Spanish Protests

 

^{Ruskins Critique of Classical Political Economy.}

Unto This Last
John Ruskin
1860

^{Essays from the Cornhill Magazine 1860
reprinted as Unto This Last in 1862}

^{The Roots of Honour}

^{Among the delusions which at different periods have possessed
themselves of the minds of large masses of the human race,
perhaps the most curious — certainly the least creditable — is
the modern soi-disant science of political economy, based on the
idea that an advantageous code of social action may be determined
irrespectively of the influence of social affection.
Of course, as in the instances of alchemy, astrology,
witchcraft, and other such popular creeds, political economy, has
a plausible idea at the root of it. “The social affections,” says
the economist, “are accidental and disturbing elements in human
nature; but avarice and the desire of progress are constant
elements. Let us eliminate the inconstants, and, considering the
human being merely as a covetous machine, examine by what laws of
labour, purchase, and sale, the greatest accumulative result in
wealth is obtainable. Those laws once determined, it will be for
each individual afterwards to introduce as much of the disturbing
affectionate element as he chooses, and to determine for himself
the result on the new conditions supposed.”
This would be a perfectly logical and successful method of
analysis, if the accidentals afterwards to be introduced were of
the same nature as the powers first examined. Supposing a body in
motion to be influenced by constant and inconstant forces, it is
usually the simplest way of examining its course to trace it
first under the persistent conditions, and afterwards introduce
the causes of variation. But the disturbing elements in the
social problem are not of the same nature as the constant ones:
they alter the essence of the creature under examination the
moment they are added; they operate, not mathematically, but
chemically, introducing conditions which render all our previous
knowledge unavailable. We made learned experiments upon pure
nitrogen, and have convinced ourselves that it is a very
manageable gas: but, behold! the thing which we have practically
to deal with is its chloride; and this, the moment we touch it on
our established principles, sends us and or apparatus through the
ceiling.
Observe, I neither impugn nor doubt the conclusion of the
science if its terms are accepted. I am simply uninterested in
then, as I should be in those of a science of gymnastics which
assumed that men had no skeletons. It might be shown, on that
supposition, that it would be advantageous to roll the students
up into pellets, flatten them into cakes, or stretch them into
cables; and that when these results were effected, the
re-insertion of the skeleton would be attended with various
inconveniences to their constitution. The reasoning might be
admirable, the conclusions true, and the science deficient only
in applicability. Modern political economy stands on a precisely
similar basis. Assuming, not that the human being has no
skeleton, but that it is all skeleton, it founds an ossifiant
theory of progress on this negation of a soul; and having shown
the utmost that may be made of bones, and constructed a number of
interesting geometrical figures with death’s-head and humeri,
successfully proves the inconvenience of the reappearance of a
soul among these corpuscular structures. I do not deny the truth
of this theory: I simply deny its applicability to the present
phase of the world.
This inapplicability has been curiously manifested during the
embarrassment caused by the late strikes of our workmen. Here
occurs one of the simplest cases, in a pertinent and positive
form, of the first vital problem which political economy has to
deal with (the relation between employer and employed); and, at a
severe crisis, when lives in multitudes and wealth in masses are
at stake, the political economists are helpless — practically
mute: no demonstrable solution of the difficulty can be given by
them, such as may convince or calm the opposing parties.
Obstinately the masters take one view of the matter. obstinately
the operatives another; and no political science can set them at
one.
It would be strange if it could, it being not by “science” of
any kind that men were ever intended to be set at one. Disputant
after disputant vainly strives to show that the interests of the
masters are, or are not, antagonistic to those of the men: none
of the pleaders ever seeming to remember that it does not
absolutely or always follow that the persons must he antagonistic
because their interests are. If there is only a crust of bread in
the house, and mother and children are starving, their interests
are not the same. If the mother eats it, the children want it; if
the children eat it, the mother must go hungry to her work. yet
it does not necessarily follow that there will be “antagonism”
between them, that they will fight for the crust, and that the
mother, being strongest, will get it, and eat it. Neither, in any
other case, whatever the relations of the persons may be, can it
be assumed for certain that, because their interests are diverse,
they must necessarily regard each other with hostility, and use
violence or cunning to obtain the advantage.
Even if this were so, and it were as just as it is convenient
to consider men as actuated by no other moral influences than
those which affect rats or swine, the logical conditions of the
question are still indeterminable. It can never be shown
generally either that the interests of master and labourer are
alike, or that they are opposed; for, according to circumstances,
they may be either. It is, indeed, always the interest of both
that the work should be rightly done, and a just price obtained
for it; but, in the division of profits, the gain of the one may
or may not be the loss of the other. It is not the master’s
interest to pay wages so low as to leave the men sickly and
depressed, nor the workman’s interest to be paid high wages if
the smallness of the master’s profit hinders him from enlarging
his business, or conducting it in a safe and liberal way. A
stoker ought not to desire high pay if the company is too poor to
keep the engine-wheels in repair.
And the varieties of circumstances which influence these
reciprocal interests are so endless, that all endeavour to deduce
rules of action from balance of expediency is in vain. And it is
meant to be in vain. For no human actions ever were intended by
the maker of men to be guided by balances of expediency, but by
balances of justice. He has therefore rendered all endeavours to
determine expediency futile for evermore. No man ever knew, or
can know, what will be the ultimate result to himself, or to
others, of any given line of conduct. But every man may know, and
most of us do know, what is a just and unjust act. And all of us
may know also, that the consequences of justice will be
ultimately the best possible, both to others and ourselves,
though we can neither say what is best, or how it is likely to
come to pass.
I have said balances of justice, meaning, in the term
justice, to include affection, — such affection as one man owes
to another. All right relations between master and operative, and
all their best interests, ultimately depend on these.
We shall find the best and simplest illustration of the
relations of master and operative in the position of domestic
servants.
We will suppose that the master of a household desires only
to get as much work out of his servants as he can, at the rate of
wages he gives. He never allows them to be idle; feeds them as
poorly and lodges them as ill as they will endure, and in all
things pushes his requirements to the exact point beyond which he
cannot go without forcing the servant to leave him. In doing
this, there is no violation on his part of what is commonly
called “justice.” He agrees with the domestic for his whole time
ad service, and takes them; — the limits of hardship in
treatment being fixed by the practice of other masters in his
neighbourhood; that is to say, by the current rate of wages for
domestic labour. If the servant can get a better place, he is
free to take one, and the master can only tell what is the real
market value of his labour, by requiring as much as he will give.
This is the politico-economical view of the case, according
to the doctors of that science; who assert that by this procedure
the greatest average of work will be obtained from the servant,
and therefore the greatest benefit to the community, and through
the community, by reversion, to the servant himself.
That, however, is not so. It would be so if the servant were
an engine of which the motive power was steam, magnetism,
gravitation, or any other agent of calculable force. But he
being, on the contrary, an engine whose motive power is a Soul,
the force of this very peculiar agent, as an unknown quantity,
enters into all the political economist’s equations, without his
knowledge, and falsifies every one of their results. The largest
quantity of work will not be done by this curious engine for pay,
or under pressure, or by help of any kind of fuel which may be
supplied by the caldron. It will be done only when the motive
force, that is to say, the will or spirit of the creature, is
brought to its greatest strength by its own proper fuel: namely,
by the affections.
It may indeed happen, and does happen often, that if the
master is a man of sense ad energy, a large quantity of material
work may be done under mechanical pressure, enforced by strong
will and guided by wise method; also it may happen, and does
happen often, that if the master is indolent and weak (however
good-natured), a very small quantity of work, and that bad, may
be produced by the servant’s undirected strength, and
contemptuous gratitude. But the universal law of the matter is
that, assuming any given quantity of energy and sense in master
and servant, the greatest material result obtainable by them will
be, not through antagonism to each other, but through affection
for each other; and that if the master, instead of endeavouring
to get as much work as possible from the servant, seeks rather to
render his appointed and necessary work beneficial to him, and to
forward his interests in all just and wholesome ways, the real
amount of work ultimately done, or of good rendered, by the
person so cared for, will indeed be the greatest possible.
Observe, I say, “of good rendered,” for a servant’s work is
not necessarily or always the best thing he can give his master.
But good of all kinds, whether in material service, in protective
watchfulness of his master’s interest and credit, or in joyful
readiness to seize unexpected and irregular occasions of help.
Nor is this one whit less generally true because indulgence
will be frequently abused, and kindness met with ingratitude. For
the servant who, gently treated, is ungrateful, treated ungently,
will be revengeful; and the man who is dishonest to a liberal
master will be injurious to an unjust one.
In any case, and with any person, this unselfish treatment
will produce the most effective return. Observe, I am here
considering the affections wholly as a motive power; not at all
as things in themselves desirable or noble, or in any other way
abstractedly good. I look at them simply as an anomalous force,
rendering every one of the ordinary political economist’s
calculations nugatory; while, even if he desired to introduce
this new element into his estimates, he has no power of dealing
with it; for the affections only become a true motive power when
they ignore every other motive and condition of political
economy. Treat the servant kindly, with the idea of turning his
gratitude to account, and you will get, as you deserve, no
gratitude, nor any value for your kindness; but treat him kindly
without any economical purpose, and all economical purposes will
be answered; in this, as in all other matters, whosoever will
save his life shall lose it, whoso loses it shall find it.(1*)
The next clearest and simplest example of relation between
master and operative is that which exists between the commander
of a regiment and his men.
Supposing the officer only desires to apply the rules of
discipline so as, with least trouble to himself, to make the
regiment most effective, he will not be able, by any rules or
administration of rules, on this selfish principle, to develop
the full strength of his subordinates. If a man of sense and
firmness, he may, as in the former instance, produce a better
result than would be obtained by the irregular kindness of a weak
officer; but let the sense and firmness be the same in both
cases, and assuredly the officer who has the most direct personal
relations with his men, the most care for their interests, and
the most value for their lives, will develop their effective
strength, through their affection for his own person, and trust
in his character, to a degree wholly unattainable by other means.
This law applies still more stringently as the numbers concerned
are larger: a charge may often be successful, though the men
dislike their officers; a battle has rarely been won, unless they
loved their general.
Passing from these simple examples to the more complicated
relations existing between a manufacturer and his workmen, we are
met first by certain curious difficulties, resulting, apparently,
from a harder and colder state of moral elements. It is easy to
imagine an enthusiastic affection existing among soldiers for the
colonel. Not so easy to imagine an enthusiastic affection among
cotton-spinners for the proprietor of the mill. A body of men
associated for purposes of robbery (as a Highland clan in ancient
times) shall be animated by perfect affection, and every member
of it be ready to lay down his life for the life of his chief.
But a band of men associated for purposes of legal production and
accumulation is usually animated, it appears, by no such
emotions, and none of them are in any wise willing to give his
life for the life of his chief. Not only are we met by this
apparent anomaly, in moral matters, but by others connected with
it, in administration of system. For a servant or a soldier is
engaged at a definite rate of wages, for a definite period; but a
workman at a rate of wages variable according to the demand for
labour, and with the risk of being at any time thrown out of his
situation by chances of trade. Now, as, under these
contingencies, no action of the affections can take place, but
only an explosive action of disaffections, two points offer
themselves for consideration in the matter.
The first — How far the rate of wages may be so regulated as
not to vary with the demand for labour.
The second — How far it is possible that bodies of workmen
may be engaged and maintained at such fixed rate of wages
(whatever the state of trade may be), without enlarging or
diminishing their number, so as to give them permanent interest
in the establishment with which they are connected, like that of
the domestic servants in an old family, or an esprit de corps,
like that of the soldiers in a crack regiment.
The first question is, I say, how far it may be possible to
fix the rate of wages, irrespectively of the demand for labour.
Perhaps one of the most curious facts in the history of human
error is the denial by the common political economist of the
possibility of thus regulating wages; while, for all the
important, and much of the unimportant, labour, on the earth,
wages are already so regulated.
We do not sell our prime-ministership by Dutch auction; nor,
on the decease of a bishop, whatever may be the general
advantages of simony, do we (yet) offer his diocese to the
clergyman who will take the episcopacy at the lowest contract. We
(with exquisite sagacity of political economy!) do indeed sell
commissions; but not openly, generalships: sick, we do not
inquire for a physician who takes less than a guinea; litigious,
we never think of reducing six-and-eight-pence to
four-and-sixpence; caught in a shower, we do not canvass the
cabmen, to find one who values his driving at less than sixpence
a mile.
It is true that in all these cases there is, and in every
conceivable case there must be, ultimate reference to the
presumed difficulty of the work, or number of candidates for the
office. If it were thought that the labour necessary to make a
good physician would be gone through by a sufficient number of
students with the prospect of only half-guinea fees, public
consent would soon withdraw the unnecessary half-guinea. In this
ultimate sense, the price of labour is indeed always regulated by
the demand for it; but, so far as the practical and immediate
administration of the matter is regarded, the best labour always
