Janet said that she had seen John Staunton in the village in his new
car. He was very pleased with it, and apparently still more pleased
that he had sold his old car just before the big reduction in the
makers' prices was announced, with the result that he had got a new
car for an old of the same make, and was some pounds in pocket into
the bargain. "I should be ashamed to gloat over such a transaction,"
she said. Indeed, she was doubtful whether it was morally right to
benefit in such a way.
I agreed that it was perhaps indecent to "gloat" over such a stroke
of luck, but I could not agree that any reasonable moral
consideration had been outraged by the affair. The question raised
the problem of what is fair in the way of deals of this sort. What,
for example, ought one to say of the case of the eminent statesman of
these days, who, looking over the stock of a second-hand book-dealer,
saw a copy of the first edition of Gray's Elegy marked at a few
shillings, and bought it, took it away, and has probably got it
to-day. He had got a prize worth, I think, in the neighbourhood of
two hundred pounds. He knew its value, and apparently the bookseller
did not. What was the "morality" in that case? Ought he to have
summoned the bookseller and said, "My dear sir, are you aware that
this little book which you offer me at the ridiculous price of a few
shillings is worth a couple of hundred pounds?" I think that would
be demanding too much of human nature. Bookbuying and bookselling is
a business transaction like any other, and it is the bookseller's
business to know what his stock is worth. All the same, I hope the
eminent statesman sent the bookseller a substantial Christmas box
without telling him what a fool he had been.
After all, the traffic in curiosities is a sort of sport in which
sometimes the seller and sometimes the buyer wins the trick. I heard
the other day an amusing incident of a man who was fond of collecting
old furniture. He was walking in a remote country district when the
rain came on, and he took shelter in a barn, at the door of which the
farmer was standing. The collector noticed in a corner of the barn
an old chest containing fodder of some sort. He looked at it, saw
that it was obviously very old, spoke to the farmer about it, found
he knew nothing of its value, and bought it for a comparatively small
sum. Not long after a friend of his who knew of the bargain wandered
to the same farm in the hope of picking up something for himself. He
went into the barn and there, behold! was another old chest,
containing some more old fodder. Only it wasn't an old chest. Like
the other, it was simply a modern-antique--a bait for hungry trout to
snap at. The farmer was just an agent. He did not invite people to
buy, and he did not pretend that the pieces were old. He just sold
them at a price if they were asked for. Was he morally culpable?
Was he more culpable than the buyer would have been if he had taken
advantage of the farmer's real instead of supposed ignorance?
If we applied the code of strict morality in these matters and
asserted that no one must benefit by another's lack of knowledge,
what would become of the Stock Exchange? It would have to close its
doors forthwith. Nearly every transaction between a buyer and a
seller is in the nature of a duel in which one backs his supposed
knowledge against the other's supposed ignorance. If I have reason
to know, let me say, that salt-water has got into the Mexican oil
wells, is it wicked of me to sell out my shares in the company to
some innocent person who does not possess that piece of information?
After all, I may be wrong, and he may know more than I do. He may
know that the menace was true, but he may have the later information
that it has been overcome. Every transaction of this sort is
admittedly a competition in knowledge or calculation, and each side
takes the risk in the hope of taking the profit.
There are, of course, cases in which it would be dishonourable to
profit by private knowledge. If I knew that a certain firm was going
bankrupt and sold my shares in it to a man who could not possibly
know and from whom I deliberately concealed my own absolute knowledge
on the point, I should be guilty of an act which would not be morally
distinguishable from theft. Or if I went into a remote house of a
poor peasant, found a First Folio Shakespeare--think of it!--the
market price of which is now over five thousand pounds, discovered
that the peasant was ignorant of its value, and took it away for a
pound or two, I should be morally, though not legally, a thief.
Fortunately I shall never have such a temptation thrust on me. I
wonder what I should do if I had.
The difference between such a case and that of the Gray's _Elegy_ is
that the seller in the latter case was a business man setting his
knowledge against the buyer's, and in the other he would be an
innocent who was being rooked. In the matter of John Staunton I see
no question of impropriety. One chanced to sell luckily and the
other to buy unluckily. That is all. But I agree with Janet that
John oughtn't to have "gloated" openly over the transaction. He
should have purred to himself privately.