Commerce is necessary, however, not only to exchange local products,

but local skill. Labour requiring the agency of fire can only be given

abundantly in cold countries; labour requiring suppleness of body and

sensitiveness of touch only in warm ones; labour involving accurate

vivacity of thought only in temperate ones; while peculiar imaginative

actions are produced by extremes of heat and cold, and of light and

darkness. The production of great art is limited to climates warm

enough to admit of repose in the open air, and cool enough to render

such repose delightful. Minor variations in modes of skill distinguish

every locality. The labour which at any place is easiest, is in that

place cheapest; and it becomes often desirable that products raised in

one country should be wrought in another. Hence have arisen

discussions on "International values," which will be one day

remembered as highly curious exercises of the human mind. For it will

be discovered, in due course of tide and time, that international

value is regulated just as inter-provincial or inter-parishional value

is. Coals and hops are exchanged between Northumberland and Kent on

absolutely the same principles as iron and wine between Lancashire and

Spain. The greater breadth of an arm of the sea increases the cost,

but does not modify the principle of exchange; and a bargain written

in two languages will have no other economical results than a bargain

written in one. The distances of nations are measured not by seas, but

by ignorances; and their divisions determined, not by dialects, but by

enmities.

Of course, a system of international values may always be constructed

if we assume a relation of moral law to physical geography; as, for

instance, that it is right to cheat across a river, though not across

a road; or across a lake, though not across a river; or over a

mountain, though not across a lake, etc.:--again, a system of such

values may be constructed by assuming similar relations of taxation to

physical geography; as, for instance, that an article should be taxed

in crossing a river, but not in crossing a road; or in being carried

over a mountain, but not over a ferry, etc.: such positions are indeed

not easily maintained when once put in logical form; but one law of

international value is maintainable in any form; namely, that the

farther your neighbour lives from you, and the less he understands

you, the more you are bound to be true in your dealings with him;

because your power over him is greater in proportion to his ignorance,

and his remedy more difficult in proportion to his distance.

I have just said the breadth of sea increases the cost of exchange.

Exchange or commerce, as such, is always costly; the sum of the value

of the goods being diminished by the cost of their conveyance, and by

the maintenance of the persons employed in it. So that it is only when

there is advantage to both producers (in getting the one thing for the

other), greater than the loss in conveyance, that the exchange is

expedient. And it is only justly conducted when the porters kept by

the producers (commonly called merchants) look only for pay, and not

for profit. For in just commerce there are but three parties--the two

persons or societies exchanging and the agent or agents of exchange:

the value of the things to be exchanged is known by both the

exchangers, and each receives equivalent value, neither gaining nor

losing (for whatever one gains the other loses). The intermediate

agent is paid an equal and known percentage by both, partly for labour

in conveyance, partly for care, knowledge, and risk; every attempt at

concealment of the amount of the pay indicates either effort on the

part of the agent to obtain exorbitant percentage, or effort on the

part of the exchangers to refuse him a just one. But for the most part

it is the first, namely, the effort on the part of the merchant to

obtain larger profit (so called) by buying cheap and selling dear.

Some part, indeed, of this larger gain is deserved, and might be

openly demanded, because it is the reward of the merchant's knowledge,

and foresight of probable necessity; but the greater part of such gain

is unjust; and unjust in this most fatal way, that it depends first on

keeping the exchangers ignorant of the exchange value of the articles,

and secondly, on taking advantage of the buyer's need and the seller's

poverty. It is, therefore, one of the essential, and quite the most

fatal, forms of usury; for usury means merely taking an exorbitant sum

for the use of anything, and it is no matter whether the exorbitance

is on loan or exchange, in rent or in price--the essence of the usury

being that it is obtained by advantage of opportunity or necessity,

and not as due reward for labour. All the great thinkers, therefore,

have held it to be unnatural and impious, in so far as it feeds on

the distress of others, or their folly.[97] Nevertheless attempts to

repress it by law (in other words, to regulate prices by law so far as

their variations depend on iniquity, and not on nature) must for ever

be ineffective; though Plato, Bacon, and the First Napoleon--all three

of them men who knew somewhat more of humanity than the "British

merchant" usually does--tried their hands at it, and have left some

(probably) good moderative forms of law, which we will examine in

their place. But the only final check upon it must be radical

purifying of the national character, for being, as Bacon calls it,

"concessum propter duritiem cordis," it is to be done away with by

touching the heart only; not, however, without medicinal law--as in

the case of the other permission, "propter duritiem." But in this,

more than in anything (though much in all, and though in this he would

not himself allow of their application, for his own laws against usury

are sharp enough), Plato's words are true in the fourth book of the

"Polity," that neither drugs, nor charms, nor burnings, will touch a

deep-lying political sore, any more than a deep bodily one; but only

right and utter change of constitution; and that "they do but lose

their labour who think that by any tricks of law they can get the

better of these mischiefs of intercourse, and see not that they hew at

a Hydra."

[97] Hence Dante's companionship of Cahors, Inf., canto xi.,

supported by the view taken of the matter throughout the

middle ages, in common with the Greeks.

And indeed this Hydra seems so unslayable, and sin sticks so fast

between the joinings of the stones of buying and selling, that "to

trade" in things, or literally "cross-give" them, has warped itself,

by the instinct of nations, into their worst word for fraud; for,

because in trade there cannot but be trust, and it seems also that

there cannot but also be injury in answer to it, what is merely fraud

between enemies becomes treachery among friends: and "trader,"

"traditor," and "traitor" are but the same word. For which simplicity

of language there is more reason than at first appears; for as in true

commerce there is no "profit," so in true commerce there is no "sale."

The idea of sale is that of an interchange between enemies

respectively endeavouring to get the better of one another; but

commerce is an exchange between friends; and there is no desire but

that it should be just, any more than there would be between members

of the same family. The moment there is a bargain over the pottage,

the family relation is dissolved;--typically "the days of mourning for

my father are at hand." Whereupon follows the resolve "then will I

slay my brother."

This inhumanity of mercenary commerce is the more notable because it

is a fulfilment of the law that the corruption of the best is the

worst. For as, taking the body natural for symbol of the body politic,

the governing and forming powers may be likened to the brain and the

labouring to the limbs, the mercantile, presiding over circulation and

communication of things in changed utilities is symbolized by the

heart; which, if it harden, all is lost. And this is the ultimate

lesson which the leader of English intellect meant for us (a lesson,

indeed, not all his own, but part of the old wisdom of humanity), in

the tale of the "Merchant of Venice"; in which the true and incorrupt

merchant,--kind and free, beyond every other Shakespearian conception

of men,--is opposed to the corrupted merchant, or usurer; the lesson

being deepened by the expression of the strange hatred which the

corrupted merchant bears to the pure one, mixed with intense scorn--

"This is the fool that lent out money gratis; look to him, jailor,"

(as to lunatic no less than criminal); the enmity, observe, having its

symbolism literally carried out by being aimed straight at the heart,

and finally foiled by a literal appeal to the great moral law that

flesh and blood cannot be weighed, enforced by "Portia" ("Portion"),

the type of divine Fortune,[98] found, not in gold, nor in silver, but

in lead, that is to say, in endurance and patience, not in splendour;

and finally taught by her lips also, declaring, instead of the law and

quality of "merces," the greater law and quality of mercy, which is

not strained, but drops as the rain, blessing him that gives and him

that takes. And observe that this "mercy" is not the mean

"Misericordia," but the mighty "Gratia," answered by Gratitude

(observe Shylock's leaning on the, to him detestable, word gratis, and

compare the relation of Grace to Equity given in the second chapter of

the second book of the "Memorabilia"); that is to say, it is the

gracious or loving, instead of the strained, or competing manner, of

doing things, answered, not only with "merces" or pay, but with

"merci," or thanks. And this is indeed the meaning of the great

benediction, "Grace, mercy, and peace," for there can be no peace

without grace (not even by help of rifled cannon),[99] nor even

without triplicity of graciousness, for the Greeks, who began with but

one Grace, had to open their scheme into three before they had done.

[98] Shakespeare would certainly never have chosen this name had

he been forced to retain the Roman spelling. Like Perdita,

"lost lady," or "Cordelia," "heart-lady," Portia is

"fortune-lady." The two great relative groups of words,

Fortune, fero, and fors--Portio, porto, and pars (with the

lateral branch, op-portune, im-portune, opportunity, etc.),

are of deep and intrinsic significance; their various senses

of bringing, abstracting, and sustaining, being all

centralized by the wheel (which bears and moves at once), or

still better, the ball (spera) of Fortune,--"Volve sua

spera, e beata si gode:" the motive power of this wheel

distinguishing its goddess from the fixed majesty of

Necessitas with her iron nails; or [Greek: ananke], with

her pillar of fire and iridescent orbits, fixed at the

centre. Portus and porta, and gate in its connexion with

gain, form another interesting branch group; and Mors, the

concentration of delaying, is always to be remembered with

Fors, the concentration of bringing and bearing, passing on

into Fortis and Fortitude.

[99] Out of whose mouths, indeed, no peace was ever promulgated,

but only equipoise of panic, highly tremulous on the edge in

changes in the wind.

With the usual tendency of long-repeated thought to take the surface

for the deep, we have conceived their goddesses as if they only gave

loveliness to gesture; whereas their true function is to give

graciousness to deed, the other loveliness arising naturally out of

that. In which function Charis becomes Charitas[100] and has a name and

praise even greater than that of Faith or truth, for these may be

maintained sullenly and proudly; but Charis[101] is in her countenance

always gladdening (Aglaia), and in her service instant and humble; and

the true wife of Vulcan, or Labour. And it is not until her sincerity

of function is lost, and her mere beauty contemplated, instead of her

patience, that she is born again of the foam flake, and becomes

Aphrodite; then only capable of joining herself to War and to the

enmities of men, instead of to Labour and their services. Therefore

the fable of Mars and Venus is, chosen by Homer, picturing himself as

Demodocus, to sing at the games in the Court of Alcinous. Phaeacia is

the Homeric island of Atlantis; an image of noble and wise government,

concealed, how slightly! merely by the change of a short vowel for a

long one in the name of its queen; yet misunderstood by all later

writers, even by Horace in his "pinguis, Phaeaxque," etc. That fable

expresses the perpetual error of men, thinking that grace and dignity

can only be reached by the soldier, and never by the artizan; so that

commerce and the useful arts have had the honour and beauty taken

away, and only the Fraud[102] and Pain left to them, with the lucre.

Which is, indeed, one great reason of the continual blundering about

the offices of government with respect to commerce. The higher classes

are ashamed to deal with it; and though ready enough to fight for (or

occasionally against) the people,--to preach to them,--or judge them,

will not break bread for them; the refined upper servant who has

willingly looked after the burnishing of the armoury and ordering of

the library, not liking to set foot into the larder.

[100] The reader must not think that any care can be misspent

in tracing the connexion and power of the words which we

have to use in the sequel. Not only does all soundness of

reasoning depend on the work thus done in the outset, but

we may sometimes gain more by insistence on the expression

of a truth, than by much wordless thinking about it; for

to strive to express it clearly is often to detect it

thoroughly; and education, even as regards thought, nearly

sums itself in making men economise their words, and

understand them. Nor is it possible to estimate the harm

that has been done, in matters of higher speculation and

conduct, by loose verbiage, though we may guess at it by

observing the dislike which people show to having anything

about their religion said to them in simple words, because

then they understand it. Thus congregations meet weekly to

invoke the influence of a Spirit of Life and Truth; yet if

any part of that character were intelligibly expressed to

them by the formulas of the service, they would be offended.