has been, and is, as all labour ought to be, paid by an
invariable standard.
“What!” the reader perhaps answers amazedly: “pay good and
bad workmen alike?”
Certainly. The difference between one prelate’s sermons and
his successor’s — or between one physician’s opinion and
another’s — is far greater, as respects the qualities of mind
involved, and far more important in result to you personally,
than the difference between good and bad laying of bricks (though
that is greater than most people suppose). Yet you pay with equal
fee, contentedly, the good and bad workmen upon your soul, and
the good and bad workmen upon your body; much more may you pay,
contentedly, with equal fees, the good and bad workmen upon your
house.
“Nay, but I choose my physician and (?) my clergyman, thus
indicating my sense of the quality of their work.” By all means,
also, choose your bricklayer; that is the proper reward of the
good workman, to be “chosen.” The natural and right system
respecting all labour is, that it should be paid at a fixed rate,
but the good workman employed, and the bad workman unemployed.
The false, unnatural, and destructive system is when the bad
workman is allowed to offer his work at half-price, and either
take the place of the good, or force him by his competition to
work for an inadequate sum.
This equality of wages, then, being the first object toward
which we have to discover the directest available road; the
second is, as above stated, that of maintaining constant numbers
of workmen in employment, whatever may be the accidental demand
for the article they produce.
I believe the sudden and extensive inequalities of demand,
which necessarily arise in the mercantile operations of an active
nation, constitute the only essential difficulty which has to be
overcome in a just organization of labour. The subject opens into
too many branches to admit of being investigated in a paper of
this kind; but the following general facts bearing on it may be
noted.
The wages which enable any workman to live are necessarily
higher, if his work is liable to intermission, than if it is
assured and continuous; and however severe the struggle for work
may become, the general law will always hold, that men must get
more daily pay if, on the average, they can only calculate on
work three days a week than they would require if they were sure
of work six days a week. Supposing that a man cannot live on less
than a shilling a day, his seven shillings he must get, either
for three days’ violent work, or six days’ deliberate work. The
tendency of all modern mercantile operations is to throw both
wages and trade into the form of a lottery, and to make the
workman’s pay depend on intermittent exertion, and the
principal’s profit on dexterously used chance.
In what partial degree, I repeat, this may be necessary in
consequence of the activities of modern trade, I do not here
investigate; contenting myself with the fact, that in its
fatalest aspects it is assuredly unnecessary, and results merely
from love of gambling on the part of the masters, and from
ignorance and sensuality in the men. The masters cannot bear to
let any opportunity of gain escape them, and frantically rush at
every gap and breach in the walls of Fortune, raging to be rich,
and affronting, with impatient covetousness, every risk of ruin,
while the men prefer three days of violent labour, and three days
of drunkenness, to six days of moderate work and wise rest. There
is no way in which a principal, who really desires to help his
workmen, may do it more effectually than by checking these
disorderly habits both in himself and them; keeping his own
business operations on a scale which will enable him to pursue
them securely, not yielding to temptations of precarious gain;
and, at the same time, leading his workmen into regular habits of
labour and life, either by inducing them rather to take low wages
in the form of a fixed salary, than high wages, subject to the
chance of their being thrown out of work; or, if this be
impossible, by discouraging the system of violent exertion for
nominally high day wages, and leading the men to take lower pay
for more regular labour.
In effecting any radical changes of this kind, doubtless
there would be great inconvenience and loss incurred by all the
originators of movement. That which can be done with perfect
convenience and without loss, is not always the thing that most
needs to be done, or which we are most imperatively required to
do.
I have already alluded to the difference hitherto existing
between regiments of men associated for purposes of violence, and
for purposes of manufacture; in that the former appear capable of
self-sacrifice — the latter, not; which singular fact is the
real reason of the general lowness of estimate in which the
profession of commerce is held, as compared with that of arms.
Philosophically, it does not, at first sight, appear reasonable
(many writers have endeavoured to prove it unreasonable) that a
peaceable and rational person, whose trade is buying and selling,
should be held in less honour than an unpeaceable and often
irrational person, whose trade is slaying. Nevertheless, the
consent of mankind has always, in spite of the philosophers,
given precedence to the soldier.
And this is right.
For the soldier’s trade, verily and essentially, is not
slaying, but being slain. This, without well knowing its own
meaning, the world honours it for. A bravo’s trade is slaying;
but the world has never respected bravos more than merchants: the
reason it honours the soldier is, because he holds his life at
the service of the State. Reckless he may be — fond of pleasure
or of adventure-all kinds of bye-motives and mean impulses may
have determined the choice of his profession, and may affect (to
all appearance exclusively) his daily conduct in it; but our
estimate of him is based on this ultimate fact — of which we are
well assured — that put him in a fortress breach, with all the
pleasures of the world behind him, and only death and his duty in
front of him, he will keep his face to the front; and he knows
that his choice may be put to him at any moment — and has
beforehand taken his part — virtually takes such part
continually — does, in reality, die daily.
Not less is the respect we pay to the lawyer and physician,
founded ultimately on their self-sacrifice. Whatever the learning
or acuteness of a great lawyer, our chief respect for him depends
on our belief that, set in a judge’s seat, he will strive to
judge justly, come of it what may. Could we suppose that he would
take bribes, and use his acuteness and legal knowledge to give
plausibility to iniquitous decisions, no degree of intellect
would win for him our respect. Nothing will win it, short of our
tacit conviction, that in all important acts of his life justice
is first with him; his own interest, second.
In the case of a physician, the ground of the honour we
render him is clearer still. Whatever his science, we would
shrink from him in horror if we found him regard his patients
merely as subjects to experiment upon; much more, if we found
that, receiving bribes from persons interested in their deaths,
he was using his best skill to give poison in the mask of
medicine.
Finally, the principle holds with utmost clearness as it
respects clergymen. No goodness of disposition will excuse want
of science in a physician, or of shrewdness in an advocate; but a
clergyman, even though his power of intellect be small, is
respected on the presumed ground of his unselfishness and
serviceableness.
Now, there can be no question but that the tact, foresight,
decision, and other mental powers, required for the successful
management of a large mercantile concern, if not such as could be
compared with those of a great lawyer, general, or divine, would
at least match the general conditions of mind required in the
subordinate officers of a ship, or of a regiment, or in the
curate of a country parish. If, therefore, all the efficient
members of the so-called liberal professions are still, somehow,
in public estimate of honour, preferred before the head of a
commercial firm, the reason must lie deeper than in the
measurement of their several powers of mind.
And the essential reason for such preference will he found to
lie in the fact that the merchant is presumed to act always
selfishly. His work may be very necessary to the community. but
the motive of it is understood to be wholly personal. The
merchant’s first object in all his dealings must be (the public
believe) to get as much for himself, and leave as little to his
neighbour (or customer) as possible. Enforcing this upon him, by
political statute, as the necessary principle of his action;
recommending it to him on all occasions, and themselves
reciprocally adopting it, proclaiming vociferously, for law of
the universe, that a buyer’s function is to cheapen, and a
seller’s to cheat, — the public, nevertheless, involuntarily
condemn the man of commerce for his compliance with their own
statement, and stamp him for ever as belonging to an inferior
grade of human personality.
This they will find, eventually, they must give up doing.
They must not cease to condemn selfishness; but they will have to
discover a kind of commerce which is not exclusively selfish. Or,
rather, they will have to discover that there never was, or can
be, any other kind of commerce; that this which they have called
commerce was not commerce at all, but cozening; and that a true
merchant differs as much from a merchant according to laws of
modern political economy, as the hero of the Excursion from
Autolycus. They will find that commerce is an occupation which
gentlemen will every day see more need to engage in, rather than
in the businesses of talking to men, or slaying them; that, in
true commerce, as in true preaching, or true fighting, it is
necessary to admit the idea of occasional voluntary loss; — that
sixpences have to be lost, as well as lives, under a sense of
duty. that the market may have its martyrdoms as well as the
pulpit; and trade its heroisms as well as war.
May have — in the final issue, must have-and only has not
had yet, because men of heroic temper have always been misguided
in their youth into other fields; not recognising what is in our
days, perhaps, the most important of all fields; so that, while
many a jealous person loses his life in trying to teach the form
of a gospel, very few will lose a hundred pounds in showing the
practice of one.
The fact is, that people never have had clearly explained to
them the true functions of a merchant with respect to other
people. I should like the reader to be very clear about this.
Five great intellectual professions, relating to daily
necessities of life, have hitherto existed — three exist
necessarily, in every civilised nation:
The Soldier’s profession is to defend it.
The Pastor’s to teach it.
The Physician’s to keep it in health.
The lawyer’s to enforce justice in it.
The Merchant’s to provide for it.
And the duty of all these men is, on due occasion, to die for it.
“On due occasion,” namely: –
The Soldier, rather than leave his post in battle.
The Physician, rather than leave his post in plague.
The Pastor, rather than teach Falsehood.
The lawyer, rather than countenance Injustice.
The Merchant-what is his “due occasion” of death?
It is the main question for the merchant, as for all of us.
For, truly, the man who does not know when to die, does not know
how to live.
Observe, the merchant’s function (or manufacturer’s, for in
the broad sense in which it is here used the word must be
understood to include both) is to provide for the nation. It is
no more his function to get profit for himself out of that
provision than it is a clergyman’s function to get his stipend.
This stipend is a due and necessary adjunct, but not the object
of his life, if he be a true clergyman, any more than his fee (or
honorarium) is the object of life to a true physician. Neither is
his fee the object of life to a true merchant. All three, if true
men, have a work to be done irrespective of fee — to be done
even at any cost, or for quite the contrary of fee; the pastor’s
function being to teach, the physician’s to heal, and the
merchant’s, as I have said, to provide. That is to say, he has to
understand to their very root the qualities of the thing he deals
in, and the means of obtaining or producing it; and he has to
apply all his sagacity and energy to the producing or obtaining
it in perfect state, and distributing it at the cheapest possible
price where it is most needed.
And because the production or obtaining of any commodity
involves necessarily the agency of many lives and hands, the
merchant becomes in the course of his business the master and
governor of large masses of men in a more direct, though less
confessed way, than a military officer or pastor; so that on him
falls, in great part, the responsibility for the kind of life
they lead: and it becomes his duty, not only to be always
considering how to produce what he sells, in the purest and
cheapest forms, but how to make the various employments involved
in the production, or transference of it, most beneficial to the
men employed.
And as into these two functions, requiring for their right
exercise the highest intelligence, as well as patience, kindness,
and tact, the merchant is bound to put all his energy, so for
their just discharge he is bound, as soldier or physician is
bound, to give up, if need be, his life, in such way as it may be
demanded of him. Two main points he has in his providing function
to maintain: first, his engagements (faithfulness to engagements
being the real root of all possibilities, in commerce); and,
secondly, the perfectness and purity of the thing provided; so
that, rather than fail in any engagement, or consent to any
deterioration, adulteration, or unjust and exorbitant price of
that which he provides, he is bound to meet fearlessly any form
of distress, poverty, or labour, which may, through maintenance
of these points, come upon him.
Again: in his office as governor of the men employed by him,
the merchant or manufacturer is invested with a distinctly
paternal authority and responsibility. In most cases, a youth
entering a commercial establishment is withdrawn altogether from
home influence; his master must become his father, else he has,
for practical and constant help, no father at hand: in all cases
the master’s authority, together with the general tone and
atmosphere of his business, and the character of the men with
whom the youth is compelled in the course of it to associate,
have more immediate and pressing weight than the home influence,
and will usually neutralize it either for good or evil; so that
the only means which the master has of doing justice to the men
employed by him is to ask himself sternly whether he is dealing
with such subordinate as he would with his own son, if compelled
by circumstances to take such a position.
Supposing the captain of a frigate saw it right, or were by
any chance obliged, to place his own son in the position of a
common sailor: as he would then treat his son, he is bound always
to treat every one of the men under him. So, also, supposing the
master of a manufactory saw it right, or were by any chance
obliged, to place his own son in the position of an ordinary
workman; as he would then treat his son, he is bound always to
treat every one of his men. This is the only effective, true, or
practical Rule which can be given on this point of political
economy.
And as the captain of a ship is bound to be the last man to
leave his ship in case of wreck, and to share his last crust with
the sailors in case of famine, so the manufacturer, in any
commercial crisis or distress, is bound to take the suffering of
it with his men, and even to take more of it for himself than he
allows his men to feel; as a father would in a famine, shipwreck,
or battle, sacrifice himself for his son.
All which sounds very strange: the only real strangeness in
the matter being, nevertheless, that it should so sound. For all
this is true, and that not partially nor theoretically, but
everlastingly and practically: all other doctrine than this
respecting matters political being false in premises, absurd in
deduction, and impossible in practice, consistently with any
progressive state of national life; all the life which we now
possess as a nation showing itself in the resolute denial and
scorn, by a few strong minds and faithful hearts, of the economic
principles taught to our multitudes, which principles, so far as
accepted, lead straight to national destruction. Respecting the
modes and forms of destruction to which they lead, and, on the
other hand, respecting the farther practical working of true
polity, I hope to reason farther in a following paper.}

