the great objection, ‘the
tradesman’s’ objection I may call it, which is the most important by
far of all that have been urged against this system of retrenchment.
You are taking the bread out of the mouths not of ‘wealthy tradesmen’
only, but ‘wealthy tradesmen’s’ far-from-wealthy work-people. Do you
think all that tailoring, and man-millinery making, that cooking, and
that horse-tending, that serving and waiting was done by nobody? Will
nobody stand idle and hungry, because you have changed your mind?
Had you not, as it were, rung your bell for them, and now when they
wait your commands have you nothing to say? Had you not, in point of
fact, engaged their service, and now do you, without warning, dismiss
them? If they suffer by it, are you not in the wrong? If they starve,
is not yours the guilt? Doubtless, indeed, if in this country any
man in any place starve, a verdict of guilt, less or greater, must I
fear be brought, not, as in Irish juries, against Lord John Russell,
but against the wealthy and luxurious of this wealthy and luxurious
land. ‘We are verily guilty concerning our brother, in that we saw the
anguish of his soul when he besought us and we would not hear.’ Their
suffering is on our heads. But the question is, Who had best suffer?
those who are working to bring things right, or those whom we could not
save from suffering without crippling our means for all? Which must be
put on shortest allowance, the able soldier or the camp-follower? Which
must be dismissed, in this household that must be reduced, the farm
labourers or the valets and lady’s-maids?
Surely Irish newspapers long ere this should have made us see how
reproductive labour differs from unreproductive. Most true it is
that the indulgences of Members of this University are the means
of providing a livelihood for a large staff of shopkeepers and
shopkeepers’ work-people, tailors and confectioners, ostlers and
waiters. Most true it is. Yet except for the mere enjoyment so
received by us, the customers, our money is a mere waste. We are
employing for our enjoyments men who might, by devoting their skill and
their strength to the farm, the factory, the ship, and the railway,
increase our stock of food, and our facilities for obtaining and
transmitting it. Or, ultimately, if useful employment fail here, we
should have money in our hands for removing superfluous labourers to a
field where not labourers but land is superfluous.
At no time whatever, I believe, can our large expenditure upon objects
of luxury be justified: at a time like this, when we know that wages
paid to those who work in the farm and the factory will bring us corn,
while wages paid to Oxford tradesmen will only increase our own useless
consumption, I see not how any doubt can be felt.
The ship is stranded and short of provisions, but a port full of
supplies is at hand; and they who control the matter will not victual
the boat’s crew that should go to obtain them, because forsooth it
would straiten the allowance of their cabin boys, and cooks, and
waiters. And that these forsooth may earn their food, and their masters
have an excuse for feeding them, these masters bid them continue their
functions--consume precious flour in pies and pasties--precious meats
in wasteful made dishes--for their own over-eating. Alas, that _mutato
nomine de nobis fabula narratur_.
You will say, I am pleading the cause not of Irish peasants, but of
English factory people and excavators. I am pleading the cause of both.
Is it not English labour that has this year kept Ireland alive? What is
to do the kind office in the next year? Mainly, I fear, English labour
again. Yet may we not hope, too, that if we keep alive Irishmen in
their wretched Skibbereens, we shall preserve not only hungry mouths,
but also strong hands that in the end will do work? But it is true; I
plead for both.
And for the tradesmen and the tradesmen’s work-people, what can be
done? Surely it is idle to keep up an unnatural and vicious demand
which finds no better means of feeding one set of men than wasting
food on another. We are guilty, I think, in having brought this state
of things upon ourselves, that many families depend for their present
sustenance on the continuance of such a system. One thing however there
is, which will relieve at any rate the tradesmen, and through them
perhaps do something for their dependants: and that is, paying bills. I
for my part urge no man to give alms at this time, till he has paid his
debts. It is not, I think, due to the tradesmen to go on spending; but
to pay for what has been received, I think is due.
Here then we come to another objection, the soundness of which I have
at once admitted. It is said, If I save at all, I must save to pay my
debts; we must be just before we are generous. It is said, and said
most fairly. But is it never added (how fairly I will not ask), I will
therefore not save at all? Why should I, this year more than last year?
My savings will not go to the Irish; why need I have savings at all?
And therefore while others starve I will surfeit; while others cry out
for husks, and submit if they cannot have them, I, no less loudly, will
clamour for a new pleasure, and be indignant if it is not found me. And
therefore if this affliction should be, as in some degree it surely
will be, continued into another year, or extended, no unlikely event,
in some form or other into England itself, I shall still be helpless,
still have the same ready plea for doing nothing, the same happy excuse
for self-indulgence. Verily it is to be feared there are some who, with
money in their pockets, will refuse to give to the Irish, because they
owe sums to tradesmen; neglect to pay their tradesmen, because paying
tradesmen is not giving to Ireland; and so in the end will do neither,
will let their bills go on increasing, and spend their ready money
on extra amusements not to be had without it. It is not impossible
there are men who will say, What money I have I owe to Bennett, or
Bickerstaff; however, as Bennett and Bickerstaff are not famishing,
they may as well wait; and then I shall have my money to take me up
to town, to carry me to the opera, to pay my way in my long vacation
continental excursion.
