EMILE DE LAVELEYE 
 
 alifornia 
 
 ponal 
 
 ility
 
 LUXURY. 
 
 US 
 
 I 
 
 BY 
 
 EMILE DE LAVELEYE. 
 
 Professor of Political Economy in the University of Liege, Member of the 
 
 Belgian Royal Academy, Correspondent of the French Institute and 
 
 of the Royal Academies of Madrid, Lisbon, Rome, &c., 
 
 and Honorary D.C.L. of Edinburgh and 
 
 WUrzburg Universities. 
 
 > 
 
 LONDON 
 
 GEORGE ALLEN & COMPANY, LTD. 
 
 RUSKIN HOUSE, 44 AMD 45 RATHBONB PLACE 
 1912 
 
 [All Rights Reserved}
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. THE QUESTION AT ISSUE . . . . 1 
 
 II. WHAT is LUXURY? ...... 3 
 
 III. SENTIMENTS WHICH GIVE RISE TO LUXURY . 7 
 
 IV. LUXURY is UNJUSTIFIABLE .... 25 
 
 V. Is LUXURY ANY EVIDENCE OR CAUSE OP MORAL 
 
 DEVELOPMENT? 38 
 
 VI. Is LUXURY NECESSARY FOR THE SAKE OF 
 
 KEEPING MACHINERY EMPLOYED? . . 48 
 
 VII. THREE ASPECTS OF THE QUESTION OF LUXURY . 68 
 
 VIII. LUXURY AND THE IDEAL LIFE .... 60 
 
 IX. LUXURY IN RELATION TO THE PROSPERITY OF 
 
 NATIONS 77 
 
 X. LUXURY AND JUSTICE 97 
 
 XI. STATE LUXURY . . , , , . . 104 
 XII. LUXURY AS CONNECTED WITH DIFFERENT FORMS 
 
 OF GOVERNMENT 108
 
 iv CONTENTS. 
 
 LAW AND MORALS IN POLITICAL 
 ECONOMY. 
 
 CHAP. PAOM 
 
 I. POLITICAL ECONOMY AS RELATED TO OTHER 
 
 BRANCHES OF SOCIAL SCIENCE . . . 119 
 
 II. POLITICAL ECONOMY AS RELATED TO MORALITY 134 
 
 III. POLITICAL ECONOMY AS RELATED TO LAW 145 
 
 IV. POLITICAL ECONOMY AS RELATED TO HISTORY . 171
 
 LUXURY. 
 
 CHAPTER L 
 
 THE QUESTION AT ISSUE. 
 
 IN the 18th century people held long and lively 
 discussions on the subject of Luxury. To-day we do 
 not discuss it so frequently ; we are content with 
 indulging in it to excess. 
 
 Is luxury useful ? This is the question we need to 
 decide. I have read somewhere, no matter where, a 
 saying which seems to me exactly to sum up the 
 discussion. A financier and an economist of the last 
 
 century held entirely different opinions on this subject. 
 
 A
 
 a LUXURY. 
 
 " I maintain, for my part," said the financier, " that 
 it is luxury which upholds States." " Yes," replied the 
 economist, "just as the executioner's rope upholds the 
 hanged man." I agree with the economist. The 
 philosophers of old times and the fathers of the 
 Church alike condemned luxury in the strongest 
 terms, and they were right in so doing. It is per- 
 nicious to the individual, and fatal to society. Primi- 
 tive Christianity reproved it in the name of charity 
 and of humility ; political economy condemns it in the 
 name of utility, and right in the name of equity.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 WHAT IS LUXURY? 
 
 FIRST let us make it plain what we understand by 
 luxury. M. Baudrillart, in his excellent book, 
 "Histoire du luxe," does not trouble to seek a 
 definition. He takes for granted that every one 
 knows what it means. I do not quarrel with him 
 for this, but we shall be none the worse for a little 
 precision. 
 
 I understand by a luxury anything which does 
 not answer to our primary needs, and which, since it 
 costs much money to buy, and consequently much 
 labour to produce, is only within reach of the few. 
 