Suppose, for instance, in the closing benediction, the

clergyman were to give its vital significance to the word

"Holy," and were to say, "the Fellowship of the Helpful and

Honest Ghost be with you, and remain with you always," what

would be the horror of many, first, at the irreverence of so

intelligible an expression, and, secondly, at the

discomfortable entry of the suspicion that (while throughout

the commercial dealings of the week they had denied the

propriety of Help, and possibility of Honesty) the Person

whose company they had been asking to be blessed with could

have no fellowship with knaves.

[101] As Charis becomes Charitas [see next page], the word "Cher,"

or "Dear," passes from Shylock's sense of it (to buy cheap

and sell dear) into Antonio's sense of it: emphasized with

the final i in tender "Cheri," and hushed to English

calmness in our noble "Cherish."

[102] While I have traced the finer and higher laws of this matter

for those whom they concern, I have also to note the

material law--vulgarly expressed in the proverb, "Honesty is

the best policy." That proverb is indeed wholly inapplicable

to matters of private interest. It is not true that honesty,

as far as material gain is concerned, profits individuals. A

clever and cruel knave will, in a mixed society, always be

richer than an honest person can be. But Honesty is the best

"policy," if policy means practice of State. For fraud gains

nothing in a State. It only enables the knaves in it to live

at the expense of honest people; while there is for every

act of fraud, however small, a loss of wealth to the

community. Whatever the fraudulent person gains, some other

person loses, as fraud produces nothing; and there is,

besides, the loss of the time and thought spent in

accomplishing the fraud; and of the strength otherwise

obtainable by mutual help (not to speak of the fevers of

anxiety and jealousy in the blood, which are a heavy

physical loss, as I will show in due time). Practically,

when the nation is deeply corrupt, cheat answers to cheat,

every one is in turn imposed upon, and there is to the body

politic the dead loss of ingenuity, together with the

incalculable mischief of the injury to each defrauded

person, producing collateral effect unexpectedly. My

neighbour sells me bad meat: I sell him in return flawed

iron. We neither of us get one atom of pecuniary advantage

on the whole transaction, but we both suffer unexpected

inconvenience;--my men get scurvy, and his cattle-truck runs

off the rails.

Farther still. As Charis becomes Charitas on the one side, she

becomes--better still--Chara, Joy, on the other; or rather this is her

very mother's milk and the beauty of her childhood; for God brings no

enduring Love, nor any other good, out of pain, nor out of contention;

but out of joy and harmony.[103] And in this sense, human and divine,

music and gladness, and the measures of both, come into her name; and

Cher becomes full-vowelled Cheer, and Cheerful; and Chara,

companioned, opens into Choir and Choral.

[103] "[Greek: ta men houn alla zoa ouk echein aisthesin ton

en tais kinesesi taxeon oude ataxion, hoi de rhuthmos

onoma kai harmonia hemin de ous eipomen tous theous]

[Apollo, the Muses, and Bacchus--the grave Bacchus, that

is---ruling the choir of age; or Bacchus restraining;

'saeva _tene_, cum Berecyntio cornu, tympana,' etc.]

[Greek: sunchoreutas dedosthai, toutous einai kai tous

dedokotas ten enruthmon te kai henarmonion aisthesin

meth' edones ... chorous te onomakenai para tes charas

emphyton unoma.]"--"Laws," book ii.

And lastly. As Grace passes into Freedom of action, Charis becomes

Eleutheria, or liberality; a form of liberty quite curiously and

intensely different from the thing usually understood by "Liberty"

in modern language; indeed, much more like what some people would

call slavery; for a Greek always understood, primarily, by liberty,

deliverance from the law of his own passions (or from what the

Christian writers call bondage of corruption), and this a complete

liberty: not having to resist the passion, but making it fawn upon,

and follow him--(this may be again partly the meaning of the fawning

beasts about the Circean cave; so, again, George Herbert--

Correct thy passion's spite;

Then may the beasts draw thee to happy light)--

not being merely safe from the Siren, but also unbound from the mast.

And it is only in such generosity that any man becomes capable of so

governing others as to take true part in any system of national

economy. Nor is there any other eternal distinction between the upper

and lower classes than this form of liberty, Eleutheria, or benignity,

in the one, and its opposite of slavery, Douleia, or malignity, in the

other; the separation of these two orders of men, and the firm

government of the lower by the higher, being the first conditions of

possible wealth and economy in any state,--the Gods giving it no

greater gift than the power to discern its freemen, and "malignum

spernere vulgus."

The examination of this form of Charis must, therefore, lead us into

the discussion of the principles of government in general, and

especially of that of the poor by the rich, discovering how the

Graciousness joined with the Greatness, or Love with Majestas, is the

true Dei Gratia, or Divine Right, of every form and manner of King;

_i.e._, specifically, of the thrones, dominations, princedoms,

virtues, and powers of the earth;--of the thrones, stable, or

"ruling," literally right-doing powers ("rex eris, recte si facies:")

of the dominations, lordly, edifying, dominant, and harmonious powers;

chiefly domestic, over the "built thing," domus, or house; and

inherently twofold, Dominus and Domina; Lord and Lady: of the

Princedoms, pre-eminent, incipient, creative, and demonstrative

powers; thus poetic and mercantile, in the "princeps carmen deduxisse"

and the merchant-prince: of the Virtues or Courages; militant,

guiding, or Ducal powers; and finally of the Strengths and Forces

pure; magistral powers, of the more over the less, and the forceful

and free over the weak and servile elements of life.

Subject enough for the next paper involving "economical" principles of

some importance, of which, for theme, here is a sentence, which I do

not care to translate, for it would sound harsh in English, though,

truly, it is one of the tenderest ever uttered by man; which may be

meditated over, or rather through, in the meanwhile, by any one who

will take the pains:--

[Greek: Arh oun, hosper hippos to anepistemoni men encheirounti

de chresthai zemia estin, houto kai adelphos hotan tis auto me

epistamenos encheire chresthai, zemia esti?]

IV.

LAWS AND GOVERNMENTS: LABOUR AND RICHES.

It remains, in order to complete the series of our definitions, that

we examine the general conditions of government, and fix the sense in

which we are to use, in future, the terms applied to them.

The government of a state consists in its customs, laws, and councils,

and their enforcements.

I.--CUSTOMS.

As one person primarily differs from another by fineness of nature,

and secondarily, by fineness of training, so also, a polite nation

differs from a savage one, first by the refinement of its nature, and

secondly by the delicacy of its customs.

In the completeness, or accomplishment of custom, which is the

nation's self-government, there are three stages--first, fineness in

method of doing or of being;--called the manner or moral of acts:

secondly, firmness in holding such method after adoption, so that

it shall become a habit in the character: _i.e._, a constant "having"

or "behaving"; and, lastly, practice, or ethical power in performance

and endurance, which is the skill following on habit, and the ease

reached by frequency of right doing.

The sensibility of the nation is indicated by the fineness of its

customs; its courage, patience, and temperance by its persistence in

them.

By sensibility I mean its natural perception of beauty, fitness, and

rightness; or of what is lovely, decent, and just: faculties

dependent much on race, and the primal signs of fine breeding in man;

but cultivable also by education, and necessary perishing without it.

True education has, indeed, no other function than the development of

these faculties, and of the relative will. It has been the great error

of modern intelligence to mistake science for education. You do not

educate a man by telling him what he knew not, but by making him what

he was not.

And making him what he will remain for ever: for no wash of weeds will

bring back the faded purple. And in that dyeing there are two

processes--first, the cleansing and wringing out, which is the baptism

with water; and then the infusing of the blue and scarlet colours,

gentleness and justice, which is the baptism with fire.

The customs and manners of a sensitive and highly-trained race are

always vital: that is to say, they are orderly manifestations of

intense life (like the habitual action of the fingers of a musician).

The customs and manners of a vile and rude race, on the contrary,

are conditions of decay: they are not, properly speaking, habits,

but incrustations; not restraints, or forms, of life; but

gangrenes;--noisome, and the beginnings of death. And generally, so

far as custom attaches itself to indolence instead of action, and to

prejudice instead of perception, it takes this deadly character, so

that thus

"Custom hangs upon us with a weight

Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life."

This power and depth are, however, just what give value to custom,

when it works with life, instead of against it.

The high ethical training, of a nation being threefold, of body,

heart, and practice (compare the statement in the preface to "Unto

This Last"), involves exquisiteness in all its perceptions of

circumstance,--all its occupations of thought. It implies perfect

Grace, Pitifulness, and Peace; it is irreconcilably inconsistent with

filthy or mechanical employments,--with the desire of money,--and with

mental states of anxiety, jealousy, and indifference to pain. The

present insensibility of the upper classes of Europe to the aspects of

suffering, uncleanness, and crime, binds them not only into one

responsibility with the sin, but into one dishonour with the foulness,

which rot at their thresholds. The crimes daily recorded in the police

courts of London and Paris (and much more those which are unrecorded)

are a disgrace to the whole body politic;[104] they are, as in the

body natural, stains of disease on a face of delicate skin, making the

delicacy itself frightful. Similarly, the filth and poverty permitted

or ignored in the midst of us are as dishonourable to the whole social

body, as in the body natural it is to wash the face, but leave the

hands and feet foul. Christ's way is the only true one: begin at the

feet; the face will take care of itself. Yet, since necessarily, in

the frame of a nation, nothing but the head can be of gold, and the

feet, for the work they have to do, must be part of iron, part of

clay;--foul or mechanical work is always reduced by a noble race to

the minimum in quantity; and, even then, performed and endured, not

without sense of degradation, as a fine temper is wounded by the sight

of the lower offices of the body. The highest conditions of human

society reached hitherto, have cast such work to slaves;--supposing

slavery of a politically defined kind to be done away with, mechanical

and foul employment must in all highly-organized states take the

aspect either of punishment or probation. All criminals should at once

be set to the most dangerous and painful forms of it, especially to

work in mines and at furnaces,[105] so as to relieve the innocent

population as far as possible: of merely rough (not mechanical) manual

labour, especially agricultural, a large portion should be done by the

upper classes;--bodily health, and sufficient contrast and repose for

the mental functions, being unattainable without it; what necessarily

inferior labour remains to be done, as especially in manufactures,

should, and always will, when the relations of society are reverent

and harmonious, fall to the lot of those who, for the time, are fit

for nothing better. For as, whatever the perfectness of the

educational system, there must remain infinite differences between the

natures and capacities of men; and these differing natures are

generally rangeable under the two qualities of lordly (or tending

towards rule, construction, and harmony) and servile (or tending

towards misrule, destruction, and discord); and, since the lordly part

is only in a state of profitableness while ruling, and the servile

only in a state of redeemableness while serving, the whole health of

the state depends on the manifest separation of these two elements of

its mind: for, if the servile part be not separated and rendered

visible in service, it mixes with and corrupts the entire body of the

state; and if the lordly part be not distinguished, and set to rule,

it is crushed and lost, being turned to no account, so that the rarest

qualities of the nation are all given to it in vain.[106] The

effecting of which distinction is the first object, as we shall see

presently, of national councils.

[104] "The ordinary brute, who flourishes in the very centre

of ornate life, tells us of unknown depths on the verge of

which we totter, being bound to thank our stars every day we

live that there is not a general outbreak and a revolt from

the yoke of civilization."--_Times_ leader, Dec. 25th, 1862.

Admitting that our stars are to be thanked for our safety,

whom are we to thank for the danger?