^{The Veins of Wealth}

^{The answer which would be made by any ordinary political
economist to the statements contained in the preceding paper, is
in few words as follows:
“It is indeed true that certain advantages of a general
nature may be obtained by the development of social affections.
But political economists never professed, nor profess, to take
advantages of a general nature into consideration. Our science is
simply the science of getting rich. So far from being a
fallacious or visionary one, it is found by experience to be
practically effective. Persons who follow its precepts do
actually become rich, and persons who disobey them become poor.
Every capitalist of Europe has acquired his fortune by following
the known laws of our science, and increases his capital daily by
an adherence to them. It is vain to bring forward tricks of
logic, against the force of accomplished facts. Every man of
business knows by experience how money is made, and how it is
lost.”
Pardon me. Men of business do indeed know how they themselves
made their money, or how, on occasion, they lost it. Playing a
long-practised game, they are familiar with the chances of its
cards, and can rightly explain their losses and gains. But they
neither know who keeps the bank of the gambling-house, nor what
other games may be played with the same cards, nor what other
losses and gains, far away among the dark streets, are
essentially, though invisibly, dependent on theirs in the lighted
rooms. They have learned a few, and only a few, of the laws of
mercantile economy; but not one of those of political economy.
Primarily, which is very notable and curious, I observe that
men of business rarely know the meaning of the word “rich.” At
least, if they know, they do not in their reasonings allow for
the fact, that it is a relative word, implying its opposite
“poor” as positively as the word “north” implies its opposite
“south.” Men nearly always speak and write as if riches were
absolute, and it were possible, by following certain scientific
precepts, for everybody to be rich. Whereas riches are a power
like that of electricity, acting only through inequalities or
negations of itself. The force of the guinea you have in your
pocket depends wholly on the default of a guinea in your
neighbour’s pocket. If he did not want it, it would be of no use
to you; the degree of power it possesses depends accurately upon
the need or desire he has for it, — and the art of making
yourself rich, in the ordinary mercantile economist’s sense, is
therefore equally and necessarily the art of keeping your
neighbour poor.
I would not contend in this matter (and rarely in any matter)
for the acceptance of terms. But I wish the reader clearly and
deeply to understand the difference between the two economies, to
which the terms “Political” and “Mercantile” might not
unadvisedly be attached.
Political economy (the economy of a State, or of citizens)
consists simply in the production, preservation, and
distribution, at fittest time and place, of useful or pleasurable
things. The farmer who cuts his hay at the right time; the
shipwright who drives his bolts well home in sound wood; the
builder who lays good bricks in well-tempered mortar; the
housewife who takes care of her furniture in the parlour, and
guards against all waste in her kitchen; and the singer who
rightly disciplines, and never overstrains her voice, are all
political economists in the true and final sense: adding
continually to the riches and well-being of the nation to which
they belong.
But mercantile economy, the economy of “merces” or of “pay,”
signifies the accumulation, in the hands of individuals, of legal
or moral claim upon, or power over, the labour of others; every
such claim implying precisely as much poverty or debt on one
side, as it implies riches or right on the other.
It does not, therefore, necessarily involve an addition to
the actual property, or well-being, of the State in which it
exists. But since this commercial wealth, or power over labour,
is nearly always convertible at once into real property, while
real property is not always convertible at once into power over
labour, the idea of riches among active men in civilized nations,
generally refers to commercial wealth; and in estimating their
possessions, they rather calculate the value of their horses and
fields by the number of guineas they could get for them, than the
value of their guineas by the number of horses and fields they
could buy with them.
There is, however, another reason for this habit of mind;
namely, that an accumulation of real property is of little use to
its owner, unless, together with it, he has commercial power over
labour. Thus, suppose any person to be put in possession of a
large estate of fruitful land, with rich beds of gold in its
gravel, countless herds of cattle in its pastures; houses, and
gardens, and storehouses full of useful stores; but suppose,
after all, that he could get no servants? In order that he may be
able to have servants, some one in his neighbourhood must be
poor, and in want of his gold — or his corn. Assume that no one
is in want of either, and that no servants are to be had. He
must, therefore, bake his own bread, make his own clothes, plough
his own ground, and shepherd his own flocks. His gold will be as
useful to him as any other yellow pebbles on his estate. His
stores must rot, for he cannot consume them. He can eat no more
than another man could eat, and wear no more than another man
could wear. He must lead a life of severe and common labour to
procure even ordinary comforts; he will be ultimately unable to
keep either houses in repair, or fields in cultivation; and
forced to content himself with a poor man’s portion of cottage
and garden, in the midst of a desert of waste land, trampled by
wild cattle, and encumbered by ruins of palaces, which he will
hardly mock at himself by calling “his own.”
The most covetous of mankind would, with small exultation, I
presume, accept riches of this kind on these terms. What is
really desired, under the name of riches, is essentially, power
over men; in its simplest sense, the power of obtaining for our
own advantage the labour of servant, tradesman, and artist; in
wider sense, authority of directing large masses of the nation to
various ends (good, trivial or hurtful, according to the mind of
the rich person). And this power of wealth of course is greater
or less in direct proportion to the poverty of the men over whom
it is exercised, and in inverse proportion to the number of
persons who are as rich as ourselves, and who are ready to give
the same price for an article of which the supply is limited. If
the musician is poor, he will sing for small pay, as long as
there is only one person who can pay him; but if there be two or
three, he will sing for the one who offers him most. And thus the
power of the riches of the patron (always imperfect and doubtful,
as we shall see presently, even when most authoritative) depends
first on the poverty of the artist, and then on the limitation of
the number of equally wealthy persons, who also want seats at the
concert. So that, as above stated, the art of becoming “rich,” in
the common sense, is not absolutely nor finally the art of
accumulating much money for ourselves, but also of contriving
that our neighbours shall have less. In accurate terms, it is
“the art of establishing the maximum inequality in our own
favour.”
Now, the establishment of such inequality cannot be shown in
the abstract to be either advantageous or disadvantageous to the
body of the nation. The rash and absurd assumption that such
inequalities are necessarily advantageous, lies at the root of
most of the popular fallacies on the subject of political
economy. For the eternal and inevitable law in this matter is,
that the beneficialness of the inequality depends, first, on the
methods by which it was accomplished; and, secondly, on the
purposes to which it is applied. Inequalities of wealth, unjustly
established, have assuredly injured the nation in which they
exist during their establishment; and, unjustly directed, injure
it yet more during their existence. But inequalities of wealth,
justly established, benefit the nation in the course of their
establishment; and, nobly used, aid it yet more by their
existence. That is to say, among every active and well-governed
people, the various strength of individuals, tested by full
exertion and specially applied to various need, issues in
unequal, but harmonious results, receiving reward or authority
according to its class and service;(2*) while, in the inactive or
ill-governed nation, the gradations of decay and the victories of
treason work out also their own rugged system of subjection and
success; and substitute, for the melodious inequalities of
concurrent power, the iniquitous dominances and depressions of
guilt and misfortune.
Thus the circulation of wealth in a nation resembles that of
the blood in the natural body. There is one quickness of the
current which comes of cheerful emotion or wholesome exercise;
and another which comes of shame or of fever. There is a flush of
the body which is full of warmth and life; and another which will
pass into putrefaction.
The analogy will hold down even to minute particulars. For as
diseased local determination of the blood involves depression of
the general health of the system, all morbid local action of
riches will be found ultimately to involve a weakening of the
resources of the body politic.
The mode in which this is produced may be at once understood
by examining one or two instances of the development of wealth in
the simplest possible circumstances.
Suppose two sailors cast away on an uninhabited coast, and
obliged to maintain themselves there by their own labour for a
series of years.
If they both kept their health, and worked steadily and in
amity with each other, they might build themselves a convenient
house, and in time come to possess a certain quantity of
cultivated land, together with various stores laid up for future
use. All these things would be real riches or property; and,
supposing the men both to have worked equally hard, they would
each have right to equal share or use of it. Their political
economy would consist merely in careful preservation and just
division of these possessions. Perhaps, however, after some time
one or other might be dissatisfied with the results of their
common farming; and they might in consequence agree to divide the
land they had brought under the spade into equal shares, so that
each might thenceforward work in his own field, and live by it.
Suppose that after this arrangement had been made, one of them
were to fall ill, and be unable to work on his land at a critical
time — say of sowing or harvest.
He would naturally ask the other to sow or reap for him.
Then his companion might say, with perfect justice, “I will
do this additional work for you; but if I do it, you must promise
to do as much for me at another time. I will count how many hours
I spend on your ground, and you shall give me a written promise
to work for the same number of hours on mine, whenever I need
your help, and you are able to give it.” Suppose the disabled
man’s sickness to continue, and that under various circumstances,
for several years, requiring the help of the other, he on each
occasion gave a written pledge to work, as soon as he was able,
at his companion’s orders, for the same number of hours which the
other had given up to him. What will the positions of the two men
be when the invalid is able to resume work?
Considered as a “Polis,” or state, they will be poorer than
they would have been otherwise: poorer by the withdrawal of what
the sick man’s labour would have produced in the interval. His
friend may perhaps have toiled with an energy quickened by the
enlarged need, but in the end his own land and property must have
suffered by the withdrawal of so much of his time and thought
from them: and the united property of the two men will be
certainly less than it would have been if both had remained in
health and activity.
But the relations in which they stand to each other are also
widely altered. The sick man has not only pledged his labour for
some years, but will probably have exhausted his own share of the