 The extreme of luxury is that which destroys the 
 
 3
 
 4 LUXURY. 
 
 product of many days of labour without bringing 
 any rational satisfaction to the owner. The queen of 
 the ball-room destroys in the mazes of the waltz a 
 lace skirt worth 10,000 francs : there you have the 
 equivalent of 50,000 hours of labour, and labour of the 
 most tedious kind, and fatal to the eyes, destroyed in 
 a moment. And what advantage has anyone derived 
 from it? M. de Keratry defines luxury as "that 
 which creates imaginary needs, exaggerates real wants, 
 diverts them from their true end, establishes a habit 
 of prodigality in society, and offers through the senses 
 a satisfaction of self-love which puffs up, but does not 
 nourish, the heart, and which presents to others the 
 picture of a happiness to which they can never attain." 
 The very definition of luxury which to me seems 
 the best contains in it the condemnation of luxury. 
 It follows from it that a thing may be an object of 
 luxury at one period, and may cease to be so at another, 
 when it can be procured without great expense. As
 
 WHAT IS LUXUKYf 
 
 Roscher says, in his chapters on this subject ("Principles 
 of Political Economy "), luxury is entirely relative. 
 
 Every nation and every age considers everything 
 as superfluous which they do not habitually use. 
 Holinshed, in his chronicle, groans over the ultra-re- 
 finement of the English in his times (1577), because 
 they were everywhere introducing chimneys, instead 
 of allowing the smoke to escape through cracks in the 
 roof, and were using vessels of earthenware, or even 
 of tin, in place of the old wooden bowls and jugs. 
 Another author of the same period, Slaney, " On Rural 
 Expenditure," is indignant that oak should be used in 
 building, instead of willow. '' Formerly," he exclaims, 
 " houses were of willow and men were of oak ; now-a- 
 days, houses are of oak and men are of willow." In 
 the Middle Ages linen was so rare that princesses 
 would make a present of a shirt to their betrothed, 
 and it was the general custom in going to bed to take 
 off even this first garment. It would be considered
 
 6 LUXURY. 
 
 to-day the very extreme of misery to be reduced to 
 dispensing with this. When flowered cottons and 
 muslins first were introduced from India, wealthy 
 ladies only could wear them ; now, working-men's 
 wives despise them. Thus the progress of mechanical 
 skill brings by degrees more and more objects within 
 reach of the majority. But the above definition re- 
 mains true : everything is a luxury which is at the 
 same time dear and superfluous,
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 SENTIMENTS WHICH GIVE RISE TO LUXURY, 
 
 M. BAUDRILLART, in his book already quoted, gives 
 a fine and searching analysis of the various sentiments 
 in man which give rise to luxury. He distinguishes 
 three, which he finds to be natural and universal, 
 vanity, sensuality, and the instinct of adornment. 
 
 First, vanity : the wish to distinguish one's self and 
 to appear of more importance than others. Since 
 wealth and power win the admiration of the crowd, 
 one is happy when one is considered rich and powerful. 
 Here is a necklace of valuable pearls : a woman will 
 pay 4,000 for it. Is it for the sake of possessing a 
 
 beautiful thing, or does she hope to beautify herself 
 
 7
 
 8 LUXURY. 
 
 
 
 by wearing it ? No, for artificial pearls are more 
 regular and have as much brilliancy. But a necklace 
 which cost an immense amount of money will be the 
 sign and symbol of her wealth. Those who see it will 
 say, " She is rich," and her rivals, who are not so rich 
 as herself, will be jealous, which will season the sauce 
 of her vanity. People seek satisfaction, and, so to 
 speak, a factitious existence, in the opinion of others. 
 This is a very general sentiment and wonderfully 
 powerful. 
 
 When public opinion bows only before virtue, vanity 
 or self-love becomes a powerful stimulus for good. 
 When, on the contrary, public opinion worships wealth, 
 this sentiment urges men to luxury and corruption. 
 