[105] Our politicians, even the best of them, regard only the

distress caused by the failure of mechanical labour. The

degradation caused by its excess is a far more serious

subject of thought, and of future fear. I shall examine this

part of our subject at length hereafter. There can hardly be

any doubt, at present, cast on the truth of the above

passages, as all the great thinkers are unanimous on the

matter. Plato's words are terrific in their scorn and pity

whenever he touches on the mechanical arts. He calls the men

employed in them not even human,--but partially and

diminutively human, "[Greek: anthropiskoi]," and opposes

such work to noble occupations, not merely as prison is

opposed to freedom, but as a convict's dishonoured prison is

to the temple (escape from them being like that of a

criminal to the sanctuary), and the destruction caused by

them being of soul no less than body.--Rep., vi. 9. Compare

"Laws," v. 11. Xenophon dwells on the evil of occupations at

the furnace (root of [Greek: banausos]), and especially their

"[Greek: ascholia], want of leisure"--Econ. i. 4. (Modern

England, with all its pride of education, has lost that

first sense of the word "school," and till it recover that

it will find no other rightly.) His word for the harm to the

soul is to "break" it, as we say of the heart.--Econ. i. 6.

And herein also is the root of the scorn, otherwise

apparently most strange and cruel, with which Homer, Dante,

and Shakespeare always speak of the populace; for it is

entirely true that in great states the lower orders are low

by nature as well as by task, being precisely that part of

the commonwealth which has been thrust down for its

coarseness or unworthiness (by coarseness I mean especially

insensibility and irreverence; the "profane" of Horace); and

when this ceases to be so, and the corruption and the

profanity are in the higher instead of the lower orders,

there arises, first, helpless confusion; then, if the lower

classes deserve power, ensues swift revolution, and they get

it: but if neither the populace nor their rulers deserve it,

there follows mere darkness and dissolution, till, out of

the putrid elements, some new capacity of order rises, like

grass on a grave; if not, there is no more hope, nor shadow

of turning, for that nation. Atropos has her way with it.

So that the law of national health is like that of a great

lake or sea, in perfect but slow circulation, letting the

dregs fall continually to the lowest place, and the clear

water rise; yet so as that there shall be no neglect of the

lower orders, but perfect supervision and sympathy, so that

if one member suffer, all members shall suffer with it.

[106] "[Greek: oliges, kai allos gignomenes.]" The bitter

sentence never was so true as at this day.

II.--LAWS.

These are the definitions and bonds of custom, or, of what the nation

desires should become custom.

Law is either archic[107] (of direction), meristic (of division), or

critic (of judgment). Archic law is that of appointment and precept:

it defines what is and is not to be done. Meristic law is that of

balance and distribution: it defines what is and is not to be

possessed. Critic law is that of discernment and award: it defines

what is and is not to be suffered.

[107] Thetic, or Thesmic, would perhaps be a better term than

Archic; but liable to be confused with some which we shall

want relating to Theoria. The administrators of the three

great divisions of law are severally Archons, Merists, and

Dicasts. The Archons are the true princes, or beginners of

things; or leaders (as of an orchestra); the Merists are

properly the Domini, or Lords (law-words) of houses and

nations; the Dicasts properly the judges, and that with

Olympian justice, which reaches to heaven and hell. The

violation of archic law is [Greek: hamartia] (error)

[Greek: poneria] (failure), [Greek: plemmeleia] (discord).

The violation of meristic law is [Greek: anomia] (iniquity).

The violation of critic law is [Greek: adikia] (injury).

Iniquity is central generic term; for all law is _fatal_; it

is the division to men of their fate; as the fold of their

pasture, it is [Greek: nomos]; as the assigning of their

portion, [Greek: moira].

If we choose to class the laws of precept and distribution under the

general head of "statutes," all law is simply either of statute or

judgment; that is, first, the establishment of ordinance, and,

secondly, the assignment of the reward or penalty due to its

observance or violation.

To some extent these two forms of law must be associated, and, with

every ordinance, the penalty of disobedience to it be also determined.

But since the degrees and guilt of disobedience vary, the

determination of due reward and punishment must be modified by

discernment of special fact, which is peculiarly the office of the

judge, as distinguished from that of the lawgiver and lawsustainer, or

king; not but that the two offices are always theoretically and, in

early stages, or limited numbers, of society, are often practically,

united in the same person or persons.

Also, it is necessary to keep clearly in view the distinction between

these two kinds of law, because the possible range of law is wider in

proportion to their separation. There are many points of conduct

respecting which the nation may wisely express its will by a written

precept or resolve; yet not enforce it by penalty; and the expedient

degree of penalty is always quite a separate consideration from the

expedience of the statute, for the statute may often be better

enforced by mercy than severity, and is also easier in bearing, and

less likely to be abrogated. Farther, laws of precept have reference

especially to youth, and concern themselves with training; but laws of

judgment to manhood, and concern themselves with remedy and reward.

There is a highly curious feeling in the English mind against

educational law; we think no man's liberty should be interfered with

till he has done irrevocable wrong; whereas it is then just too late

for the only gracious and kingly interference, which is to hinder him

from doing it. Make your educational laws strict, and your criminal

ones may be gentle; but, leave youth its liberty, and you will have to

dig dungeons for age. And it is good for a man that he wear the yoke

in his youth; for the yoke of youth, if you know how to hold it, may

be of silken thread; and there is sweet chime of silver bells at that

bridle rein; but, for the captivity of age, you must forge the iron

fetter, and cast the passing bell.

Since no law can be in a final or true sense established, but by right

(all unjust laws involving the ultimate necessity of their own

abrogation), the law-sustaining power in so far as it is Royal, or

"right doing";--in so far, that is, as it rules, not mis-rules, and

orders, not dis-orders, the things submitted to it. Throned on this

rock of justice, the kingly power becomes established and

establishing, "[Greek: theios]," or divine, and, therefore, it is

literally true that no ruler can err, so long as he is a ruler, or

[Greek: archon oudeis hamartanei tote hotan archon e] (perverted by

careless thought, which has cost the world somewhat, into "the king

can do no wrong"). Which is a divine right of kings indeed, and quite

unassailable, so long as the terms of it are "God and my Right," and

not "Satan and my Wrong," which is apt, in some coinages, to appear on

the reverse of the die, under a good lens.

Meristic law, or that of tenure of property, first determines what

every individual possesses by right, and secures it to him; and what

he possesses by wrong, and deprives him of it. But it has a far higher

provisory function: it determines what every man should possess, and

puts it within his reach on due conditions; and what he should not

possess, and puts this out of his reach conclusively.

Every article of human wealth has certain conditions attached to its

merited possession, which, when they are unobserved, possession

becomes rapine. The object of meristic law is not only to secure every

man his rightful share (the share, that is, which he has worked for,

produced, or received by gift from a rightful owner), but to enforce

the due conditions of possession, as far as law may conveniently

reach; for instance, that land shall not be wantonly allowed to run to

waste, that streams shall not be poisoned by the persons through whose

properties they pass, nor air be rendered unwholesome beyond given

limits. Laws of this kind exist already in rudimentary degree, but

needing large development; the just laws respecting the possession of

works of art have not hitherto been so much as conceived, and the

daily loss of national wealth, and of its use, in this respect, is

quite incalculable.[108] While, finally, in certain conditions of a

nation's progress, laws limiting accumulation of property may be found

expedient.

[108] These laws need revision quite as much respecting property

in national as in private hands. For instance: the public

are under a vague impression, that because they have paid

for the contents of the British Museum, every one has an

equal right to see and to handle them. But the public have

similarly paid for the contents of Woolwich Arsenal; yet do

not expect free access to it, or handling of its contents.

The British Museum is neither a free circulating library,

nor a free school; it is a place for the safe preservation,

and exhibition on due occasion, of unique books, unique

objects of natural history, and unique works of art; its

books can no more be used by everybody than its coins can be

handled, or its statues cast. Free libraries there ought to

be in every quarter of London, with large and complete

reading-rooms attached; so also free educational

institutions should be open in every quarter of London, all

day long and till late at night, well lighted, well

catalogued, and rich in contents both of art and natural

history. But neither the British Museum nor National Gallery

are schools; they are treasuries; and both should be

severely restricted in access and in use. Unless some order

is taken, and that soon, in the MSS. department of the

Museum (Sir Frederic Madden was complaining of this to me

only the other day), the best MSS. in the collection will be

destroyed, irretrievably, by the careless and continual

handling to which they are now subjected.

Critic law determines questions of injury, and assigns due rewards and

punishments to conduct.[109]

[109] Two curious economical questions arise laterally with

respect to this branch of law, namely, the cost of crime and

the cost of judgment. The cost of crime is endured by

nations ignorantly, not being clearly stated in their

budgets; the cost of judgment patiently (provided only it

can be had pure for the money), because the science, or

perhaps we ought rather to say the art, of law, is felt to

found a noble profession, and discipline; so that civilized

nations are usually glad that a number of persons should be

supported by funds devoted to disputation and analysis. But

it has not yet been calculated what the practical value

might have been, in other directions, of the intelligence

now occupied in deciding, through courses of years, what

might have been decided as justly, had the date of judgment

been fixed, in as many hours. Imagine one half of the funds

which any great nation devotes to dispute by law, applied to

the determination of physical questions in medicine,

agriculture, and theoretic science; and calculate the

probable results within the next ten years.

I say nothing yet, of the more deadly, more lamentable loss,

involved in the use of purchased instead of personal

justice,--[Greek: epakto par' allon--aporia' oikeion].

Therefore, in order to true analysis of it, we must understand the

real meaning of this word "injury."

We commonly understand by it any kind of harm done by one man to

another; but we do not define the idea of harm; sometimes we limit it

to the harm which the sufferer is conscious of, whereas much the worst

injuries are those he is unconscious of; and, at other times, we limit

the idea to violence, or restraint, whereas much the worse forms of

injury are to be accomplished by carelessness, and the withdrawal of

restraint.

"Injury" is, then, simply the refusal, or violation of any man's right

or claim upon his fellows: which claim, much talked of in modern

times, under the term "right," is mainly resolvable into two branches:

a man's claim not to be hindered from doing what he should; and his

claim to be hindered from doing what he should not; these two forms of

hindrance being intensified by reward, or help and fortune, or Fors on

one side, and punishment, impediment, and even final arrest, or Mors,

on the other.

Now, in order to a man's obtaining these two rights, it is clearly

needful that the worth of him should be approximately known; as well

as the want of worth, which has, unhappily, been usually the principal

subject of study for critic law, careful hitherto only to mark degrees

of de-merit, instead of merit;--assigning, indeed, to the deficiencies

(not always, alas! even to these) just fine, diminution, or (with the

broad vowels) damnation; but to the efficiencies, on the other side,

which are by much the more interesting, as well as the only profitable

part of its subject, assigning in any clear way neither measurement

nor aid.

Now, it is in this higher and perfect function of critic law, enabling

as well as disabling, that it becomes truly kingly or basilican,

instead of Draconic (what Providence gave the great, old, wrathful

legislator his name?); that is, it becomes the law of man and of life,

instead of the law of the worm and of death--both of these laws being

set in everlasting poise one against another, and the enforcement of

both being the eternal function of the lawgiver, and true claim of

every living soul: such claim being indeed as straight and earnest to

be mercifully hindered, and even, if need be, abolished, when longer

existence means only deeper destruction, as to be mercifully helped

and recreated when longer existence and new creation mean nobler life.

So that what we vulgarly term reward and punishment will be found to

resolve themselves mainly into help and hindrance, and these again

will issue naturally from true recognition of deserving, and the just

reverence and just wrath which follow instinctively on such

recognition.