accumulated stores, and will be in consequence for some time
dependent on the other for food, which he can only “pay” or
reward him for by yet more deeply pledging his own labour.
Supposing the written promises to be held entirely valid
(among civilized nations their validity is secured by legal
measures(3*)), the person who had hitherto worked for both might
now, if he chose, rest altogether, and pass his time in idleness,
not only forcing his companion to redeem all the engagements he
had already entered into, but exacting from him pledges for
further labour, to an arbitrary amount, for what food he had to
advance to him.
There might not, from first to last, be the least illegality
(in the ordinary sense of the word) in the arrangement; but if a
stranger arrived on the coast at this advanced epoch of their
political economy, he would find one man commercially Rich; the
other commercially Poor. He would see, perhaps, with no small
surprise, one passing his days in idleness; the other labouring
for both, and living sparely, in the hope of recovering his
independence at some distant period.
This is, of course, an example of one only out of many ways
in which inequality of possession may be established between
different persons, giving rise to the Mercantile forms of Riches
and Poverty. In the instance before us, one of the men might from
the first have deliberately chosen to be idle, and to put his
life in pawn for present ease; or he might have mismanaged his
land, and been compelled to have recourse to his neighbour for
food and help, pledging his future labour for it. But what I want
the reader to note especially is the fact, common to a large
number of typical cases of this kind, that the establishment of
the mercantile wealth which consists in a claim upon labour,
signifies a political diminution of the real wealth which
consists in substantial possessions.
Take another example, more consistent with the ordinary
course of affairs of trade. Suppose that three men, instead of
two, formed the little isolated republic, and found themselves
obliged to separate, in order to farm different pieces of land at
some distance from each other along the coast: each estate
furnishing a distinct kind of produce, and each more or less in
need of the material raised on the other. Suppose that the third
man, in order to save the time of all three, undertakes simply to
superintend the transference of commodities from one farm to the
other; on condition of receiving some sufficiently remunerative
share of every parcel of goods conveyed, or of some other parcel
received in exchange for it.
If this carrier or messenger always brings to each estate,
from the other, what is chiefly wanted, at the right time, the
operations of the two farmers will go on prosperously, and the
largest possible result in produce, or wealth, will be attained
by the little community. But suppose no intercourse between the
landowners is possible, except through the travelling agent; and
that, after a time, this agent, watching the course of each man’s
agriculture, keeps back the articles with which he has been
entrusted until there comes a period of extreme necessity for
them, on one side or other, and then exacts in exchange for them
all that the distressed farmer can spare of other kinds of
produce: it is easy to see that by ingeniously watching his
opportunities, he might possess himself regularly of the greater
part of the superfluous produce of the two estates, and at last,
in some year of severest trial or scarcity, purchase both for
himself and maintain the former proprietors thenceforward as his
labourers or servants.
This would be a case of commercial wealth acquired on the
exactest principles of modern political economy. But more
distinctly even than in the former instance, it is manifest in
this that the wealth of the State, or of the three men considered
as a society, is collectively less than it would have been had
the merchant been content with juster profit. The operations of
the two agriculturists have been cramped to the utmost; and the
continual limitations of the supply of things they wanted at
critical times, together with the failure of courage consequent
on the prolongation of a struggle for mere existence, without any
sense of permanent gain, must have seriously diminished the
effective results of their labour; and the stores finally
accumulated in the merchant’s hands will not in any wise be of
equivalent value to those which, had his dealings been honest,
would have filled at once the granaries of the farmers and his
own.
The whole question, therefore, respecting not only the
advantage, but even the quantity, of national wealth, resolves
itself finally into one of abstract justice. It is impossible to
conclude, of any given mass of acquired wealth, merely by the
fact of its existence, whether it signifies good or evil to the
nation in the midst of which it exists. Its real value depends on
the moral sign attached to it, just as sternly as that of a
mathematical quantity depends on the algebraical sign attached to
it. Any given accumulation of commercial wealth may be
indicative, on the one hand, of faithful industries, progressive
energies, and productive ingenuities: or, on the other, it may be
indicative of mortal luxury, merciless tyranny, ruinous chicane.
Some treasures are heavy with human tears, as an ill-stored
harvest with untimely rain; and some gold is brighter in sunshine
than it is in substance.
And these are not, observe, merely moral or pathetic
attributes of riches, which the seeker of riches may, if he
chooses, despise; they are, literally and sternly, material
attributes of riches, depreciating or exalting, incalculably, the
monetary signification of the sum in question. One mass of money
is the outcome of action which has created, another, of action
which has annihilated, — ten times as much in the gathering of
it; such and such strong hands have been paralyzed, as if they
had been numbed by nightshade: so many strong men’s courage
broken, so many productive operations hindered; this and the
other false direction given to labour, and lying image of
prosperity set up, on Dura plains dug into seven-times-heated
furnaces. That which seems to be wealth may in verity be only the
gilded index of far-reaching ruin: a wrecker’s handful of coin
gleaned from the beach to which he has beguiled an argosy; a
camp-follower’s bundle of rags unwrapped from the breasts of
goodly soldiers dead; the purchase-pieces of potter’s fields,
wherein shall be buried together the citizen and the stranger.
And therefore, the idea that directions can be given for the
gaining of wealth, irrespectively of the consideration of its
moral sources, or that any general and technical law of purchase
and gain can be set down for national practice, is perhaps the
most insolently futile of all that ever beguiled men through
their vices. So far as I know, there is not in history record of
anything so disgraceful to the human intellect as the modern idea
that the commercial text, “Buy in the cheapest market and sell in
the dearest,” represents, or under any circumstances could
represent, an available principle of national economy. Buy in the
cheapest market? yes; but what made your market cheap? Charcoal
may be cheap among your roof timbers after a fire, and bricks may
be cheap in your streets after an earthquake; but fire and
earthquake may not therefore he national benefits. Sell in the
dearest? — Yes, truly; but what made your market dear? You sold
your bread well to-day: was it to a dying man who gave his last
coin for it, and will never need bread more; or to a rich man who
to-morrow will buy your farm over your head; or to a soldier on
his way to pillage the bank in which you have put your fortune?
None of these things you can know. One thing only you can
know: namely, whether this dealing of yours is a just and
faithful one, which is all you need concern yourself about
respecting it; sure thus to have done your own part in bringing
about ultimately in the world a state of things which will not
issue in pillage or in death. And thus every question concerning
these things merges itself ultimately in the great question of
justice, which, the ground being thus far cleared for it. I will
enter upon the next paper, leaving only, in this, three final
points for the reader’s consideration.
It has been shown that the chief value and virtue of money
consists in its having power over human beings; that, without
this power, large material possessions are useless, and to any
person possessing such power, comparatively unnecessary. But
power over human beings is attainable by other means than by
money. As I said a few pages back, the money power is always
imperfect and doubtful; there are many things which cannot be
reached with it, others which cannot be retained by it. Many joys
may be given to men which cannot be bought for gold, and many
fidelities found in them which cannot be rewarded with it.
Trite enough, — the reader thinks. Yes: but it is not so
trite, — I wish it were, — that in this moral power, quite
inscrutable and immeasurable though it be, there is a monetary
value just as real as that represented by more ponderous
currencies. A man’s hand may be full of invisible gold, and the
wave of it, or the grasp, shall do more than another’s with a
shower of bullion. This invisible gold, also, does not
necessarily diminish in spending. Political economists will do
well some day to take heed of it, though they cannot take
measure.
But farther. Since the essence of wealth consists in its
authority over men, if the apparent or nominal wealth fail in
this power, it fails in essence; in fact, ceases to be wealth at
all. It does not appear lately in England, that our authority
over men is absolute. The servants show some disposition to rush
riotously upstairs, under an impression that their wages are not
regularly paid. We should augur ill of any gentleman’s property
to whom this happened every other day in his drawing-room.
So, also, the power of our wealth seems limited as respects
the comfort of the servants, no less than their quietude. The
persons in the kitchen appear to be ill-dressed, squalid,
half-starved. One cannot help imagining that the riches of the
establishment must be of a very theoretical and documentary
character.
Finally. Since the essence of wealth consists in power over
men, will it not follow that the nobler and the more in number
the persons are over whom it has power, the greater the wealth?
Perhaps it may even appear, after some consideration, that the
persons themselves are the wealth that these pieces of gold with
which we are in the habit of guiding them, are, in fact, nothing
more than a kind of Byzantine harness or trappings, very
glittering and beautiful in barbaric sight, wherewith we bridle
the creatures; but that if these same living creatures could be
guided without the fretting and jingling of the Byzants in their
mouths and ears, they might themselves be more valuable than
their bridles. In fact, it may be discovered that the true veins
of wealth are purple — and not in Rock, but in Flesh — perhaps
even that the final outcome and consummation of all wealth is in
the producing as many as possible full-breathed, bright-eyed, and
happy-hearted human creatures. Our modern wealth, I think, has
rather a tendency the other way; — most political economists
appearing to consider multitudes of human creatures not conducive
to wealth, or at best conducive to it only by remaining in a
dim-eyed and narrow-chested state of being.
Nevertheless, it is open, I repeat, to serious question,
which I leave to the reader’s pondering, whether, among national
manufactures, that of Souls of a good quality may not at last
turn out a quite leadingly lucrative one? Nay, in some far-away
and yet undreamt-of hour, I can even imagine that England may
cast all thoughts of possessive wealth back to the barbaric
nations among whom they first arose; and that, while the sands of
the Indus and adamant of Golconda may yet stiffen the housings of
the charger, and flash from the turban of the slave, she, as a
Christian mother, may at last attain to the virtues and the
treasures of a Heathen one, and be able to lead forth her Sons,
saying, —
“These are My Jewels.”}