 Vanity, and the love of fine clothes which it engen- 
 ders, are very marked among the savages who tattoo 
 themselves before putting on garments; and they 
 become more refined in civilised man, in what is called 
 society. But a high state of culture and the growing
 
 SENTIMENTS WHICH GIVE RISE TO LUXURY. 9 
 
 empire of reason temper them and give them a 'ess 
 evil direction. Formerly, men as well as women wore 
 brilliant stuffs, ribbons, laces, and jewels, and it is still 
 the custom in China and among savage peoples. But 
 since the beginning of this century, civilised nations 
 have borrowed from England the black suit of the 
 quaker. For a man to wear diamonds, even as shirt 
 buttons, is considered very bad taste. Simplicity, 
 extreme neatness, and cleanliness constitute the whole 
 of masculine elegance. 
 
 Women, on the other hand, still love to pierce their 
 ears to hang from them certain stones, or to surround 
 their neck with beads or small pieces of metal, 
 as in the Isles of the Pacific, or in the days of 
 pre-historic man. Every year they seek some new 
 mode of rendering their garments more inconvenient 
 and more costly. How shall we set about curing 
 this infirmity, this relic of primitive barbarism ? 
 Stuart Mill tells us in his book on the condition of
 
 io LUXURY. 
 
 woman : Give her such instruction as will set her at 
 work on the matters of mind, and, like the modern 
 man, she will cease to find pleasure in feathers and 
 finery. A chimera, do you say ? Feminine vanity is 
 an incurable evil ? I do not believe a word of it. 
 Christianity wrought this miracle among the Quakers, 
 and in the monasteries ; why should it not be wrought 
 to-day by the sense of justice allied to the culture of 
 reason ? 
 
 The time is not so far distant since Buckingham, at 
 the Court of France, wore in his costume such quanti- 
 ties of diamonds that he could scatter them on the 
 floor and see the queen's ladies-in-waiting on their 
 knees picking them up. If the black dress-coat has 
 taken the place of the silken garments and trimmings 
 of lace, why should not a similar change be wrought 
 in the costume of women ? Throughout the whole 
 period of classical antiquity, were they not content 
 with the linen tunic and the chlamys of fine wool ?
 
 SENTIMENTS WHICH GIVE RISE TO LUXURY. 1 1 
 
 As luxury in this instance has its root in vanity, 
 what we need is to change the current of opinion. 
 If public opinion were sufficiently enlightened to 
 understand that luxury is a thing barbarous, in- 
 fantine, immoral, and, above all, wrong, the woman, 
 who to-day dresses herself in costly clothes in order 
 to please and to be imposing, would content herself 
 with being beautiful or pretty at a slight cost, which 
 is certainly the most charming fashion of so being. 
 
 Among the orators of the pulpit we find the most 
 eloquent condemnations of the luxury which is the 
 result of vanity. Bossuet is admirable on this 
 subject. "Look at that woman in her superb 
 beauty, in her ostentation, in her grand array. She 
 desires to conquer, to be adored as a goddess in 
 human form, but she adores herself first of all ; her- 
 self is her own idol." And again : " Men make a 
 display of their daughters; they render them a 
 spectacle of vanity and the objects of public cupidity.
 
 iz LUXURY 
 
 They foster in this way their vanity and that of 
 others." And, finally, in a terribly powerful passage : 
 " This woman," he cries, " ambitious and vain 
 thinks to enhance her own value by loading 
 herself with gold, with precious stones, and a thou- 
 sand other adornments. In order to deck her in 
 braver array the whole nation exhausts itself ; the arts 
 groan and sweat in the laborious service ; the whole 
 range of industry wears itself out." 
 
 This kind of luxury then, springing from ostenta- 
 tion, needs only that its childish folly and emptiness 
 be universally demonstrated in order for its ex- 
 tirpation. 
 