I say "follow," but in reality they are the recognition. Reverence is

but the perceiving of the thing in its entire truth: truth reverted is

truth revered (vereor and veritas having clearly the same root), so

that Goethe is for once, and for a wonder, wrong in that part of the

noble scheme of education in "Wilhelm Meister," in which he says that

reverence is not innate, and must be taught. Reverence is as

instinctive as anger;--both of them instant on true vision: it is

sight and understanding that we have to teach, and these are

reverence. Make a man perceive worth, and in its reflection he sees

his own relative unworth, and worships thereupon inevitably, not with

stiff courtesy, but rejoicingly, passionately, and, best of all,

restfully: for the inner capacity of awe and love is infinite in man;

and when his eyes are once opened to the sight of beauty and honour,

it is with him as with a lover, who, falling at his mistress's feet,

would cast himself through the earth, if it might be, to fall lower,

and find a deeper and humbler place. And the common insolences and

petulances of the people, and their talk of equality, are not

irreverence in them in the least, but mere blindness, stupefaction,

and fog in the brains,[110] which pass away in the degree that they

are raised and purified: the first sign of which raising is, that they

gain some power of discerning, and some patience in submitting to

their true counsellors and governors; the modes of such discernment

forming the real "constitution" of the state, and not the titles or

offices of the discerned person; for it is no matter, save in degree

of mischief, to what office a man is appointed, if he cannot fulfil

it. And this brings us to the third division of our subject.

[110] Compare Chaucer's "villany" (clownishness).

"Full foul and chorlishe seemed she,

And eke villanous for to be,

And little coulde of norture

To worship any creature."

III.--GOVERNMENT BY COUNCIL.

This is the determination, by living authority, of the national

conduct to be observed under existing circumstances; and the

modification or enlargement, abrogation or enforcement, of the code of

national law according to present needs or purposes. This government

is necessarily always by Council, for though the authority of it may

be vested in one person, that person cannot form any opinion on a

matter of public interest but by (voluntarily or involuntarily)

submitting himself to the influence of others.

This government is always twofold--visible and invisible.

The visible government is that which nominally carries on the national

business; determines its foreign relations, raises taxes, levies

soldiers, fights battles, or directs that they be fought, and

otherwise becomes the exponent of the national fortune. The invisible

government is that exercised by all energetic and intelligent men,

each in his sphere, regulating the inner will and secret ways of the

people, essentially forming its character, and preparing its fate.

Visible governments are the toys of some nations, the diseases of

others, the harness of some, the burdens of the more, the necessity of

all. Sometimes their career is quite distinct from that of the people,

and to write it, as the national history, is as if one should number

the accidents which befall a man's weapons and wardrobe, and call the

list his biography. Nevertheless a truly noble and wise nation

necessarily has a noble and wise visible government, for its wisdom

issues in that conclusively. "Not out of the oak, nor out of the rock,

but out of the temper of man, is his polity:" where the temper

inclines, it inclines as Samson by his pillar, and draws all down with

it.

Visible governments are, in their agencies, capable of three pure

forms, and of no more than three.

They are either monarchies, where the authority is vested in one

person; oligarchies, when it is vested in a minority; or democracies,

when vested in a majority.

But these three forms are not only, in practice, variously limited and

combined, but capable of infinite difference in character and use,

receiving specific names according to their variations; which names,

being nowise agreed upon, nor consistently used, either in thought or

writing, no man can at present tell, in speaking of any kind of

government, whether he is understood, nor in hearing whether he

understands. Thus we usually call a just government by one person a

monarchy, and an unjust or cruel one, a tyranny; this might be

reasonable if it had reference to the divinity of true government; but

to limit the term "oligarchy" to government by a few rich people, and

to call government by a few wise or noble people "aristocracies," is

evidently absurd, unless it were proved that rich people never could

be wise, or noble people rich; and farther absurd because there are

other distinctions in character, as well as riches or wisdom (greater

purity of race, or strength of purpose, for instance), which may give

the power of government to the few. So that if we had to give names to

every group or kind of minority, we should have verbiage enough. But

there is one right name--"oligarchy."

So also the terms "republic" and "democracy" are confused, especially

in modern use; and both of them are liable to every sort of

misconception. A republic means, properly, a polity in which the

state, with its all, is at every man's service, and every man, with

his all, at the state's service (people are apt to lose sight of the

last condition); but its government may nevertheless be oligarchic

(consular, or decemviral, for instance), or monarchic (dictatorial).

But a democracy means a state in which the government rests directly

with the majority of the citizens. And both these conditions have been

judged only by such accidents and aspects of them as each of us has

had experience of; and sometimes both have been confused with anarchy,

as it is the fashion at present to talk of the "failure of republican

institutions in America," when there has never yet been in America any

such thing as an institution; neither any such thing as a res-publica,

but only a multitudinous res-privata; every man for himself. It is not

republicanism which fails now in America; it is your model science of

political economy, brought to its perfect practice. There you may see

competition, and the "law of demand and supply" (especially in paper),

in beautiful and unhindered operation.[111] Lust of wealth, and trust

in it; vulgar faith in magnitude and multitude, instead of nobleness;

besides that faith natural to backwoodsmen,--"lucum ligna,"--perpetual

self-contemplation, issuing in passionate vanity: total ignorance of

the finer and higher arts, and of all that they teach and bestow;[112]

and the discontent of energetic minds unoccupied, frantic with hope of

uncomprehended change, and progress they know not whither;[113] these

are the things that they have "failed" with in America; and yet not

altogether failed--it is not collapse, but collision; the greatest

railroad accident on record, with fire caught from the furnace, and

Catiline's quenching "non aqua, sed ruina." But I see not, in any of

our talk of them, justice enough done to their erratic strength of

purpose, nor any estimate taken of the strength of endurance of

domestic sorrow in what their women and children suppose a righteous

cause. And out of that endurance and suffering, its own fruit will be

born with time; and Carlyle's prophecy of them (June, 1850), as it has

now come true in the first clause, will in the last.

America too will find that caucuses, division-lists,

stump-oratory and speeches to Buncombe will _not_ carry men

to the immortal gods; that the Washington Congress, and

constitutional battle of Kilkenny cats is, there as here,

naught for such objects; quite incompetent for such; and, in

fine, that said sublime constitutional arrangement will

require to be (with terrible throes, and travail such as few

expect yet) remodelled, abridged, extended, suppressed; torn

asunder, put together again;--not without heroic labour, and

effort quite other than that of the Stump-Orator and the

Revival Preacher, one day!

[111] "Supply-and-demand,--alas! For what noble work was there

ever any audible 'demand' in that poor sense?" ("Past and

Present"). Nay, the demand is not loud even for ignoble

work. See "Average earnings of Betty Taylor," in _Times_, of

4th February, of this year [1863]: "Worked from Monday

morning at 8 a.m., to Friday night at 5.30 p.m., for 1_s._

5-1/2_d._"--Laissez faire.

[112] See Bacon's note in the "Advancement of Learning," on

"didicisse fideliter artes" (but indeed the accent had need

be upon "fideliter"). "It taketh away vain admiration of

anything, which is the root of all weakness: for all things

are admired either because they are new, or because they are

great," etc.

[113] Ames, by report of Waldo Emerson, expressed the popular

security wisely, saying, "that a monarchy is a merchantman,

which sails well, but will sometimes strike on a rock, and

go to the bottom; whilst a republic is a raft, which would

never sink, but then your feet are always in the water."

Yes, and when the four winds (your only pilots) steer

competitively from the four corners, [Greek: hos d' hot'

oporinos Borees phoreesin akanthas], perhaps the wiser

mariner may wish for keel and wheel again.

Understand, then, once for all, that no form of government, provided

it be a government at all, is, as such, either to be condemned or

praised, or contested for in anywise but by fools. But all forms of

government are good just so far as they attain this one vital

necessity of policy--that the wise and kind, few or many, shall govern

the unwise and unkind; and they are evil so far as they miss of this

or reverse it. Nor does the form in any case signify one whit, but its

firmness and adaptation to the need; for if there be many foolish

persons in a state, and few wise, then it is good that the few govern;

and if there be many wise and few foolish, then it is good that many

govern; and if many be wise, yet one wiser, then it is good that one

should govern; and so on. Thus, we may have "the ants' republic, and

the realm of bees," both good in their kind; one for groping, and the

other for building; and nobler still, for flying, the Ducal monarchy

of those

"Intelligent of seasons, that set forth

The aery caravan, high over seas."

Nor need we want examples, among the inferior creatures, of

dissoluteness, as well as resoluteness in, government. I once saw

democracy finely illustrated by the beetles of North Switzerland, who,

by universal suffrage, and elytric acclamation, one May twilight,

carried it that they would fly over the Lake of Zug; and flew short,

to the great disfigurement of the Lake of Zug--[Greek: Kantharou

limen]--over some leagues square, and to the close of the Cockchafer

democracy for that year. The old fable of the frogs and the stork

finely touches one form of tyranny; but truth will touch it more

nearly than fable, for tyranny is not complete when it is only over

the idle, but when it is over the laborious and the blind. This

description of pelicans and climbing perch which I find quoted in one

of our popular natural histories, out of Sir Emerson Tennent's

"Ceylon," comes as near as may be to the true image of the thing:--

Heavy rains came on, and as we stood on the high ground, we

observed a pelican on the margin of the shallow pool gorging

himself; our people went towards him, and raised a cry of

"Fish! fish!" We hurried down, and found numbers of fish

struggling upward through the grass, in the rills formed by

the trickling of the rain. There was scarcely water to cover

them, but nevertheless they made rapid progress up the bank,

on which our followers collected about two baskets of them.

They were forcing their way up the knoll, and had they not

been interrupted, first by the pelican, and afterwards by

ourselves, they would in a few minutes have gained the

highest point, and descended on the other side into a pool

which formed another portion of the tank. In going this

distance, however, they must have used muscular exertion

enough to have taken them half a mile on level ground; for

at these places all the cattle and wild animals of the

neighbourhood had latterly come to drink, so that the

surface was everywhere indented with footmarks, in addition

to the cracks in the surrounding baked mud, into which the

fish tumbled in their progress. In those holes which were

deep, and the sides perpendicular, they remained to die, and

were carried off by kites and crows.

But whether governments be bad or good, one general disadvantage seems

to attach to them in modern times--that they are all costly. This,

however, is not essentially the fault of the governments. If nations

choose to play at war, they will always find their governments willing

to lead the game, and soon coming under that term of Aristophanes,

"[Greek: kapeloi aspidon]," shield-sellers. And when ([Greek: pem'

epipemati]) the shields take the form of iron ships, with apparatus

"for defence against liquid fire"--as I see by latest accounts they

are now arranging the decks in English dockyards,--they become costly

biers enough for the grey convoy of chief-mourner waves, wreathed with

funereal foam, to bear back the dead upon; the massy shoulders of

those corpse-bearers being intended for quite other work, and to bear

the living, if we would let them.