^{Qui Judicatis Terram}

^{Some centuries before the Christian era, a Jew merchant
largely engaged in business on the Gold Coast, and reported to
have made one of the largest fortunes of his time, (held also in
repute for much practical sagacity,) left among his ledgers some
general maxims concerning wealth, which have been preserved,
strangely enough, even to our own days. They were held in
considerable respect by the most active traders of the middle
ages, especially by the Venetians, who even went so far in their
admiration as to place a statue of the old Jew on the angle of
one of their principal public buildings. Of late years these
writings have fallen into disrepute, being opposed in every
particular to the spirit of modern commerce. Nevertheless I shall
reproduce a passage or two from them here, partly because they
may interest the reader by their novelty; and chiefly because
they will show him that it is possible for a very practical and
acquisitive tradesman to hold, through a not unsuccessful career,
that principle of distinction between well-gotten and ill-gotten
wealth, which, partially insisted on in my last paper, it must be
our work more completely to examine in this.
He says, for instance, in one place: “The getting of
treasures by a lying tongue is a vanity tossed to and fro of them
that see death: “adding in another, with the same meaning (he has
a curious way of doubling his sayings): “Treasures of wickedness
profit nothing: but justice delivers from death.” Both these
passages are notable for their assertion of death as the only
real issue and sum of attainment by any unjust scheme of wealth.
If we read, instead of “lying tongue,” “lying label, title,
pretence, or advertisement,” we shall more clearly perceive the
bearing of the words on modern business. The seeking of death is
a grand expression of the true course of men’s toil in such
business. We usually speak as if death pursued us, and we fled
from him; but that is only so in rare instances. Ordinarily he
masks himself — makes himself beautiful — all-glorious; not
like the King’s daughter, all-glorious within, but outwardly: his
clothing of wrought gold. We pursue him frantically all our days,
he flying or hiding from us. Our crowning success at three-score
and ten is utterly and perfectly to seize, and hold him in his
eternal integrity — robes, ashes, and sting.
Again: the merchant says, “He that oppresseth the poor to
increase his riches, shall surely come to want.” And again, more
strongly: “Rob not the poor because he is poor; neither oppress
the afflicted in the place of business. For God shall spoil the
soul of those that spoiled them.”
This “robbing the poor because he is poor,” is especially the
mercantile form of theft, consisting in talking advantage of a
man’s necessities in order to obtain his labour or property at a
reduced price. The ordinary highwayman’s opposite form of robbery
— of the rich, because he is rich — does not appear to occur so
often to the old merchant’s mind; probably because, being less
profitable and more dangerous than the robbery of the poor, it is
rarely practised by persons of discretion.
But the two most remarkable passages in their deep general
significance are the following: —
“The rich and the poor have met. God is their maker.”
“The rich and the poor have met. God is their light.”
They “have met:” more literally, have stood in each other’s
way (obviaverunt). That is to say, as long as the world lasts,
the action and counteraction of wealth and poverty, the meeting,
face to face, of rich and poor, is just as appointed and
necessary a law of that world as the flow of stream to sea, or
the interchange of power among the electric clouds: — “God is
their maker.” But, also, this action may be either gentle and
just, or convulsive and destructive: it may be by rage of
devouring flood, or by lapse of serviceable wave; — in blackness
of thunderstroke, or continual force of vital fire, soft, and
shapeable into love-syllables from far away. And which of these
it shall be depends on both rich and poor knowing that God is
their light; that in the mystery of human life, there is no other
light than this by which they can see each other’s faces, and
live; — light, which is called in another of the books among
which the merchant’s maxims have been preserved, the “sun of
justice,”(4*) of which it is promised that it shall rise at last
with “healing” (health-giving or helping, making whole or setting
at one) in its wings. For truly this healing is only possible by
means of justice; no love, no faith, no hope will do it; men will
be unwisely fond-vainly faithful, unless primarily they are just;
and the mistake of the best men through generation after
generation, has been that great one of thinking to help the poor
by almsgiving, and by preaching of patience or of hope, and by
every other means, emollient or consolatory, except the one thing
which God orders for them, justice. But this justice, with its
accompanying holiness or helpfulness, being even by the best men
denied in its trial time, is by the mass of men hated wherever it
appears: so that, when the choice was one day fairly put to them,
they denied the Helpful One and the Just;(5*) and desired a
murderer, sedition-raiser, and robber, to be gran ted to them; —
the murderer instead of the Lord of Life, the sedition-raiser
instead of the Prince of Peace, and the robber instead of the
Just Judge of all the world.
I have just spoken of the flowing of streams to the sea as a
partial image of the action of wealth. In one respect it is not a
partial, but a perfect image. The popular economist thinks
himself wise in having discovered that wealth, or the forms of
property in general, must go where they are required; that where
demand is, supply must follow. He farther declares that this
course of demand and supply cannot be forbidden by human laws.
Precisely in the same sense, and with the same certainty, the
waters of the world go where they are required. Where the land
falls, the water flows. The course neither of clouds nor rivers
can be forbidden by human will. But the disposition and
administration of them can be altered by human forethought.
Whether the stream shall be a curse or a blessing, depends upon
man’s labour, and administrating intelligence. For centuries
after centuries, great districts of the world, rich in soil, and
favoured in climate, have lain desert under the rage of their own
rivers; nor only desert, but plague-struck. The stream which,
rightly directed, would have flowed in soft irrigation from field
to field — would have purified the air, given food to man and
beast, and carried their burdens for them on its bosom — now
overwhelms the plain, and poisons the wind; its breath
pestilence, and its work famine. In like manner this wealth “goes
where it is required.” No human laws can withstand its flow. They
can only guide it: but this, the lending trench and limiting
mound can do so thoroughly, that it shall become water of life —
the riches of the hand of wisdom;(6*) or, on the contrary, by
leaving it to its own lawless flow, they may make it, what it has
been too often, the last and deadliest of national plagues: water
of Marah — the water which feeds the roots of all evil.
The necessity of these laws of distribution or restraint is
curiously over-looked in the ordinary political economist’s
definition of his own “science.” He calls it, shortly, the
“science of getting rich.” But there are many sciences, as well
as many arts, of getting rich. Poisoning people of large estates,
was one employed largely in the middle ages; adulteration of food
of people of small estates, is one employed largely now. The
ancient and honourable Highland method of blackmail; the more
modern and less honourable system of obtaining goods on credit,
and the other variously improved methods of appropriation —
which, in major and minor scales of industry, down to the most
artistic pocket-picking, we owe to recent genius, — all come
under the general head of sciences, or arts, of getting rich.
So that it is clear the popular economist, in calling his
science the science par excellence of getting rich, must attach
some peculiar ideas of limitation to its character. I hope I do
not misrepresent him, by assuming that he means his science to be
the science of “getting rich by legal or just means.” In this
definition, is the word “just,” or “legal,” finally to stand? For
it is possible among certain nations, or under certain rulers, or
by help of certain advocates, that proceedings may be legal which
are by no means just. If, therefore, we leave at last only the
word “just” in that place of our definition, the insertion of
this solitary and small word will make a notable difference in
the grammar of our science. For then it will follow that, in
order to grow rich scientifically, we must grow rich justly; and,
therefore, know what is just; so that our economy will no longer
depend merely on prudence, but on jurisprudence — and that of
divine, not human law. Which prudence is indeed of no mean order,
holding itself, as it were, high in the air of heaven, and gazing
for ever on the light of the sun of justice; hence the souls
which have excelled in it are represented by Dante as stars,
forming in heaven for ever the figure of the eye of an eagle:
they having been in life the discerners of light from darkness;
or to the whole human race, as the light of the body, which is
the eye; while those souls which form the wings of the bird
(giving power and dominion to justice, “healing in its wings”)
trace also in light the inscription in heaven: “DILIGITE
JUSTITIAM QUI JUDICATIS TERRAM.” “Ye who judge the earth, give”
(not, observe, merely love, but) “diligent love to justice:” the
love which seeks diligently, that is to say, choosingly, and by
preference, to all things else. Which judging or doing judgment
in the earth is, according to their capacity and position,
required not of judges only, nor of rulers only, but of all
men:(7*) a truth sorrowfully lost sight of even by those who are
ready enough to apply to themselves passages in which Christian
men are spoken of as called to be “saints” (i.e. to helpful or
healing functions); and “chosen to be kings” (i.e. to knowing or
directing functions); the true meaning of these titles having
been long lost through the pretences of unhelpful and unable
persons to saintly and kingly character; also through the once
popular idea that both the sanctity and royalty are to consist in
wearing long robes and high crowns, instead of in mercy and
judgment; whereas all true sanctity is saving power, as all true
royalty is ruling power; and injustice is part and parcel of the
denial of such power, which “makes men as the creeping things, as
the fishes of the sea, that have no ruler over them.”(8*)
Absolute justice is indeed no more attainable than absolute
truth; but the righteous man is distinguished from the
unrighteous by his desire and hope of justice, as the true man
from the false by his desire and hope of truth. And though
absolute justice be unattainable, as much justice as we need for
all practical use is attainable by all those who make it their
aim.
We have to examine, then, in the subject before us, what are
the laws of justice respecting payment of labour — no small
part, these, of the foundations of all jurisprudence.
I reduced, in my last paper, the idea of money payment to its
simplest or radical terms. In those terms its nature, and the
conditions of justice respecting it, can be best ascertained.
Money payment, as there stated, consists radically in a
promise to some person working for us, that for the time and
labour he spends in our service to-day we will give or procure
equivalent time and labour in his service at any future time when
he may demand it.(9*)
If we promise to give him less labour than he has given us,
we under-pay him. If we promise to give him more labour than he
has given us, we over-pay him. In practice, according to the laws
of demand and supply, when two men are ready to do the work, and
only one man wants to have it done, the two men underbid each
other for it; and the one who gets it to do, is under-paid. But
when two men want the work done, and there is only one man ready
to do it, the two men who want it done over-bid each other, and
the workman is over-paid.
I will examine these two points of injustice in succession;
but first I wish the reader to clearly understand the central
principle, lying between the two, of right or just payment.
When we ask a service of any man, he may either give it us