 But the second kind, that, namely, which has its 
 root in the cravings of sensuality, is far more diffi- 
 cult to contend with, inasmuch as this does at least 
 afford some satisfaction and enjoyment, very super- 
 ficial no doubt, but, nevertheless, real. On this 
 subject M. Baudrillart has some very just reflections
 
 SENTIMENTS WHICH GIVE RISE TO LUXURY. 13 
 
 to offer. " Matter is in its nature finite, and sensu- 
 ality, like it, has also its limits. But man cherishes 
 the illusion that this is not so. It seems to him that 
 he has never sucked out all the sweets of enjoyment ; 
 and when he has exhausted one form of pleasure, he 
 runs after another. Every refinement of delight 
 admits of still further refining, and another must 
 always be ready when the last has ceased to charm. 
 Here again, how many factitious wants are satisfied 
 which never had any existence, save in the imagina- 
 tion ! What priceless value comes to be attached to 
 shades of difference indiscoverable by any but ex- 
 perts. In the same way self-love establishes a 
 superiority in the veriest trifles, and there are 
 delicacies distinguished by marks which are not 
 patent to the senses of the vulgar. The heavy price 
 paid for such things enhances the enjoyment of them, 
 since it adds to their intrinsic charm the piquancy of a 
 difficulty overcome."
 
 14 LUXURY. 
 
 Vanity exalts sensuality, but very often serves it 
 to no good purpose. The extreme of refinement and 
 of abundance alike engender satiety. Nowadays our 
 menus are so crowded that the tables of kings can 
 find nothing to add to them, and all varieties of wine 
 circulate in succession, so that soon the jaded palate 
 ceases to distinguish one taste from another, and the 
 guest eats at random. How much more savoury, how 
 much more charming, were once those little dinners, 
 so well depicted by Brillat Savarin, where they made 
 merry over some fine, old, home-made wine, some 
 choice dish carefully prepared, a masterpiece of 
 culinary art, which was appreciated at its full value 
 by the unspoilt appetite of the guests. They tasted 
 everything with a shade of compunction, and 
 at dessert came outbursts of frank laughter, merry 
 jokes and songs. Whither is it departed, the 
 sparkling gaiety of our fathers ? Luxury and the 
 pursuit of millions have destroyed it altogether.
 
 SENTIMENTS WHICH GIVE RISE TO LUXURY. 15 
 
 Man has one stomach, and one only. When all is 
 said, his needs are but limited. It is possible without 
 excessive spending to afford the senses all real satis- 
 faction, and a man who aims at real comfort will not 
 be ruined. What costs so much is ostentation, the 
 desire to shine. To this, in fact, there is no limit. 
 When Cleopatra swallowed a pearl which had been 
 dissolved in her golden chalice, when Heliogabalus 
 devoured a plateful of nightingales' tongues, was it 
 from sensuality ? 
 
 Abundance of all that is useful may be assured to 
 us by the progress made in the art of production, but 
 when once men are fired with the ambition to dis- 
 tinguish themselves, it becomes a question of the 
 lavish use of all that is most costly and rare; and 
 hence of the destruction in a moment of the result of 
 long and arduous labour. Herein lies the very 
 essence of luxury, and herein also its inhuman per- 
 versity. Let us hope that good sense will at long
 
 16 LUXURY. 
 
 last correct and regulate even this species of de- 
 mentia. 
 
 M. Baudrillart, as we have seen, traces a third 
 source of luxury, the instinct of adornment. He says 
 very truly, " This instinct is to be distinguished from 
 ostentation even when it closely borders on it, and 
 from sensuality which it may sometimes subserve." 
 This instinct it is which gives birth to decorative and 
 industrial art. It is a very primitive human instinct; 
 even the pre-historic races who lived in caves during 
 the glacial period have left engraved on fragments of 
 bone, drawings of the reindeer and the beaver, which 
 in those days inhabited these lands. Being constantly 
 cultivated and refined it grows into the aesthetic 
 sense, that love of the beautiful which has created all 
 the arts architecture, sculpture, painting, and the art 
 of the potter. Far from condemning it, we should seek 
 to uphold and elevate it, for in our public monuments 
 it becomes an agent of civilisation and a source of
 
 SENTLV&NTS WHICH GIVE RISE TO LUXURY. 17 
 
 pure disinterested enjoyment which is accessible at 
 all times, and to the whole nation. Applied in private 
 life to the decoration of dwellings, to furniture, utensils, 
 and in everything to the choice of beautiful forms, 
 as in the days of classic antiquity, it purifies taste 
 and becomes thus an instrument of progress. 
 