What then! truly, indeed, if Bennett and Bickerstaff are not famishing
and may as well wait, why you may as well not go to the opera, and pay
your opera’s price to keep your countrymen alive. But do not suppose it
is I who so advise. Pay your debts by all means. Surprise Bennett with
bank-notes, and gratify Bickerstaff with gold. There is need, as we
saw just now. I ask you not to be generous before you are just; I only
bid you make haste and be just that you may be generous the sooner. I
only beseech you not to say (they are indeed ‘vain words’) I cannot
be generous, and as for being just, that will do a year hence. Pay if
you can; if you cannot, why, cripple not at any rate your means for
generosity alike and justice in years to come. In any case and every
case, let not the sky which in Ireland looks upon famishment and fever,
see us here at Oxford in the midst of health and strength over-eating,
over-drinking, and over-enjoying. Let us not scoff at eternal justice
with our champagne and our claret, our breakfasts and suppers, our
club-dinners, and desserts, wasteful even to the worst taste, luxurious
even to unwholesomeness--or yet again by our silly and fantastic
frippery of dandyism, in the hazardous elaboration of which the hundred
who fail are sneered at, and the one who succeeds is smiled at.
I know not if there be any who venture on the bold declaration, The
money is mine, and I will have the good of it; I have got, and I
will spend; the Irish have not, and they must do without. Something
however too much approaching to this feeling undoubtedly does exist. In
the ravelled and tangled skein, of which is constituted the content
and quietness of conscience enjoyed by us, the purse-aristocracy of
England, this thread, I think, may here and there be detected even
by unskilful fingers. To these sticklers for the rights of property
it is worth while putting one question. If you had been wrecked the
other day in the ‘Tweed’ steamer, and had been successful in reaching
the place of safety in the rocks, would you, if the articles of food
secured there from the waters had happened to belong to your own
peculiar private stores--would you, I ask, have entertained a thought
that to you exclusively belonged the right to enjoy them? This barrel
of biscuits is marked with my letters, and was always known to be mine;
did I not pay for it? mine has come, all the better for me, yours has
not, all the worse for you.
O ye, born to be rich, or at least born not to be poor; ye young men
of Oxford, who gallop your horses over Bullingdon, and ventilate your
fopperies arm-in-arm up the High Street, abuse if you will to the full
that other plea of the spirits and thoughtlessness of youth, but let
me advise you to hesitate ere you venture the question, May I not do
what I like with my own? ere you meddle with such edge-tools as the
subject of property. Some one, I fear, might be found to look up your
title-deeds, and to quote inconvenient Scriptures.
The Institution of Property, he might urge, is all well enough as
a human expedient to secure its reward to industry, and protect
the provident labourer against the careless and idle. But for
half-million-per-annum fortunes, fifty-mile-long estates, and
may-I-not-do-what-I-please-with-my-own proprietors, some other
justification, it would seem, must be sought. Sought and found. Found
it must be by owners, or looked for it will be by others.
For consider it, he might say, a little more closely. How come you
to have money? It comes from your father. Then your father or your
father’s father, we hope--(for by begging, stealing, or serving, all
men live, said Mirabeau)--your ancestor, we hope, in time past, did
service to receive it; worked for it; earned it. And who gave him that
work to do? Many a strong man have we known in our days begging for
work, no matter what, to save him from starving. The will to work,
plain enough, is not all: Archimedes must have his ποῦ στῶ: the workman
his somewhat to work at: man labours not ‘as one that beateth the air.’
Who was it then, who, when your father or father’s father asked for
work, gave it him? Ultimately you most likely will find it was He who
gave us the earth. Ultimately it is the earth that forms our wealth and
our subsistence. Philosophers and merchants, poets and shopkeepers,
soldiers, sailors, tinkers, tailors--in our most spiritual, as in our
most material productions, we all alike start in this, in the earth
have our ποῦ στῶ and πόθεν ἐσθίω, our work to work at.
And ‘the earth hath He given to the children of men.’
Not, says the Scripture, to the children of the rich, or of the
noble, or of those who have had it hitherto; not to the well-bred and
well-educated--rather, it might seem, to the children of those by the
sweat of whose brow it is subdued.