freely, or demand payment for it. Respecting free gift of
service, there is no question at present, that being a matter of
affection — not of traffic. But if he demand payment for it, and
we wish to treat him with absolute equity, it is evident that
this equity can only consist in giving time for time, strength
for strength, and skill for skill. If a man works an hour for us,
and we only promise to work half-an-hour for him in return, we
obtain an unjust advantage. If, on the contrary, we promise to
work an hour and a half for him in return, he has an unjust
advantage. The justice consists in absolute exchange; or, if
there be any respect to the stations of the parties, it will not
be in favour of the employer: there is certainly no equitable
reason in a main’s being poor, that if he give me a pound of
bread to-day, I should return him less than a pound of bread
to-morrow; or any equitable reason in a man’s being uneducated,
that if he uses a certain quantity of skill and knowledge in my
service, I should use a less quantity of skill and knowledge in
his. Perhaps, ultimately, it may appear desirable, or, to say the
least, gracious, that I should give in return somewhat more than
I received. But at present, we are concerned on the law of
justice only, which is that of perfect and accurate exchange; —
one circumstance only interfering with the simplicity of this
radical idea of just payment — that inasmuch as labour (rightly
directed) is fruitful just as seed is, the fruit (or “interest,”
as it is called) of the labour first given, or “advanced,” ought
to be taken into account, and balanced by an additional quantity
of labour in the subsequent repayment. Supposing the repayment to
take place at the end of a year, or of any other given time, this
calculation could be approximately made; but as money (that is to
say, cash) payment involves no reference to time (it being
optional with the person paid to spend what he receives at once
or after any number of years), we can only assume, generally,
that some slight advantage must in equity be allowed to the
person who advances the labour, so that the typical form of
bargain will be: If you give me an hour to-day, I will give you
an hour and five minutes on demand. If you give me a pound of
bread to day, I will give you seventeen ounces on demand, and so
on. All that it is necessary for the reader to note is, that the
amount returned is at least in equity not to be less than the
amount given.
The abstract idea, then, of just or due wages, as respects
the labourer, is that they will consist in a sum of money which
will at any time procure for him at least as much labour as he
has given, rather more than less. And this equity or justice of
payment is, observe, wholly independent of any reference to the
number of men who are willing to do the work. I want a horseshoe
for my horse. Twenty smiths, or twenty thousand smiths, may be
ready to forge it; their number does not in one atom’s weight
affect the question of the equitable payment of the one who does
forge it. It costs him a quarter of an hour of his life, and so
much skill and strength of arm to make that horseshoe for me.
Then at some future time I am bound in equity to give a quarter
of an hour, and some minutes more, of my life (or of some other
person’s at my disposal), and also as much strength of arm and
skill, and a little more, in making or doing what the smith may
have need of.
Such being the abstract theory of just remunerative payment,
its application is practically modified by the fact that the
order for labour, given in payment, is general, while labour
received is special. The current coin or document is practically
an order on the nation for so much work of any kind; and this
universal applicability to immediate need renders it so much more
valuable than special labour can be, that an order for a less
quantity of this general toil will always be accepted as a just
equivalent for a greater quantity of special toil. Any given
craftsman will always be willing to give an hour of his own work
in order to receive command over half-an-hour, or even much less,
of national work. This source of uncertainty, together. with the
difficulty of determining the monetary value of skill,(10*)
renders the ascertainment (even approximate) of the proper wages
of any given labour in terms of a currency matter of considerable
complexity. But they do not affect the principle of exchange. The
worth of the work may not be easily known; but it has a worth,
just as fixed and real as the specific gravity of a substance,
though such specific gravity may not be easily ascertainable when
the substance is united with many others. Nor is there so much
difficulty or chance in determining it as in determining the
ordinary maxima and minima of vulgar political economy. There are
few bargains in which the buyer can ascertain with anything like
precision that the seller would have taken no less; — or the
seller acquire more than a comfortable faith that the purchaser
would have given no more. This impossibility of precise knowledge
prevents neither from striving to attain the desired point of
greatest vexation and injury to the other, nor from accepting it
for a scientific principle that he is to buy for the least and
sell for the most possible, though what the real least or most
may be he cannot tell. In like manner, a just person lays it down
for a scientific principle that he is to pay a just price, and,
without being able precisely to ascertain the limits of such a
price, will nevertheless strive to attain the closest possible
approximation to them. A practically serviceable approximation he
can obtain. It is easier to determine scientifically what a man
ought to have for his work, than what his necessities will compel
him to take for it. His necessities can only be ascertained by
empirical, but his due by analytical, investigation. In the one
case, you try your answer to the sum like a puzzled schoolboy —
till you find one that fits; in the other, you bring out your
result within certain limits, by process of calculation.
Supposing, then, the just wages of any quantity of given
labour to have been ascertained, let us examine the first results
of just and unjust payment, when in favour of the purchaser or
employer; i.e. when two men are ready to do the work, and only
one wants to have it done.
The unjust purchaser forces the two to bid against each other
till he has reduced their demand to its lowest terms. Let us
assume that the lowest bidder offers to do the work at half its
just price.
The purchaser employs him, and does not employ the other. The
first or apparent result is, therefore, that one of the two men
is left out of employ, or to starvation, just as definitely as by
the just procedure of giving fair price to the best workman. The
various writers who endeavoured to invalidate the positions of my
first paper never saw this, and assumed that the unjust hirer
employed both. He employs both no more than the just hirer. The
only difference (in the outset, is that the just man pays
sufficiently, the unjust man insufficiently, for the labour of
the single person employed.
I say, “in the outset;” for this first or apparent,
difference is not the actual difference. By the unjust procedure,
half the proper price of the work is left in the hands of the
employer. This enables him to hire another man at the same unjust
rate, on some other kind of work; and the final result is that he
has two men working for him at half price, and two are out of
employ.
By the just procedure, the whole price of the first piece of
work goes in the hands of the man who does it. No surplus being
left in the employer’s hands, he cannot hire another man for
another piece of labour. But by precisely so much as his power is
diminished, the hired workman’s power is increased; that is to
say, by the additional half of the price he has received; which
additional half he has the power of using to employ another man
in his service. I will suppose, for the moment, the least
favourable, though quite probable, case — that, though justly
treated himself, he yet will act unjustly to his subordinate; and
hire at half-price, if he can. The final result will then be,
that one man works for the employer, at just price; one for the
workman, at half-price; and two, as in the first case, are still
out of employ. These two, as I said before, are out of employ in
both cases. The difference between the just and unjust procedure
does not lie in the number of men hired, but in the price paid to
them, and the persons by whom it is paid. The essential
difference, that which I want the reader to see clearly, is, that
in the unjust case, two men work for one, the first hirer. In the
just case, one man works for the first hirer, one for the person
hired, and so on, down or up through the various grades of
service; the influence being carried forward by justice, and
arrested by injustice. The universal and constant action of
justice in this matter is therefore to diminish the power oF
wealth, in the hands of one individual, over masses of men, and
to distribute it through a chain of men. The actual power exerted
by the wealth is the same in both cases; but by injustice it is
put all into one man’s hands, so that he directs at once and with
equal force the labour of a circle of men about him; by the just
procedure, he is permitted to touch the nearest only, through
whom, with diminished force, modified by new minds, the energy of
the wealth passes on to others, and so till it exhausts itself.
The immediate operation of justice in this respect is
therefore to diminish the power of wealth, first in acquisition
of luxury, and, secondly, in exercise of moral influence. The
employer cannot concentrate so multitudinous labour on his own
interests, nor can he subdue so multitudinous mind to his own
will. But the secondary operation of justice is not less
important. The insufficient payment of the group of men working
for one, places each under a maximum of difficulty in rising
above his position. The tendency of the system is to check
advancement. But the sufficient or just payment, distributed
through a descending series oF offices or grades or labour,(11*)
gives each subordinated person fair and sufficient means of
rising in the social scale, if he chooses to use them; and thus
not only diminishes the immediate power of wealth, but removes
the worst disabilities of poverty.
It is on this vital problem that the entire destiny of the
labourer is ultimately dependent. Many minor interests may
sometimes appear to interfere with it, but all branch from it.
For instance, considerable agitation is often caused in the minds
of the lower classes when they discover the share which they
nominally, and to all appearance, actually, pay out of their
wages in taxation (I believe thirty-five or forty per cent). This
sounds very grievous; but in reality the labourer does not pay
it, but his employer. If the workman had not to pay it, his wages
would be less by just that sum: competition would still reduce
them to the lowest rate at which life was possible. Similarly the
lower orders agitated for the repeal of the corn laws,(12*)
thinking they would be better off if bread were cheaper; never
perceiving that as soon as bread was permanently cheaper, wages
would permanently fall in precisely that proportion. The corn
laws were rightly repealed; not, however, because they directly
oppressed the poor, but because they indirectly oppressed them in
causing a large quantity of their labour to be consumed
unproductively. So also unnecessary taxation oppresses them,
through destruction of capital, but the destiny of the poor
depends primarily always on this one question of dueness of
wages. Their distress (irrespectively of that caused by sloth,
minor error, or crime) arises on the grand scale from the two
reacting forces of competition and oppression. There is not yet,
nor will yet for ages be, any real over-population in the world;
but a local over-population, or, more accurately, a degree of
population locally unmanageable under existing circumstances for
want of forethought and sufficient machinery, necessarily shows
itself by pressure of competition; and the taking advantage of
this competition by the purchaser to obtain their labour unjustly
cheap, consummates at once their suffering and his own; for in
this (as I believe in every other kind of slavery) the oppressor
suffers at last more than the oppressed, and those magnificent
lines of Pope, even in all their force, fall short of the truth
—}