Nor have we the least right to complain of our governments being

expensive so long as we set the government to do precisely the work

which brings no return. If our present doctrines of political economy

be just, let us trust them to the utmost; take that war business out

of the government's hands, and test therein the principles of supply

and demand. Let our future sieges of Sebastopol be done by

contract--no capture, no pay--(I am prepared to admit that things

might go better so); and let us sell the commands of our prospective

battles, with our vicarages, to the lowest bidder; so may we have

cheap victories and divinity. On the other hand, if we have so much

suspicion of our science that we dare not trust it on military or

spiritual business, it would be but reasonable to try whether some

authoritative handling may not prosper in matters utilitarian. If we

were to set our governments to do useful things instead of

mischievous, possibly even the apparatus might in time come to be less

costly! The machine, applied to the building of the house, might

perhaps pay, when it seems not to pay, applied to pulling it down. If

we made in our dockyards ships to carry timber and coals, instead of

cannon, and with provision for brightening of domestic solid culinary

fire, instead of for the averting of hostile liquid fire, it might

have some effect on the taxes? Or if the iron bottoms were to bring us

home nothing better than ivory and peacocks, instead of martial glory,

we might at least have gayer suppers, and doors of the right material

for dreams after them. Or suppose that we tried the experiment on land

instead of water carriage; already the government, not unapproved,

carries letters and parcels for us; larger packages may in time

follow:--parcels;--even general merchandise? Why not, at last,

ourselves? Had the money spent in local mistakes and vain private

litigation, on the railroads of England, been laid out, instead, under

proper government restraint, on really useful railroad work, and had

no absurd expense been incurred in ornamenting stations, we might

already have had,--what ultimately will be found we must

have,--quadruple rails, two for passengers, and two for traffic, on

every great line; and we might have been carried in swift safety, and

watched and warded by well-paid pointsmen, for half the present fares.

"[Greek: ho Demidion, horas ta lago' ha soi phero]?" Suppose it should

turn out, finally, that a true government set to true work, instead of

being a costly engine, was a paying one? that your government, rightly

organized, instead of itself subsisting by an income tax, would

produce its subjects some subsistence in the shape of an income

dividend!--police and judges duly paid besides, only with less work

than the state at present provides for them.

A true government set to true work!--Not easily imagined, still less

obtained, but not beyond human hope or ingenuity. Only you will have

to alter your election systems somewhat, first. Not by universal

suffrage, nor by votes purchasable with beer, is such government to be

had. That is to say, not by universal equal suffrage. Every man

upwards of twenty, who had been convicted of no legal crime, should

have his say in this matter; but afterwards a louder voice, as he

grows older, and approves himself wiser. If he has one vote at twenty,

he should have two at thirty, four at forty, and ten at fifty. For

every one vote which he has with an income of a hundred a year, he

should have ten with an income of a thousand (provided you first see

to it that wealth is, as nature intended it to be, the reward of

sagacity and industry,--not of good luck in a scramble or a lottery.)

For every one vote which he had as subordinate in any business, he

should have two when he became a master; and every office and

authority nationally bestowed, inferring trustworthiness and

intellect, should have its known proportional number of votes attached

to it. But into the detail and working of a true system in these

matters we cannot now enter; we are concerned as yet with definitions

only, and statements of first principles, which will be established

now sufficiently for our purposes when we have examined the nature of

that form of government last on the list in the previous paper,--the

purely "Magistral," exciting at present its full share of public

notice, under its ambiguous title of "slavery."

I have not, however, been able to ascertain in definite terms, from

the declaimers against slavery, what they understand by it. If they

mean only the imprisonment or compulsion being in many cases highly

expedient, slavery, so defined, would be no evil in itself, but only

in its abuse; that is, when men are slaves, who should not be, or

masters, who should not be, or under conditions which should not be.

It is not, for instance, a necessary condition of slavery, nor a

desirable one, that parents should be separated from children, or

husbands from wives; but the institution of war, against which people

declaim with less violence, effects such separations--not unfrequently

in a higher permanent manner. To press a sailor, seize a white youth

by conscription for a soldier, or carry off a black one for a

labourer, may all be right, or all wrong, according to needs and

circumstances. It is wrong to scourge a man unnecessarily. So it is to

shoot him. Both must be done on occasion; and it is better and kinder

to flog a man to his work, than to leave him idle till he robs, and

flog him afterwards. The essential thing for all creatures is to be

made to do right; how they are made to do it--by pleasant promises, or

hard necessities, pathetic oratory, or the whip, is comparatively

immaterial. To be deceived is perhaps as incompatible with human

dignity as to be whipped, and I suspect the last instrument to be not

the worst, for the help of many individuals. The Jewish nation throve

under it, in the hand of a monarch reputed not unwise; it is only the

change of whip for scorpion which is expedient, and yet that change is

as likely to come to pass on the side of licence as of law; for the

true scorpion whips are those of the nation's pleasant vices, which

are to it as St. John's locusts--crown on the head, ravin in the

mouth, and sting in the tail. If it will not bear the rule of Athena

and her brother, who shepherd without smiting ([Greek: ou plege

nemontes]), Athena at last calls no more in the corners of the

streets; and then follows the rule of Tisiphone, who smites without

shepherding.

If, however, slavery, instead of absolute compulsion, is meant the

purchase, by money, of the right of compulsion, such purchase is

necessarily made whenever a portion of any territory is transferred,

for money, from one monarch to another: which has happened frequently

enough in history, without its being supposed that the inhabitants of

the districts so transferred became their slaves. In this, as in the

former case, the dispute seems about the fashion of the thing rather

than the fact of it. There are two rocks in mid-sea, on each of which,

neglected equally by instructive and commercial powers, a handful of

inhabitants live as they may. Two merchants bid for the two

properties, but not in the same terms. One bids for the people, buys

them, and sets them to work, under pain of scourge; the other bids for

the rock, buys it, and throws the inhabitants into the sea. The former

is the American, the latter the English method, of slavery; much is to

be said for, and something against, both, which I hope to say in due

time and place.

If, however, slavery mean not merely the purchase of the right of

compulsion, but the purchase of the body and soul of the creature

itself for money, it is not, I think, among the black races that

purchases of this kind are most extensively made, or that separate

souls of a fine make fetch the highest price. This branch of the

inquiry we shall have occasion also to follow out at some length; for

in the worst instance of the "[Greek: Bion prasis]" we are apt to get

only Pyrrhon's answer--[Greek: ti phes?--epriamen se? Adelon].

The fact is that slavery is not a political institution at all, but an

inherent, natural, and eternal inheritance of a large portion of the

human race--to whom the more you give of their own will, the more

slaves they will make themselves. In common parlance, we idly confuse

captivity with slavery, and are always thinking of the difference

between pine-trunks and cowslip bells, or between carrying wood and

clothes-stealing, instead of noting the far more serious differences

between Ariel and Caliban, and the means by which practically that

difference may be brought about.[114]

[114] The passage of Plato, referred to in note p. 280, in its

context, respecting the slave who, well dressed and washed,

aspires to the hand of his master's daughter, corresponds

curiously to the attack of Caliban on Prospero's cell, and

there is an undercurrent of meaning throughout, in the

"Tempest" as well as in the "Merchant of Venice"; referring

in this case to government, as in that to commerce. Miranda

("the wonderful," so addressed first by Ferdinand, "Oh, you

wonder!") corresponds to Homer's Arete: Ariel and Caliban

are respectively the spirits of freedom and mechanical

labour. Prospero ("for hope"), a true governor, opposed to

Sycorax, the mother of slavery, her name, "Swine-raven,"

indicating at once brutality and deathfulness; hence the

line--"As wicked dew as e'er my mother brushed, with raven's

feather,"--etc. For all dreams of Shakespeare, as those of

true and strong men must be, are "[Greek: phantasmata theia,

kai skiai ton onton]," phantasms of God, and shadows of

things that are. We hardly tell our children, willingly, a

fable with no purport in it; yet we think God sends His best

messengers only to say fairy tales to us, all fondness and

emptiness. The "Tempest" is just like a grotesque in a rich

missal, "clasped where paynims pray." Ariel is the spirit of

true liberty, in early stages of human society oppressed by

ignorance and wild tyranny; venting groans as fast as

mill-wheels strike; in shipwreck of states, fearful; so that

"all but mariners plunge in the brine, and quit the vessel,

then all afire with me," yet having in itself the will and

sweetness of truest peace, whence that is especially called

"Ariel's" song, "Come unto these yellow sands"--(fenceless,

and countless--changing with the sweep of the sea--"vaga

arena." Compare Horace's opposition of the sea-sand to the

dust of the grave: "numero carentis"--"exigui;" and again

compare "animo rotundum percurrisse" with "put a girdle

round the earth")--"and then take hands: court'sied when you

have, and kiss'd,--the wild waves whist:" (mind it is

"courtesia," not "curtsey") and read "quiet" for "whist" if

you want the full sense. Then may you indeed foot it featly,

and sweet spirits bear the burden for you--with watch in the

night, and call in early morning. The power of liberty in

elemental transformation follows--"Full fathom five thy

father lies, of his bones are coral made." Then, giving rest

after labour, it "fetches dew from the still-vex'd

Bermoothes, and, with a charm joined to their suffered

labour, leaves men asleep." Snatching away the feast of the

cruel, it seems to them as a harpy, followed by the utterly

vile, who cannot see it in any shape, but to whom it is the

picture of nobody, it still gives shrill harmony to their

false and mocking catch, "Thought is free," but leads them

into briars and foul places, and at last hollas the hounds

upon them. Minister of fate against the great criminal, it

joins itself with the "incensed seas and shores"--the sword

that layeth at it cannot hold, and may, "with bemocked-at

stabs as soon kill the still-closing waters, as diminish one

dowle that's in my plume." As the guide and aid of true

love, it is always called by Prospero "fine" (the French

"fine"--not the English), or "delicate"--another long note

would be needed to explain all the meaning in this word.

Lastly, its work done, and war, it resolves itself to the

elements. The intense significance of the last song, "Where

the bee sucks," I will examine in its due place. The types

of slavery in Caliban are more palpable, and need not be

dwelt on now: though I will notice them also, severally, in

their proper places;--the heart of his slavery is in his

worship: "That's a brave god, and bears celestial liquor."

But, in illustration of the sense in which the Latin

"benignus" and "malignus," are to be coupled with Eleutheria

and Douleia, not that Caliban's torment is always the

physical reflection of his own nature--"cramps" and

"side-stitches that shall pen thy breath up"--"thou shalt be

pinched as thick as honeycomb:" the whole nature of slavery

being one cramp and cretinous contraction. Fancy this of

Ariel! You may fetter him, but yet set no mark on him; you

may put him to hard work and far journey, but you cannot

give him a cramp.

Of Shakespeare's names I will afterwards speak at more

length: they are curiously--often barbarously--mixed out of

various traditions and languages. Three of the clearest in

meaning have been already noticed. Desdemona, "[Greek:

dysdaimonia]," "miserable fortune," is also plain enough.

Othello is, I believe, "the careful"; all the calamity of

the tragedy arising from the single flaw and error in his

magnificently collected strength. Ophelia,

"serviceableness," the true lost wife of Hamlet, is marked

as having a Greek name by that last word of her, where her

gentle preciousness is opposed to the uselessness of the

churlish clergy--"A ministering angel shall my sister be

when thou liest howling." Hamlet is, I believe, connected in

some way with "homely," the entire event of the tragedy

turning on betrayal of home duty. Hermione ([Greek: herma]),

"pillar-like" ([Greek: he eidos eche chryses Aphrodites]).

Titania ([Greek: titene]), "the queen;" Benedict and

Beatrice, "blessed and blessing;" Valentine and Proteus,

enduring (or strong) (valens) and changeful. Iago and

Iachimo have evidently the same root--probably the Spanish

Iago, Jacob, "the supplanter." Leonatus, and other such

names are interpreted, or played with, in the plays

themselves. For the interpretation of Sycorax, and reference

to her raven's feather, I am indebted to Mr. John R. Wise.

I should dwell, even in these prefatory papers, at somewhat more

length on this matter, had not all I would say, been said (already in

vain) by Carlyle, in the first of the "Latter-Day Pamphlets," which I

commend to the reader's gravest reading: together with that as much

neglected, and still more immediately needed, on model prisons, and

with the great chapter on "Permanence" (fifth of the last section of

"Past and Present"), which sums, what is known, and foreshadows,--or

rather fore-lights, all that is to be learned, of National Discipline.