So might some one put it. And far more near to the truth do I deem it
would be to declare, that whoever is born into the world has a just
claim to demand therein and therefrom work and wages for work; is bound
to do his part in the labour, and entitled to expect his proportion in
the fruits; even as in some Alacran shipwreck; each newcomer, _sævis
projectus ab undis_ (it is the old Lucretian image), may be called
upon to share in the toils, and may demand to share in the food; and
no old citizen of the rocks shall dare to say, We may monopolise the
work alike and the pay; we have hands enough for the work, and we will
have no new mouth for the victuals;--far truer, though not the whole
truth, I think would this be than the fairest human-law theory of
sacred indefeasible monopoly vested in hereditary lords of creation.
We have heard of the old oppression of ‘the lord’s mill.’ Even so,
if a capitalist now should buy all the cotton factories of the land,
and then say, ‘I have you in my power, and you must pay me what price
I will,’ would modern society bear it? How much more when, not for
cotton-twist, but for meat and drink and all things, there is one
sole machine, not made with hands, not capable of duplication, this
terraqueous globe that moves incommunicably tied to one unchanging
orbit?
Nor need we fear to acknowledge this principle freely. There is
enough sense of fairness in the world to let the sacred institution
of property find itself a basis secure and unassailed in that other
great principle, ‘If a man will not work, neither let him eat.’ Let
that apostolic limitation of that primitive-Christian state of things
where ‘they had all things common’ be our guide and interpreter. Let
us find in it the Christian exposition of the old covenant eighth
commandment. So far, as without encouraging present idleness and
improvidence, without encroaching unduly on provisions for posterity,
it were possible to equalise the distribution of labour, so far were
that equalisation a duty. And, as it is, when we punish the starving
man who steals the loaf, it is not because either the baker or we have
an exclusive right to it, but because society at all hazards must avoid
putting a premium on laziness.
It is of course utterly foreign to my meaning to do anything but find
a secure basis for the rights of property; to impugn them were idle.
But as legal justice must be corrected by equity, so must justice as
administered by the laws of property be modified by the equity of a
higher though less definite rule; and as the distinction between legal
and equitable justice was considered worthy of observation, so too let
not this be despised. Let it be fairly felt that what we call bounty
and charity is not, as we fain would persuade ourselves, a matter of
gratuitous uncalled-for condescension--as of God to men, or men to
meaner animals, as of children feeding the robins, or ladies watering
their flowers, but on the contrary a supplementary but integral part
of fair dealing; the payment of a debt of honour. Let however this
conviction be treated as it may, it cannot at least be denied that
in great calamities a higher law, ‘a law within the law,’ steps in
to supersede that of property. What we should feel to be right on an
Alacran reef is, in its measure, applicable to a Skibbereen famine;
to appropriate is to steal. As a matter of pure justice and not of
generosity, England is bound to share her last crust with Ireland, and
the rich men to fare as the poor.
Some things perhaps might be found to modify this: of that anon:
meantime have we not a nearer objection in the fact of Irish idleness
and Irish improvidence? To this I shall only answer that the failure
of the potato crop was surely a matter beyond the province of human
foresight, and that with respect to the labouring classes it may be
greatly questioned whether they have ever yet been any thing like
fairly tried.
And now then some one will tell us--that society has higher objects
than the preservation of the lives of individual members. A great
heritage of civilisation, of law, and thought, and religion has come to
our hands: shame upon this generation, if for the sake of prolonging
to some wretched and short-lived beings their brief tenure of misery,
we sacrifice our father’s hard-won gains. Better that many perish
than that the nation lose a Bacon, a Burke, or a Shakspeare. There
are things worse than starving. True indeed it is, and in this, or
something like this, is founded the justification of inequality of
ranks. True indeed, and truly well worth the knowing. As ignorant and
unrefined parents stint themselves to secure knowledge and refinement
for their children, so the laborious poor of the land support, at
their painful cost, the aristocracy of the rich and educated. And so
long as it is indeed an aristocracy--forgetful though it may be and
unfilial too--they do it, and do it with joy, as of a parent. But if
cultivation be so great a thing, has it no such ingredients as mercy
and justice? Enjoyment is good; and refined enjoyment better than
coarse. Wine is better than gin; and the ale-house inferior to the
opera: _vilius argentum est auro_, but also _virtutibus aurum_. As it
is the pure service of God, so may it not be also the true cultivation
of man, ‘to visit the orphans and widows in their affliction, and to
keep himself unspotted from the world’? If there are things worse than
starving, there are also things better than eating and drinking.
And as this our English aristocracy draws its recruits almost
exclusively from the newly rich, what, may we ask, is the most fitting
lesson it should inculcate upon them, what discipline and what drill
should it place them under? Shall it meet them half-way with the
precept of, Expense and ostentation? Shall it say, Your business as a
member of the best part of the English nation is to entertain, to give
good dinners, and see the world, to have houses larger than you want,
servants more than you want, carriages more than you use, horses more
than you have work for? Is this to be the talismanic tradition handed
down from chivalrous days to the new generation; is this the torch of
wisdom and honour which our feudal aristocracy transmits to the new one
that succeeds it? Is this all which they can give us whose boast it is
to belong to the historic being of England--to be the conducting medium
through which the past sends its electric power into the present,
Eating and drinking, and (we must remember that, I suppose) a dash of
gentlemanly manner?