 Animals, even, are attracted by brilliancy of colour, 
 and perhaps, also, by the beauty of lines. 1 Naturalists 
 find in this one of the principal causes of the perfecting 
 of species. 
 
 The love of beauty, therefore, in itself would work 
 for the amelioration of the human species, if it were 
 not so often checked by the love of riches. Suppress 
 the dowry, or establish equality of conditions, and 
 your strong, handsome youth will marry a beautiful 
 
 1 Thus there is in Australia a bird, the Ohlamyderis, called in 
 the English colonies the bower-bird, which makes little gardens 
 in front of its nest, adorned with shells and bright-coloured 
 flowers. Again, in the grotto of Spy in Belgium, once inhabited 
 by primitive men with flattened skulls, objects have been found 
 engraved with markings which form the rudiment* of decoration. 
 
 B
 
 18 LUXURY. 
 
 and graceful girl : from their union will come genera- 
 tions of vigorous and healthy men and women. In 
 these days a misshapen dwarf or a wretched hunch- 
 back, armed with their millions, will find a mate, and 
 will transmit to their descendants their own defects 
 of character and form. Thus the race is ruined by 
 extreme inequality of conditions. 
 
 The love of the beautiful and the instinct of adorn- 
 ment are things good in themselves, and they do not 
 necessarily encourage luxury, since they take delight, 
 if they are pure, not in the costliness of the material, 
 but in the harmony of the colouring and in the purity 
 of the lines. A gold or silver statue covered with 
 jewels is revolting to good taste. The figures of this 
 kind which are to be seen in Catholic churches 
 
 
 
 are horrible. But what can be more charming than 
 these little terra-cotta statuettes of Tanagra, made 
 from materials that cost less than a halfpenny ! It is 
 to periods of decay in art that the poet's words apply:
 
 SENTIMENTS WHICH GIVS RISE TO LUXURY. 19 
 
 "Materiam superabat opus," and that the remark 
 could be made to a Greek sculptor, " You have made 
 Venus rich because you could not make her beautiful." 
 
 M. Baudrillart brings out very skilfully the 
 difference which there is between luxury and art. 
 " Art has for its aim the realisation of the ideal of 
 beauty, or, again, the reproduction of certain forms. 
 Luxury has but one object : to make a display. The 
 object of art is essentially disinterested ; that of 
 luxury essentially selfish. The beautiful itself, which 
 is the goal passionately sought by the true artist, 
 always longing for perfection, what does it mean to 
 the devotee of luxury ? Nothing but what glitters. 
 The luxurious pay for art by the yard and by the 
 pound : they buy its masterpieces as they lavish 
 money on jewels and stuffs." 
 
 M. Baudrillart names lastly, as an additional source 
 of luxury, the desire for change. This for the most 
 part expresses itself in the caprices of fashion, and is,
 
 ao LUXURY. 
 
 in fact, the scourge of our time. In former days each 
 country had its own mode of dress, generally dictated 
 by the necessities of climate or of local produc- 
 tion. These national costumes, picturesque, solid, and 
 durable, were transmitted from generation to genera- 
 tion. Now-a-days society everywhere has the same 
 general style of dress, but the fashions, especially 
 among women, change every spring. A famous 
 dressmaker invents a new cut, and from Paris to 
 Shanghai, from London to San-Francisco, everyone 
 will adopt it, discarding the costumes of the previous 
 year. There are many different evils traceable 
 entirely to these fluctuations of fashion. M. Bau- 
 drillart illustrates them by some apt quotations. 
 
 First, they engender frivolity, and distract the mind 
 from matters with which it ought to be occupied. 
 " Those who pride themselves on being elegant are 
 obliged to occupy a considerable portion of their time 
 with their clothes, and to study them in a way which
 
 SENTIMENTS WHICH GIVE RISE TO LUXURY. 21 
 
 assuredly does not tend to elevate the mind or to 
 render it capable of great things." This is the moral 
 evil. 
 