I have only here farther to examine the nature of one world-wide and

everlasting form of slavery, wholesome in use, deadly in abuse--the

service of the rich by the poor.

As in all previous discussions of our subject, we must study this

relation in its simplest elements in order to reach its first

principles. The simplest state of it is, then, this:[115] a wise and

provident person works much, consumes little, and lays by store; an

improvident person works little, consumes all the produce, and lays by

no store. Accident interrupts the daily work, or renders it less

productive; the idle person must then starve, or be supported by the

provident one,--who, having him thus at his mercy, may either refuse

to maintain him altogether, or, which will evidently be more to his

own interest, say to him, "I will maintain you, indeed, but you shall

now work hard, instead of indolently, and instead of being allowed to

lay by what you save, as you might have done, had you remained

independent, I will take all the surplus. You would not lay it up

yourself; it is wholly your own fault that has thrown you into my

power, and I will force you to work, or starve; yet you shall have no

profit, only your daily bread." This mode of treatment has now become

so universal that it is supposed the only natural--nay, the only

possible one; and the market wages are calmly defined by economists as

"the sum which will maintain the labourer."

[115] In the present general examination I concede so much to

ordinary economists as to ignore all innocent poverty. I

assume poverty to be always criminal; the conceivable

exceptions we will examine afterwards.

The power of the provident person to do this is only checked by the

correlative power of some neighbour of similarly frugal habits, who

says to the labourer--"I will give you a little more than my provident

friend:--come and work for me." The power of the provident over the

improvident depends thus primarily on their relative numbers;

secondarily, on the modes of agreement of the adverse parties with

each other. The level of wages is a variable function of the number of

provident and idle persons in the world, of the enmity between them as

classes, and of the agreement between those of the same class. It

depends, from beginning to end, on moral conditions.

Supposing the rich to be entirely selfish, it is always for their

interest that the poor should be as numerous as they can employ and

restrain. For, granting the entire population no larger than the

ground can easily maintain,--that the classes are stringently

divided,--and that there is sense or strength of hand enough with the

rich to secure obedience; then, if nine-tenths of a nation are poor,

the remaining tenth have the service of nine persons each;[116] but,

if eight-tenths are poor, only of four each; if seven-tenths are poor,

of two and a third each; but, practically if the rich strive always to

obtain more power over the poor, instead of to raise them,--and if, on

the other hand, the poor become continually more vicious and numerous,

through neglect and oppression--though the range of the power of the

rich increases, its tenure becomes less secure; until, at last, the

measure of iniquity being full, revolution, civil war, or the

subjection of the state to a healthier or stronger one, closes the

moral corruption and industrial disease.

[116] I say nothing yet of the quality of the servants, which,

nevertheless, is the gist of the business. Will you have

Paul Veronese to paint your ceiling, or the plumber from

over the way? Both will work for the same money; Paul, if

anything, a little cheaper of the two, if you keep him in

good humour; only you have to discern him first, which will

need eyes.

It is rare, however, that things come to this extremity. Kind persons

among the rich, and wise among the poor, modify the connexion of the

classes: the efforts made to raise and relieve on the one side, and

the success and honest toil on the other, bind and blend the orders of

society into the confused tissue of half-felt obligation,

sullenly-rendered obedience, and variously-directed, or mis-directed,

toil, which form the warp of daily life. But this great law rules all

the wild design of the weaving; that success (while society is guided

by laws of competition) signifies always so much victory over your

neighbour as to obtain the direction of his work, and to take the

profits of it. This is the real source of all great riches. No man can

become largely rich by his personal toil.[117] The work of his own

hands, wisely directed, will indeed always maintain himself and his

family, and make fitting provision for his age. But it is only by the

discovery of some method of taxing the labour of others that he can

become opulent. Every increase of his capital enables him to extend

this taxation more widely; that is, to invest larger funds in the

maintenance of his labourers--to direct, accordingly, vaster and yet

vaster masses of labour; and to appropriate its profits. There is much

confusion of idea on the subject of this appropriation. It is, of

course, the interest of the employer to disguise it from the persons

employed; and for his own comfort and complacency he often desires no

less to disguise it from himself. And it is matter of much doubt with

me, how far the foolish arguments used habitually on this subject are

indeed the honest expressions of foolish convictions,--or rather (as I

am sometimes forced to conclude from the irritation with which they

are advanced) are resolutely dishonest, wilful sophisms, arranged so

as to mask to the last moment the real state of economy, and future

duties of men. By taking a simple example, and working it thoroughly

out, the subject may be rescued from all but determined misconception.

[117] By his heart he may; but only when its produce, or the

sight or hearing of it, becomes a subject of dispute, so as

to enable the artist to tax the labour of multitudes highly,

in exchange for his own.

Let us imagine a society of peasants, living on a river-shore, exposed

to destructive inundation at somewhat extended intervals; and that

each peasant possesses of this good, but imperilled ground, more than

he needs to cultivate for immediate subsistence. We will assume

farther (and with too great probability of justice) that the greater

part of them indolently keep in tillage just as much land as supplies

them with daily food;--that they leave their children idle and

untaught; and take no precautions against the rise of the stream. But

one of them (we will say only one, for the sake of greater clearness)

cultivates carefully all the ground of his estate; makes his children

work hard and healthily; uses his spare time and theirs in building a

rampart against the river; and at the end of some years has in his

storehouses large reserves of food and clothing, and in his stables a

well-tended breed of cattle.

The torrent rises at last--sweeps away the harvests and many of the

cottages of the careless peasantry, and leaves them destitute. They

naturally come for help to the provident one, whose fields are

unwasted and whose granaries are full. He has the right to refuse it

them; no one disputes his right. But he will probably not refuse it;

it is not his interest to do so, even were he entirely selfish and

cruel. The only question with him will be on what terms his aid is to

be granted.

Clearly not on terms of mere charity. To maintain his neighbours in

idleness would be his ruin and theirs. He will require work from them

in exchange for their maintenance; and whether in kindness or cruelty,

all the work they can give. Not now the three or four hours they were

wont to spend on their own land, but the eight or ten hours they ought

to have spent. But how will he apply this labour? The men are now his

slaves--nothing less. On pain of starvation, he can force them to work

in the manner and to the end he chooses. And it is by his wisdom in

this choice that the worthiness of his mastership is proved, or its

unworthiness. Evidently he must first set them to bank out the water

in some temporary way, and to get their ground cleansed and resown;

else, in any case, their continued maintenance will be impossible.

That done, and while he has still to feed them, suppose he makes them

raise a secure rampart for their own ground against all future flood,

and rebuild their houses in safer places, with the best material they

can find; being allowed time out of their working hours to fetch such

material from a distance. And for the food and clothing advanced, he

takes security in land that as much shall be returned at a convenient

period.

At the end of a few years, we may conceive this security redeemed, and

the debt paid. The prudent peasant has sustained no loss; but is no

richer than he was, and has had all his trouble for nothing. But he

has enriched his neighbours materially; bettered their houses, secured

their land, and rendered them, in worldly matters, equal to himself.

In all true and final sense, he has been throughout their lord and

king.

We will next trace his probable line of conduct, presuming his object

to be exclusively the increase of his own fortune. After roughly

recovering and cleansing the ground, he allows the ruined peasantry

only to build huts upon it, such as he thinks protective enough from

the weather to keep them in working health. The rest of their time he

occupies first in pulling down and rebuilding on a magnificent scale

his own house, and in adding large dependencies to it. This done, he

follows the example of the first great Hebrew financier, and in

exchange for his continued supply of corn, buys as much of his

neighbours! land, as he thinks he can superintend the management of;

and makes the former owners securely embank and protect the ceded

portion. By this arrangement he leaves to a certain number of the

peasantry only as much ground as will just maintain them in their

existing numbers: as the population increases, he takes the extra

hands, who cannot be maintained on the narrow estates, for his own

servants; employs some to cultivate the ground he has bought, giving

them of its produce merely enough for subsistence; with the surplus,

which, under his energetic and careful superintendence, will be large,

he supports a train of servants for state, and a body of workmen, whom

he educates in ornamental arts. He now can splendidly decorate his

house, lay out its grounds magnificently, and richly supply his table,

and that of his household and retinue. And thus, without any abuse of

right, we should find established all the phenomena of poverty and

riches, which (it is supposed necessarily) accompany modern

civilization. In one part of the district, we should have unhealthy

land, miserable dwellings and half-starved poor; in another, a

well-ordered estate, well-fed servants, and refined conditions of

highly-educated and luxurious life.

I have put the two cases in simplicity, and to some extremity. But

though in more complex and qualified operation, all the relations of

society are but the expansion of these two typical sequences of

conduct and result. I do not say, observe, that the first procedure is

entirely right; still less, that the second is wholly wrong. Servants

and artists, and splendour of habitation and retinue, have all their

use, propriety and office. I only wish the reader to understand

clearly what they cost; that the condition of having them is the

subjection to you of a certain number of imprudent or unfortunate

persons (or, it may be, more fortunate than their master), over whose

destinies you exercise a boundless control. "Riches" mean eternally

and essentially this; and may heaven send at last a time when those

words of our best-reputed economist shall be true, and we shall indeed

"all know what it is to be rich;" that is to be slave-master over

farthest earth, and over all ways and thoughts of men. Every operative

you employ is your true servant: distant or near, subject to your

immediate orders, or ministering to your widely-communicated

caprice--for the pay he stipulates, or the price he tempts,--all are

alike under this great dominion of the gold. The milliner who makes

the dress is as much a servant (more so, in that she uses more

intelligence in the service) as the maid who puts it on; the carpenter

who smoothes the door, as the footman who opens it; the tradesmen who

supply the table, as the labourers and sailors who supply the

tradesmen. Why speak of these lower services? Painters and singers

(whether of note or rhyme), jesters and story-tellers, moralists,

historians, priests--so far as these, in any degree, paint, or sing,

or tell their tale, or charm their charm, or "perform" their rite, for

pay, in so far they are all slaves; abject utterly, if the service be

for pay only; abject less and less in proportion to the degrees of

love and wisdom which enter into their duty, or can enter into it,

according as their function is to do the bidding and the work of a

man;--or to amuse, tempt, and deceive a child.

There may be thus, and, to a certain extent, there always is, a

government of the rich by the poor, as of the poor by the rich; but

the latter is the prevailing and necessary one, and it consists,

observe, of two distinct functions,--the collection of the profits of

labour from those who would have misused them, and the administration

of those profits for the service either of the same person in future,

or of others; or, as is more frequently the case in modern times, for

the service of the collector himself.

The examination of these various modes of collection and use of riches

will form the third branch of our future inquiries; but the key to the

whole subject lies in the clear understanding of the difference

between selfish and unselfish expenditure. It is not easy, by any

course of reasoning, to enforce this on the generally unwilling

hearer; yet the definition of unselfish expenditure is brief and

simple. It is expenditure which if you are a capitalist, does not pay

you, but pays somebody else; and if you are a consumer, does not

please you, but pleases somebody else. Take one special instance, in

further illustration of the general type given above. I did not invent

that type, but spoke of a real river, and of real peasantry, the

languid and sickly race which inhabits, or haunts--for they are often

more like spectres than living men--the thorny desolation on the banks

of the Arve. Some years ago, a society formed at Geneva offered to

embank the river, for the ground which would have been recovered by

the operation; but the offer was refused by the (then Sardinian)

government. The capitalists saw that this expenditure would have

"paid," if the ground saved from the river was to be theirs. But if

when the offer that had this aspect of profit was refused, they had

nevertheless persisted in the plan and, merely taking security for the

return of their outlay, lent the funds for the work, and thus saved a

whole race of human souls from perishing in a pestiferous fen (as, I

presume, some among them would, at personal risk, have dragged any one

drowning creature out of the current of the stream, and not expected

payment therefor), such expenditure would have precisely corresponded

to the use of his power made, in the first instance, by our supposed

richest peasant--it would have been the king's, of grace, instead of

the usurer's, for gain.