To what result then do we come? To something like this.
First of all, that the welfare of the nation does undoubtedly require
the existence of a class free for the most part to follow their own
devices; that it is right that there should be men with time at their
disposal, and money in their purses, and large liberty in public
opinion; men who, though thousands and tens of thousands perish by
starvation, stoically meanwhile in books and in study, in reading,
and thinking, and travelling, and--it would seem too, enjoying, in
hunting, videlicet, and shooting, in duets, and dancing, by ball-going
and grousing, by déjeuners and deer-stalking, by foie-gras and
Johannisberger, by February strawberries and December green peas, by
turbot, and turtle, and venison, should pioneer the route of the armies
of mankind; should, an intrepid forlorn hope, lead the way up the
breach of human destiny to the citadel of truth; and, devoted priests
and prophets, solve some more than ‘Asian mystery’ by pilgrimage to
the Palestine of Cockaigne! But that however essential be these higher
classes, still there remains the question, Is there not a holier land
than Cockaigne; is not temperance as efficient a sapper and miner as
wine of Burgundy; is not labour better than enjoyment; is it not higher
cultivation ‘to do justice and mercy, and walk humbly,’ than to ‘eat
and drink and be drunken’; and though thought and study be glorious,
may we not combine ‘plain living and high thinking’; though science,
and art, and philosophy be divine, is not charity ‘yet a more excellent
way’?
In the second place, looking backward through our discussion, we
recur to the thought that property is scarcely, by law or gospel,
that inalienable personal, individual thing, which we that have it
would believe it to be. As in the dangers and distresses of society
great characters are for the first time seen, and as soon as seen are
recognised, while rank, and wealth, and titles are forgotten; even so
in calamities and horrors the old laws of _meum_ and _tuum_ shrink to
nothing, while a loftier principle reveals itself and no man gainsays
it.
The sons of deceased public servants--yea, the living workers
themselves--possess no indefeasible title to those lands, and goods,
and monies, which they call their earnings. Their lands come to them
saddled with indefinite rent-charges, reservations, and reversional
interests--the poor and the needy that are, and that shall be, have
a lien on their monies and their chattels. Beyond the reach of all
statutes of limitation there are bills that must be liquidated,
creditors that must not be deferred. Many yet shall come in from the
highways and hedges, and join in the meal with us that came early: a
posthumous brother is yet to be born, to share and share alike in our
father’s bequests.
Terraque _mancipio nulli datur, omnibus usu_.
He from whom came man’s primal raw material--that Pharaoh, who fed
while the harvest yet was lacking; He retains, and to those whom He
shall send is due, in their proportion, that which hath come of it.
Without Him we could not have laboured: that which His gift was to us,
it is His will our labour should be found to others. ‘The earth hath He
given to the children of men.’
No such thing can there be as a right to do what you will with
your own. The property is not your own: scarcely your own at any
time; during times of calamity in no wise, except to do good with
and distribute. Neither again can you plead the good it does you:
who made thee to differ? you cannot even plead the good which your
cultivation, so obtained, does the nation; that cultivation could be
better obtained without it. Nor yet that you are patronising arts and
sciences; genius, and skill, and knowledge. You are so, no doubt--but
the thing could be done as well and better if you employed painters
and architects--engravers and jewellers--builders and engineers--not
upon your own dining-rooms and drawing-rooms; but upon churches, and
schools, and hospitals, public works and public institutions. And that
patronage would be as superior to the present as the patronage of
painting, properly so called, to that of the painting of portraits. Yet
even for that higher kind this is hardly the season. Neither, again,
can you defend yourselves on the ground of the ‘benefit of trade.’ Burn
your candles, if you please, at both ends--to make your blanket longer
cut off from the top to piece on at the bottom: but this is too serious
a matter for playing with transparent fallacies.
But I am running into idle repetitions, and telling a twicetold tale:
what is it then that I call upon you to do? Join the Association? Not
I. Do as you please about that. But about one thing you must not do as
you please. You must not insult God alike and man with the spectacle
of your sublime indifference. The angels of heaven, one might believe,
as they pass above those devoted shores, in gazing on that ordained
destruction let fall untasted from their immortal lips the morsel of
ambrosial sustenance. If we, as they, were nurtured on other food than
our brothers, if no gift of ours could help to allay those pangs of
famine, still methinks this undisturbed, unrestrained fruition were
not wholly free of guilt. How much more when every crumb we touch is
abstracted from that common stock, which in the eternal registers is
set down, I fear, as scarcely less theirs than ours?