^{“Yet, to be just to these poor men of pelf,
Each does but HATE HIS NEIGHBOUR AS HIMSELF:
Damned to the mines, an equal fate betides
The slave that digs it, and the slave that hides.”}

^{The collateral and reversionary operations of justice in this
matter I shall examine hereafter (it being needful first to
define the nature of value); proceeding then to consider within
what practical terms a juster system may be established; and
ultimately the vexed question of the destinies of the unemployed
workmen.(13*) Lest, however, the reader should be alarmed at some
of the issues to which our investigations seem to be tending, as
if in their bearing against the power of wealth they had
something in common with those of socialism, I wish him to know
in accurate terms, one or two of the main points which I have in
view.
Whether socialism has made more progress among the army and
navy (where payment is made on my principles), or among the
manufacturing operatives (who are paid on my opponents’
principles), I leave it to those opponents to ascertain and
declare. Whatever their conclusion may be, I think it necessary
to answer for myself only this: that if there be any one point
insisted on throughout my works more frequently than another,
that one point is the impossibility of Equality. My continual aim
has been to show the eternal superiority of some men to others,
sometimes even of one man to all others; and to show also the
advisability of appointing such persons or person to guide, to
lead, or on occasion even to compel and subdue, their inferiors,
according to their own better knowledge and wiser will. My
principles of Political Economy were all involved in a single
phrase spoken three years ago at Manchester. “Soldiers of the
Ploughshare as well as soldiers of the Sword:” and they were all
summed in a single sentence in the last volume of Modern Painters
— “Government and co-operation are in all things the Laws of
Life; Anarchy and competition the Laws of Death.”
And with respect to the mode in which these general
principles affect the secure possession of property, so far am I
from invalidating such security, that the whole gist of these
papers will be found ultimately to aim at an extension in its
range; and whereas it has long been known and declared that the
poor have no right to the property of the rich, I wish it also to
be known and declared that the rich have no right to the property
of the poor.
But that the working of the system which I have undertaken to
develope would in many ways shorten the apparent and direct,
though not the unseen and collateral, power, both of wealth, as
the Lady of Pleasure, and of capital as the Lord of Toil, I do
not deny on the contrary, I affirm it in all joyfulness; knowing
that the attraction of riches is already too strong, as their
authority is already too weighty, for the reason of mankind. I
said in my last paper that nothing in history had ever been so
disgraceful to human intellect as the acceptance among us of the
common doctrines of political economy as a science. I have many
grounds for saying this, but one of the chief may be given in few
words. I know no previous instance in history of a nation’s
establishing a systematic disobedience to the first principles of
its professed religion. The writings which we (verbally) esteem
as divine, not only denounce the love of money as the source of
all evil, and as an idolatry abhorred of the Deity, but declare
mammon service to be the accurate and irreconcileable opposite of
God’s service: and, whenever they speak of riches absolute, and
poverty absolute, declare woe to the rich, and blessing to the
poor. Where upon we forthwith investigate a science of becoming
rich as the shortest road to national prosperity.}

^{“Tai Cristian dannera l’ Etiope,
Quando si partiranno i due collegi,
L’UNO IN ETERNO RICCO, E L’ALTRO INOPE.”}