"Impossible, absurd, Utopian!" exclaim nine-tenths of the few readers

whom these words may find. No, good reader, this is not Utopian: but I

will tell you what would have seemed, if we had not seen it, Utopian

on the side of evil instead of good: that ever men should have come to

value their money so much more than their lives, that if you call upon

them to become soldiers, and take chance of bullet, for their pride's

sake, they will do it gaily, without thinking twice; but if you ask

them for their country's sake to spend a hundred pounds without

security of getting back a hundred-and-five[118] they will laugh in

your face.

[118] I have not hitherto touched on the subject of interest of

money; it is too complex; and must be reserved for its

proper place in the body of the work. (I should be glad if a

writer, who sent me some valuable notes on this subject, and

asked me to return a letter which I still keep at his

service, would send me his address.) The definition of

interest (apart from compensation for risk) is, "the

exponent of the comfort of accomplished labour, separated

from its power;" the power being what is lent: and the

French economists who have maintained the entire illegality

of interest are wrong; yet by no means so curiously or

wildly wrong as the English and French ones opposed to them,

whose opinions have been collected by Dr. Whewell at page 41

of his Lectures; it never seeming to occur to the mind of

the compiler any more than to the writers whom he quotes,

that it is quite possible, and even (according to Jewish

proverb) prudent, for men to hoard, as ants and mice do, for

use, not usury; and lay by something for winter nights, in

the expectation of rather sharing than lending the

scrapings. My Savoyard squirrels would pass a pleasant time

of it under the snow-laden pine-branches, if they always

declined to economize because no one would pay them interest

on nuts.

Not but that also this game of life-giving-and-taking is, in the end,

somewhat more costly than other forms of play might be. Rifle practice

is, indeed, a not unhealthy pastime, and a feather on the top of the

head is a pleasing appendage; but while learning the stops and

fingering of the sweet instrument, does no one ever calculate the cost

of an overture? What melody does Tityrus meditate on his tenderly

spiral pipe? The leaden seed of it, broad cast, true conical "Dents de

Lion" seed--needing leas allowance for the wind than is usual with

that kind of herb--what crop are you likely to have of it? Suppose,

instead of this volunteer marching and countermarching, you were to do

a little volunteer ploughing and counterploughing? It is more

difficult to do it straight: the dust of the earth, so disturbed, is

more grateful than for merely rhythmic footsteps. Golden cups, also,

given for good ploughing would be more suitable in colour (ruby glass,

for the wine which "giveth his colour" on the ground, as well as in

the cup, might be fitter for the rifle prize in the ladies' hands);

or, conceive a little volunteer exercise with the spade, other than

such as is needed for moat and breastwork, or even for the burial of

the fruit of the leaden avena-seed, subject to the shrill Lemures'

criticism--

"Wer hat das Haus so schlecht gebaut?"

If you were to embank Lincolnshire now,--more stoutly against the sea?

or strip the peat of Solway, or plant Plinlimmon moors with

larch--then, in due hour of year, some amateur reaping and threshing?

"Nay, we reap and thresh by steam in these advanced days."

I know it, my wise and economical friends. The stout arms God gave

you to win your bread by, you would fain shoot your neighbours--and

God's sweet singers--with;[119] then you invoke the friends to your

farm-service, and--

"When young and old come forth to play

On a sulphurous holiday,

Tell how the darling goblin sweat

(His feast of cinders duly set),

And belching night, where breathed the morn.

His shadowy flail hath threshed the corn

That ten day-labourers could not end."

But we will press the example closer. On a green knoll above that

plain of the Arve, between Cluses and Bonneville, there was, in the

year 1860, a cottage, inhabited by a well-doing family--man and wife,

three children, and the grandmother. I call it a cottage but, in

truth, it was a large chimney on the ground, wide at the bottom (so

that the family might live round the fire), with one broken window in

it, and an unclosing door. The family, I say, was "well-doing," at

least, it was hopeful and cheerful; the wife healthy, the children,

for Savoyards, pretty and active, but the husband threatened with

decline, from exposure under the cliffs of the Mont Vergi by day, and

to draughts between every plank of his chimney in the frosty nights.

"Why could he not plaster the chinks?" asks the practical reader. For

the same reason that your child cannot wash its face and hands till

you have washed them many a day for it, and will not wash them when it

can, till you force it.

[119] Compare Chaucer's feeling respecting birds (from Canace's

falcon, to the nightingale, singing "Domine labia "--to the

Lord of Love) with the usual modern British sentiments on

this subject. Or even Cowley's:--

"What prince's choir of music can excel

That which within this shade does dwell.

To which we nothing pay, or give,

They, like all other poets, live

Without reward, or thanks for their obliging pains!

'Tis well if they became not prey."

Yes; it is better than well; particularly since the seed

sown by the wayside has been protected by the peculiar

appropriation of part of the church rates in our country

parishes. See the remonstrance from a "Country Parson," in

the _Times_ of June 4th (or 5th; the letter is dated June

3rd, 1862):--"I have heard at a vestry meeting a good deal

of higgling over a few shillings' outlay in cleaning the

church; but I have never heard any dissatisfaction expressed

on account of the part of the rate which is invested in

fifty or 100 dozens of birds' heads."

I passed this cottage often in my walks, had its window and door

mended, sometimes mended also a little the meal of sour bread and

broth, and generally got kind greeting and smile from the face of

young or old; which greeting, this year, narrowed itself into the

half-recognizing stare of the elder child and the old woman's tears;

for the father and mother were both dead,--one of sickness, the other

of sorrow. It happened that I passed not alone, but with a companion,

a practised English joiner, who, while these people were dying of

cold, had been employed from six in the morning to six of the evening

for two months, in fitting the panels without nails, of a single door

in a large house in London. Three days of his work taken, at the right

time, from the oak panels, and applied to the larch timbers, would

have saved these Savoyards' lives. He would have been maintained

equally (I suppose him equally paid for his work by the owner of the

greater house, only the work not consumed selfishly on his own walls;)

and the two peasants, and eventually, probably their children, saved.

There are, therefore, let me finally enforce and leave with the reader

this broad conclusion,--three things to be considered in employing any

poor person. It is not enough to give him employment. You must employ

him first to produce useful things; secondly, of the several (suppose

equally useful) things he can equally well produce, you must set him

to make that which will cause him to lead the healthiest life; lastly,

of the things produced, it remains a question of wisdom and conscience

how much you are to take yourself, and how much to leave to others. A

large quantity, remember, unless you destroy it, must always be so

left at one time or another; the only questions you have to decide

are, not what you will give, and what you will keep, but when, and

how, and to whom, you will give. The natural law of human life is, of

course, that in youth a man shall labour and lay by store for his old

age, and when age comes, should use what he has laid by, gradually

slackening his toil, and allowing himself more frank use of his store,

taking care always to leave himself as much as will surely suffice for

him beyond any possible length of life. What he has gained, or by

tranquil and unanxious toil, continues to gain, more than is enough

for his own need, he ought so to administer, while he yet lives, as to

see the good of it again beginning in other hands; for thus he has

himself the greatest sum of pleasure from it, and faithfully uses his

sagacity in its control. Whereas most men, it appears, dislike the

sight of their fortunes going out into service again, and say to

themselves,--"I can indeed nowise prevent this money from falling at

last into the hands of others, nor hinder the good of it, such as it

is, from becoming theirs, not mine; but at least let a merciful death

save me from being a witness of their satisfaction; and may God so far

be gracious to me as to let no good come of any of this money of mine

before my eyes." Supposing this feeling unconquerable, the safest way

of rationally indulging it would be for the capitalist at once to

spend all his fortune on himself, which might actually, in many cases,

be quite the rightest as well as the pleasantest thing to do, if he

had just tastes and worthy passions. But, whether for himself only, or

through the hands and for the sake of others also, the law of wise

life is, that the maker of the money should also be the spender of it,

and spend it, approximately, all, before he dies; so that his true

ambition as an economist should be, to die, not as rich, but as poor,

as possible, calculating the ebb tide of possession in true and calm

proportion to the ebb tide of life. Which law, checking the wing of

accumulative desire in the mid-volley,[120] and leading to peace of

possession and fulness of fruition in old age, is also wholesome in

that by the freedom of gift, together with present help and counsel,

it at once endears and dignifies age in the sight of youth, which then

no longer strips the bodies of the dead, but receives the grace of the

living. Its chief use would (or will be, for men are indeed capable of

attaining to this much use for their reason), that some temperance and

measure will be put to the acquisitiveness of commerce.[121] For as

things stand, a man holds it his duty to be temperate in his food, and

of his body, but for no duty to be temperate in his riches, and of his

mind. He sees that he ought not to waste his youth and his flesh for

luxury; but he will waste his age, and his soul, for money, and think

it no wrong, nor the delirium tremens of the intellect any evil. But

the law of life is, that a man should fix the sum he desires to make

annually, as the food he desires to eat daily; and stay when he has

reached the limit, refusing increase of business, and leaving it to

others, so obtaining due freedom of time for better thoughts. How the

gluttony of business is punished, a bill of health for the principals

of the richest city houses, issued annually, would show in a

sufficiently impressive manner.

[120] [Greek: kai penian hegoumenous heinai me to ten ousian

elatto poiein, alla to ten aplestian pleio.]--"Laws," v. 8.

Read the context and compare. "He who spends for all that is

noble, and gains by nothing but what is just, will hardly be

notably wealthy, or distressfully poor."--"Laws," v. 42.

[121] The fury of modern trade arises chiefly out of the

possibility of making sudden fortune by largeness of

transaction, and accident of discovery or contrivance.

I have no doubt that the final interest of every nation

is to check the action of these commercial lotteries. But

speculation absolute, unconnected with commercial effort, is

an unmitigated evil in a state, and the root of countless

evils beside.

I know, of course, that these statements will be received by the

modern merchant, as an active Border rider of the sixteenth century

would have heard of its being proper for men of the Marches to get

their living by the spade instead of the spur. But my business is only

to state veracities and necessities; I neither look for the acceptance

of the one, nor promise anything for the nearness of the other. Near

or distant, the day will assuredly come when the merchants of a state

shall be its true "ministers of exchange," its porters, in the double

sense of carriers and gate-keepers, bringing all lands into frank and

faithful communication, and knowing for their master of guild, Hermes

the herald, instead of Mercury the gain-guarder.

And now, finally, for immediate rule to whom it concerns.

The distress of any population means that they need food, houseroom,

clothes, and fuel. You can never, therefore, be wrong in employing any

labourer to produce food, houseroom, clothes, or fuel: but you are

always wrong if you employ him to produce nothing (for then some other

labourer must be worked double time to feed him); and you are

generally wrong, at present, if you employ him (unless he can do

nothing else) to produce works of art, or luxuries; because modern art

is mostly on a false basis, and modern luxury is criminally great.[122]

[122] It is especially necessary that the reader should keep his

mind fixed on the methods of consumption and destruction, as

the true sources of national poverty. Men are apt to watch

rather the exchanges in a state than its damages; but the

exchanges are only of importance so far as they bring about

these last. A large number of the purchases made by the

richer classes are mere forms of interchange of unused

property, wholly without effect on national prosperity. It

matters nothing to the state, whether if a china pipkin be

rated as worth a hundred pounds, A has the pipkin, and B the

pounds, or A the pounds and B the pipkin. But if the pipkin

is pretty, and A or B breaks it, there is national loss; not

otherwise. So again, when the loss has really taken place,

no shifting of the shoulders that bear it will do away with

the fact of it. There is an intensely ludicrous notion in

the public mind respecting the abolishment of debt by

denying it. When a debt is denied, the lender loses instead

of the borrower, that is all; the loss is precisely,

accurately, everlastingly the same. The Americans borrow

money to spend in blowing up their own houses. They deny

their debt; by one third already, gold being at fifty

premium; and will probably deny it wholly. That merely means

that the holders of the notes are to be the losers instead

of the issuers. The quantity of loss is precisely equal, and

irrevocable; it is the quantity of human industry spent in

explosion, plus the quantity of goods exploded. Honour only

decides who shall pay the sum lost, not whether it is to be

paid or not. Paid it must be and to the uttermost farthing.

The way to produce more food is mainly to bring in fresh ground, and

increase facilities of carriage;--to break rock, exchange earth, drain

the moist, and water the dry, to mend roads, and build harbours of

refuge. Taxation thus spent will annihilate taxation, but spent in

war, it annihilates revenue.

The way to produce houseroom is to apply your force first to the

humbler dwellings. When your bricklayers are out of employ, do not

build splendid new streets, but better the old ones: send your

paviours and slaters to the poorest villages, and see that your poor

are healthily lodged before you try your hand on stately architecture.

You will find its stateliness rise better under the trowel afterwards;

and we do not yet build so well as that we need hasten to display our

skill to future ages. Had the labour which has decorated the Houses of

Parliament filled, instead, rents in walls and roofs throughout the

county of Middlesex; and our deputies met to talk within massive walls

that would have needed no stucco for five hundred years,--the

decoration might have been better afterwards, and the talk now. And

touching even our highly conscientious church building, it may be well

to remember that in the best days of church plans, their masons called

themselves "logeurs du bon Dieu;" and that since, according to the

most trusted reports, God spends a good deal of His time in cottages

as well as in churches, He might perhaps like to be a little better

lodged there also.

The way to get more clothes is,--not necessarily, to get more cotton.

There were words written twenty years ago which would have saved many

of us some shivering had they been minded in time. Shall we read them?

"The Continental people, it would seem, are 'importing our machinery,

beginning to spin cotton and manufacture for themselves, to cut us out

of this market and then out of that!' Sad news indeed; but

irremediable;--by no means. The saddest news is, that we should find

our National Existence, as I sometimes hear it said, depend on selling

manufactured cotton at a farthing an ell cheaper than any other

People. A most narrow stand for a great Nation to base itself on! A

stand which, with all the Corn-Law Abrogations conceivable, I do not

think will be capable of enduring.

"My friends, suppose we quitted that stand; suppose we came honestly

down from it and said: 'This is our minimum cotton-prices. We care

not, for the present, to make cotton any cheaper. Do you, if it seem

so blessed to you, make cotton cheaper. Fill your lungs with

cotton-fuzz, your hearts with copperas-fumes, with rage and mutiny;

become ye the general gnomes of Europe, slaves of the lamp!' I admire

a Nation which fancies it will die if it do not undersell all other

Nations, to the end of the world. Brothers, we will cease to

_under_sell them; we will be content to _equal_-sell them; to be happy

selling equally with them! I do not see the use of underselling them.

Cotton-cloth is already two-pence a yard or lower; and yet bare backs

were never more numerous among us. Let inventive men cease to spend

their existence incessantly contriving how cotton can be made cheaper;

and try to invent, a little, how cotton at its present cheapness could

be somewhat justlier divided among us. Let inventive men consider,

Whether the Secret of this Universe, and of Man's Life there, does,

after all, as we rashly fancy it, consist in making money?... With a

Hell which means--'Failing to make money,' I do not think there is any

Heaven possible that would suit one well; nor so much as an Earth that

can be habitable long! In brief, all this Mammon-Gospel of

Supply-and-demand, Competition, Laissez-faire, and Devil take the

hindmost" (foremost, is it not, rather, Mr. Carlyle?) "begins to be

one of the shabbiest Gospels ever preached." (In the matter of

clothes, decidedly.) The way to produce more fuel is first to make

your coal mines safer, by sinking more shafts; then set all your

convicts to work in them, and if, as is to be hoped, you succeed in

diminishing the supply of that sort of labourer, consider what means

there may be, first of growing forest where its growth will improve

climate; then of splintering the forests which now make continents of

fruitful land pathless and poisonous, into faggots for fire;--so

gaining at once dominion sunwards and icewards. Your steam power has

been given you (you will find eventually) for work such as that; and

not for excursion trains, to give the labourer a moment's breath, at

the peril of his breath for ever, from amidst the cities which you

have crushed into masses of corruption. When you know how to build

cities, and how to rule them, you will be able to breathe in their

streets, and the "excursion" will be the afternoon's walk or game in

the fields round them. Long ago, Claudian's peasant of Verona knew,

and we must yet learn, in his fashion, the difference between via and

vita. But nothing of this work will pay.

No; no more than it pays to dust your rooms or wash your doorsteps. It

will pay; not at first in currency, but in that which is the end and

the source of currency,--in life (and in currency richly afterwards).

It will pay in that which is more than life,--in "God's first

creature, which was light," whose true price has not yet been

reckoned in any currency, and yet into the image of which all wealth,

one way or other, must be cast. For your riches must either as the

lightning, which,

"begot but in a cloud,

Though shining bright, and speaking loud,

Whilst it begins, concludes its violent race,

And, where it gilds, it wounds the place;"

or else as the lightning of the sacred sign, which shines from one

part of the heaven to the other. There is no other choice; you must

either take dust for deity, spectre for possession, fettered dream for

life, and for epitaph, this reversed verse of the great Hebrew hymn of

economy (Psalm cxii.):--"He hath gathered together, he hath stripped

the poor, his iniquity remaineth for ever." Or else, having the sun

for justice to shine on you, and the sincere substance of good in your

possession, and the pure law and liberty of life within you, leave men

to write this better legend over your grave: "He hath dispersed

abroad. He hath given to the poor. His righteousness remaineth for

ever."

* * * * *

The present paper completes the definitions necessary for

future service. The next in order will be the first chapter

of the body of the work.

These introductory essays are as yet in imperfect form; I

suffer them to appear, though they were not intended for

immediate publication, for the sake of such chance service

as may be found in them.

[Here the author indicated certain corrections, which have

been carried out in this edition. He then went on to say

that the note on Charis (p. 274) required a word or two in

further illustration, as follows:--]

The derivation of words is like that of rivers: there is one

real source, usually small, unlikely, and difficult to find,

far up among the hills; then, as the word flows on and comes

into service, it takes in the force of other words from

other sources, and becomes itself quite another word--even

more than one word, after the junction--a word as it were of

many waters, sometimes both sweet and bitter. Thus the whole

force of our English "charity" depends on the guttural in

"Charis" getting confused with the "c" of the Latin "carus;"

thenceforward throughout the middle ages, the two ideas

ran on together, and both got confused with St. Paul's

[Greek: agape], which expresses a different idea in all

sorts of ways; our "charity," having not only brought in the

entirely foreign sense of almsgiving, but lost the essential

sense of contentment, and lost much more in getting too far

away from the "charis," of the final Gospel benedictions.

For truly it is fine Christianity we have come to, which

professing to expect the perpetual grace of its Founder,

has not itself grace enough to save it from overreaching

its friends in sixpenny bargains; and which, supplicating

evening and morning the forgiveness of its own debts, goes

forth in the daytime to take its fellow-servants by the

throat, saying--not "Pay me that thou owest," but "Pay me

that thou owest me not."

Not but that we sometimes wear Ophelia's rue with a

difference, and call it, "Herb o' grace o' Sundays," taking

consolation out of the offertory with--"Look, what he layeth

out, it shall be paid him again." Comfortable words, indeed,

and good to set against the old royalty of Largesse--

"Whose moste joie was, I wis,

When that she gave, and said, 'Have this.'"

Again: the first root of the word faith being far away

in----(compare my note on this force of it in "Modern

Painters," vol. v., p. 255), the Latins, as proved by

Cicero's derivation of the word, got their "facio," also

involved in the idea; and so the word, and the world with

it, gradually lose themselves in an arachnoid web of

disputation concerning faith and works, no one ever taking

the pains to limit the meaning of the term: which in

earliest Scriptural use is as nearly as possible our English

"obedience." Then the Latin "fides," a quite different word,

alternately active and passive in different uses, runs into

"foi;" "facere," through "ficare," into "fier," at the end

of words; and "fidere," into "fier" absolute; and out of

this endless reticulation of thought and word rise still

more finely reticulated theories concerning salvation by

faith--the things which the populace expected to be saved

from, being indeed carved for them in a very graphic manner

in their cathedral porches, but the things they were

expected to believe being carved for them not so clearly.

Lastly I debated with myself whether to make the note on

Homer longer by examining the typical meaning of the

shipwreck of Ulysses, and his escape from Charybdis by help

of her fig-tree; but as I should have had to go on to the

lovely myth of Leucothea's veil, and did not care to spoil

this by a hurried account of it, I left it for future

examination; and three days after the paper was published,

observed that the reviewers, with their usual useful

ingenuity, were endeavouring to throw the whole subject back

into confusion by dwelling on the single (as they imagined)

oversight. I omitted also a note on the sense of the word

[Greek: lygron], with respect to the pharmacy of Circe, and

herb-fields of Helen (compare its use in Odyssey, xvii. 473,

etc.), which would further have illustrated the nature of

the Circean power. But, not to be led too far into the

subtleness of these myths, respecting them all I have but

this to say: Even in very simple parables, it is not always

easy to attach indisputable meaning to every part of them. I

recollect some years ago, throwing an assembly of learned

persons who had met to delight themselves with

interpretations of the parable of the prodigal son

(interpretations which had up to that moment gone very

smoothly) into high indignation, by inadvertently asking who

the prodigal son was, and what was to be learned by his

example. The leading divine of the company (still one of our

great popular preachers) at last explained to me that the

unprodigal son was a lay figure, put in for dramatic effect,

to make the story prettier, and that no note was to be taken

of him. Without, however, admitting that Homer put in the

last escape of Ulysses merely to make his story prettier,

this is nevertheless true of all Greek myths, that they have

many opposite lights and shades: they are as changeful as

opal and, like opal, usually have one colour by reflected,

and another by transmitted, light. But they are true jewels

for all that, and full of noble enchantment for those who

can use them; for those who cannot, I am content to repeat

the words I wrote four years ago, in the appendix to the

"Two Paths"--

"The entire purpose of a great thinker may be difficult to

fathom, and we may be over and over again more or less

mistaken in guessing at his meaning; but the real, profound,

nay, quite bottomless and unredeemable mistake, is the

fool's thought, that he had no meaning."

LONDON: WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED.

* * * * *

Transcriber's note:

1. Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).

2. Footnotes have been renumbered and moved from the middle of the

paragraph to the closest paragraph break.

3. The original text includes Greek characters. For this text version

these letters have been replaced with transliterations. For example,

[Greek: b] represents greek letter beta.

4. Certain words use an oe ligature in the original.

5. Mixed fractions are indicated with a hyphen and forward slash. For

example, 3-1/2 indicates three and a half.

6. Obvious misprints and punctuation errors have been silently corrected

in this text version.

7. Other than the changes listed above, printer's inconsistencies in

hyphenation and ligature usage have been retained.