^{Ad Valorem}

^{We saw that just payment of labour consisted in a sum of
money which would approximately obtain equivalent labour at a
future time: we have now to examine the means of obtaining such
equivalence. Which question involves the definition of Value,
Wealth, Price, and Produce.
None of these terms are yet defined so as to be understood by
the public. But the last, Produce, which one might have thought
the clearest of all, is, in use, the most ambiguous; and the
examination of the kind of ambiguity attendant on its present
employment will best open the way to our work.
In his chapter on Capital,(14*) Mr J.S. Mill instances, as a
capitalist, a hardware manufacturer, who, having intended to
spend a certain portion of the proceeds of his business in buying
plate and jewels, changes his mind, and, ‘pays it as wages to
additional workpeople.” The effect is stated by Mr Mill to be,
that “more food is appropriated to the consumption of productive
labourers.”
Now I do not ask, though, had I written this paragraph, it
would surely have been asked of me, What is to become of the
silversmiths? If they are truly unproductive persons, we will
acquiesce in their extinction. And though in another part of the
same passage, the hardware merchant is supposed also to dispense
with a number of servants, whose “food is thus set free for
productive purposes,” I do not inquire what will be the effect,
painful or otherwise, upon the servants, of this emancipation of
their food. But I very seriously inquire why ironware is produce,
and silverware is not? That the merchant consumes the one, and
sells the other, certainly does not constitute the difference,
unless it can be shown (which, indeed, I perceive it to be
becoming daily more and more the aim of tradesmen to show) that
commodities are made to be sold, and not to be consumed. The
merchant is an agent of conveyance to the consumer in one case,
and is himself the consumer in the other:(15*) but the labourers
are in either case equally productive, since they have produced
goods to the same value, if the hardware and the plate are both
goods.
And what distinction separates them? It is indeed possible
that in the “comparative estimate of the moralist,” with which Mr
Mill says political economy has nothing to do (III. i. 2), a
steel fork might appear a more substantial production than a
silver one: we may grant also that knives, no less than forks,
are good produce; and scythes and ploughshares serviceable
articles. But, how of bayonets? Supposing the hardware merchant
to effect large sales of these, by help of the “setting free” of
the food of his servants and his silversmith, — is he still
employing productive labourers, or, in Mr Mill’s words, labourers
who increase “the stock of permanent means of enjoyment” (I. iii.
4)? Or if, instead of bayonets, he supply bombs, will not the
absolute and final “enjoyment” of even these energetically
productive articles (each of which costs ten pounds(16*)) be
dependent on a proper choice of time and place for their
enfantement; choice, that is to say, depending on those
philosophical considerations with which political economy has
nothing to do?(17*)
I should have regretted the need of pointing out
inconsistency in any portion of Mr Mill’s work, had not the value
of his work proceeded from its inconsistencies. He deserves
honour among economists by inadvertently disclaiming the
principles which he states, and tacitly introducing the moral
considerations with which he declares his science has no
connection. Many of his chapters are, therefore, true and
valuable; and the only conclusions of his which I have to dispute
are those which follow from his premises.
Thus, the idea which lies at the root of the passage we have
just been examining, namely, that labour applied to produce
luxuries will not support so many persons as labour applied to
produce useful articles, is entirely true; but the instance given
fails — and in four directions of failure at once-because Mr
Mill has not defined the real meaning of usefulness. The
definition which he has given-” capacity to satisfy a desire, or
serve a purpose” (III. i. 2) — applies equally to the iron and
silver. while the true definition which he has not given, but
which nevertheless underlies the false verbal definition in his
mind, and comes out once or twice by accident (as in the words
“any support to life or strength” in I. iii. 5) — applies to
some articles of iron, but not to others, and to some articles of
silver, but not to others. It applies to ploughs, but not to
bayonets; and to forks, but not to filigree.(18*)
The eliciting of the true definitions will give us the reply
to our first question, “What is value?” respecting which,
however, we must first hear the popular statements.
“The word ‘value,’ when used without adjunct, always means,
in political economy, value in exchange” (Mill, III. i. 2). So
that, if two ships cannot exchange their rudders, their rudders
are, in politico-economic language, of no value to either.
But “the subject of political economy is wealth.” —
(Preliminary remarks, page 1)
And wealth “consists of all useful and agreeable objects
which possess exchangeable value.” — (Preliminary remarks, page
10.)
It appears, then, according to Mr Mill, that usefulness and
agreeableness underlie the exchange value, and must be
ascertained to exist in the thing, before we can esteem it an
object of wealth.
Now, the economical usefulness of a thing depends not merely
on its own nature, but on the number of people who can and will
use it. A horse is useless, and therefore unsaleable, if no one
can ride, — a sword, if no one can strike, and meat, if no one
can eat. Thus every material utility depends on its relative
human capacity.
Similarly: The agreeableness of a thing depends not merely on
its own likeableness, but on the number of people who can be got
to like it. The relative agreeableness, and therefore
saleableness, of “a pot of the smallest ale,” and of “Adonis
painted by a running brook,” depends virtually on the opinion of
Demos, in the shape of Christopher Sly. That is to say, the
agreeableness of a thing depends on its relatively human
disposition.(19*) Therefore, political economy, being a science
of wealth, must be a science respecting human capacities and
dispositions. But moral considerations have nothing to do with
political economy (III. i. 2). Therefore, moral considerations
have nothing to do with human capacities and dispositions.
I do not wholly like the look of this conclusion from Mr
Mill’s statements: — let us try Mr Ricardo’s.
“Utility is not the measure of exchangeable value, though it
is absolutely essential to it.” — (Chap. I. sect. i) essential
in what degree, Mr Ricardo? There may be greater and less degrees
of utility. Meat, for instance, may be so good as to be fit for
any one to eat, or so bad as to be fit for no one to eat. What is
the exact degree of goodness which is “essential” to its
exchangeable value, but not “the measure” of it? How good must
the meat be, in order to possess any exchangeable value; and how
bad must it be — (I wish this were a settled question in London
markets) — in order to possess none?
There appears to be some hitch, I think, in the working even
of Mr. Ricardo’s principles; but let him take his own example.
“Suppose that in the early stages of society the bows and arrows
of the hunter were of equal value with the implements of the
fisherman. Under such circumstances the value of the deer, the
produce of the hunter’s day’s labour, would be exactly equal to
the value of the fish, the product of the fisherman’s day’s
labour, The comparative value of the fish and game would be
entirely regulated by the quantity of labour realized in each.”
(Ricardo, chap. iii. On Value).
Indeed! Therefore, if the fisherman catches one sprat. and
the huntsman one deer, one sprat will be equal in value to one
deer but if the fisherman catches no sprat, and the huntsman two
deer, no sprat will be equal in value to two deer?
Nay but — Mr Ricardo’s supporters may say — he means, on an
average, -if the average product of a day’s work of fisher and
hunter be one fish and one deer, the one fish will always be
equal in value to the one deer.
Might I inquire the species of fish? Whale? or
white-bait?(20*)
It would be waste of time to purpose these fallacies farther;
we will seek for a true definition.
Much store has been set for centuries upon the use of our
English classical education. It were to be wished that our
well-educated merchants recalled to mind always this much of
their latin schooling, — that the nominative of valorem (a word
already sufficiently familiar to them) is valor; a word which,
therefore, ought to be familiar to them. Valor, from valere, to
be well or strong; — strong, life (if a man), or valiant;
strong, for life (if a thing), or valuable. To be “valuable,”
therefore, is to “avail towards life.” A truly valuable or
availing thing is that which leads to life with its whole
strength. In proportion as it does not lead to life, or as its
strength is broken, it is less valuable; in proportion as it
leads away from life, it is unvaluable or malignant.
The value of a thing, therefore, is independent of opinion,
and of quantity. Think what you will of it, gain how much you may
of it, the value of the thing itself is neither greater nor less.
For ever it avails, or avails not; no estimate can raise, no
disdain repress, the power which it holds from the Maker of
things and of men.
The real science of political economy, which has yet to be
distinguished from the bastard science, as medicine from
witchcraft, and astronomy from astrology, is that which teaches
nations to desire and labour for the things that lead to life:
and which teaches them to scorn and destroy the things that lead
to destruction. And if, in a state of infancy, they supposed
indifferent things, such as excrescences of shell-fish, and
pieces of blue and red stone, to be valuable, and spent large
measures of the labour which ought to be employed for the
extension and ennobling of life, in diving or digging for them,
and cutting them into various shapes,or if, in the same state of
infancy, they imagine precious and beneficent things, such as
air, light, and cleanliness, to be valueless,-or if, finally,
they imagine the conditions of their own existence, by which
alone they can truly possess or use anything, such, for instance,
as peace, trust, and love, to be prudently exchangeable, when the
markets offer, for gold, iron, or excresrences of shells — the
great and only science of Political Economy teaches them, in all
these cases, what is vanity, and what substance; and how the
service of Death, the lord of Waste, and of eternal emptiness,
differs from the service of Wisdom, the lady of Saving, and of
eternal fulness; she who has said, “I will cause those that love
me to inherit SUBSTANCE; and I will FILL their treasures.”
The “Lady of Saving,” in a profounder sense than that of the
savings bank, though that is a good one: Madonna della Salute, —
Lady of Health, — which, though commonly spoken of as if
separate from wealth, is indeed a part of wealth. This word,
“wealth,” it will be remembered, is the next we have to define.
“To be wealthy” says Mr Mill, “is to have a large stock of
useful articles.” I accept this definition. Only let us perfectly
understand it. My opponents often lament my not giving them
enough logic: I fear I must at present use a little more than
they will like: but this business of Political Economy is no
light one, and we must allow no loose terms in it.
We have, therefore, to ascertain in the above definition,
first, what is the meaning of “having,” or the nature of
Possession. Then what is the meaning of “useful,” or the nature
of Utility.
And first of possession. At the crossing of the transepts of
Milan Cathedral has lain, for three hundred years, the embalmed
body of St. Carlo Borromeo. It holds a golden crosier, and has a
cross of emeralds on its breast. Admitting the crosier and
emeralds to be useful articles, is the body to be considered as
“having” them? Do they, in the politico-economical sense of
property, belong to it? If not, and if we may, therefore,
conclude generally that a dead body cannot possess property, what
degree and period of animation in the body will render possession
possible?
As thus: lately in a wreck of a Californian ship, one of the
passengers fastened a belt about him with two hundred pounds of
gold in it, with which he was found afterwards at the bottom.
Now, as he was sinking — had he the gold? or had the gold
him?(21*)
And if, instead of sinking him in the sea by its weight, the
gold had struck him on the forehead, and thereby caused incurable
disease — suppose palsy or insanity, — would the gold in that
case have been more a “possession” than in the first? Without
pressing the inquiry up through instances of gradually increasing
vital power over the gold (which I will, however, give, if they
are asked for), I presume the reader will see that possession, or
“having,” is not an absolute, but a gradated, power; and consists
not only in the quantity or nature of the thing possessed, but
also (and in a greater degree) in its suitableness to the person
possessing it and in his vital power to use it.
And our definition of Wealth, expanded, becomes: “The
possession of useful articles, which we can use.” This is a very
serious change. For wealth, instead of depending merely on a
“have,” is thus seen to depend on a “can.” Gladiator’s death, on
a “habet”; but soldier’s victory, and State’s salvation, on a
“quo plurimum posset.” (liv. VII. 6.) And what we reasoned of
only as accumulation of material, is seen to demand also
accumulation of capacity.
So much for our verb. Next for our adjective. What is the
meaning of “useful”?
The inquiry is closely connected with the last. For what is
capable of use in the hands of some persons, is capable, in the
hands of others, of the opposite of use, called commonly
“from-use,” or “ab-use.” And it depends on the person, much more
than on the article, whether its usefulness or ab-usefulness will
be the quality developed in it. Thus, wine, which the Greeks, in
their Bacchus, made rightly the type of all passion, and which,
when used, “cheereth god and man” (that is to say, strengthens
both the divine life, or reasoning power, and the earthy, or
carnal power, of man); yet, when abused, becomes “Dionysos,”
hurtful especially to the divine part of man, or reason. And
again, the body itself, being equally liable to use and to abuse,
and, when rightly disciplined, serviceable to the State, both for
war and labour, — but when not disciplined, or abused, valueless
to the State, and capable only of continuing the private or
single existence of the individual (and that but feebly) — the
Greeks called such a body an “idiotic” or “private” body, from
their word signifying a person employed in no way directly useful
to the State; whence finally, our “idiot,” meaning a person
entirely occupied with his own concerns.
Hence, it follows that if a thing is to be useful, it must be
not only of an availing nature, but in availing hands. Or, in
accurate terms, usefulness is value in the hands of the valiant;
so that this science of wealth being, as we have just seen, when
regarded as the science of Accumulation, accumulative of capacity
as well as of material, — when regarded as the Science of
Distribution, is distribution not absolute, but discriminate; not
of every thing to every man, but of the right thing to the right
man. A difficult science, dependent on more than arithmetic.
Wealth, therefore, is “THE POSSESSION OF THE VALUABLE BY THE
VALIANT”; and in considering it as a power existing in a nation,
the two elements, the value of the thing, and the valour of its
possessor, must be estimated together. Whence it appears that
many of the persons commonly considered wealthy, are in reality
no more wealthy than the locks of their own strong boxes are,
they being inherently and eternally incapable of wealth; and
operating for the nation, in an economical point of view, either
as pools of dead water, and eddies in a stream (which, so long as
the stream flows, are useless, or serve only to drown people, but
may become of importance in a state of stagnation should the
stream dry); or else, as dams in a river, of which the ultimate
service depends not on the dam, but the miller; or else, as mere
accidental stays and impediments, acting not as wealth, but (for
we ought to have a correspondent term) as “illth,” causing
various devastation and trouble around them in all directions; or
lastly, act not at all, but are merely animated conditions of
delay, (no use being possible of anything they have until they
are dead,) in which last condition they are nevertheless often
useful as delays, and “impedimenta,” if a nation is apt to move
too fast.
This being so, the difficulty of the true science of
Political Economy lies not merely in the need of developing manly
character to deal with material value, but in the fact, that
while the manly character and material value only form wealth by
their conjunction, they have nevertheless a mutually destructive
operation on each other. For the manly character is apt to
ignore, or even cast away, the material value: — whence that of
Pope: —
“Sure, of qualities demanding praise,
More go to ruin fortunes, than to raise.”}