 The economic evil is well described by J. B. Say : 
 " Fashion is privileged to consider things useless which 
 have not yet come to be so, things, often, which have 
 not even lost their first freshness : fashion multiplies 
 consumption, and condemns what is still in excellent 
 condition, convenient, it may be pretty, to be no longer 
 good for anything. Thus the rapid changes of fashion 
 impoverish a state both by what they consume and 
 by what they do not consume." 
 
 For the manufacture of any new designs in silk, 
 wool, or cotton, there are first expenses in the way 
 of models, cartoons, printing rollers, and I know not 
 what besides. All that does not sell in the same year 
 becomes sale- stock to be cleared off at low prices ; 
 some goods are not fancied, remain unsold, and go at 
 last at half-price. All these outlays and all these losses
 
 22 LUXURY. 
 
 must, at last, be covered by the proceeds of sale, or the 
 manufacturer will be ruined and will cease to produce. 
 The changes of fashion thus considerably increase the 
 price of all articles which are subject to them. 
 
 Suppose we had, as formerly, an unvarying 
 national costume : the current manufacture of 
 material it would require could be done at much 
 less cost than that of the thousands of different styles 
 which every year break out in the spring and winter 
 fashions. The Queen of Roumania is trying to induce 
 the ladies of her country to adopt the delightful 
 costume of the Wallachian peasantry, and she herself 
 is setting tiiem the example. 
 
 " What ! " you will say ; "you wish to condemn us 
 to a stupifying monotony, and to deprive us of the 
 piquancy of novelty ! " Do you then believe that the 
 best use mankind can make of capital, science and 
 taste, is to place them at the services of the purveyors 
 of fashions ? Have women nothing better to do than
 
 SENTIMENTS WHICH GIVE RISE TO LUXURY. 23 
 
 to invent new combinations for their toilette, to talk 
 incessantly about dress and fashion, and to envy each 
 other the possession of such things ? 
 
 It is possible to conceive of garments suited to the 
 seasons of the year which would combine in a high 
 degree comfort and elegance. Material, cut, and 
 colours would all be decided on aesthetic lines and on 
 hygienic principles. This once done, it should be 
 everywhere kept to. 
 
 In England a society of ladies has been formed to 
 forward the introduction of rational dress. 
 
 But already I hear it said, " Good heavens ! why 
 not give us at once the gown of the Carmelite or the 
 robe of the Capuchin ? " I reply first that it was a 
 profound and far-reaching idea which imposed on the 
 religious orders a costume which has remained un- 
 changed for eighteen centuries. It is a means by 
 which the human soul is withdrawn, at least on one 
 side, from the region of those futilities in which vanity
 
 24 LUXURY. 
 
 takes delight, that it may be the more free to rise 
 towards the level of things eternal. Further, let us 
 not forget that from the most ancient Greek vases 
 down to the frescoes in catacombs of the third and 
 fourth centuries, ancient art presents to us figures all 
 clad in the same manner. 
 
 Leisure and studied elegance induce frivolity, and 
 from this spring the caprices of fashion. When laws 
 shall be more just, and men's souls more noble, and 
 their brains better supplied with good sense, then we 
 shall at length come to do as did the ancients
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 LUXURY IS UNJUSTIFIABLE. 
 
 HAVING analysed the various sentiments of the 
 human heart which give rise to luxury, we pass on 
 to consider in what light we ought to regard it. 
 Many authors, and among them M. Baudrillart, take up 
 an intermediate position between the austere school, 
 which preaches the retrenchment of needs, and the 
 laxer school, which considers luxury as a thing 
 agreeable to the individual and necessary for the 
 State, making a distinction between luxury which is 
 honest, permissible, praiseworthy even, and luxury 
 which is improper and immoral. I, for my part, do 
 
 not admit this distinction, and I believe that the 
 
 25
 
 26 LUXURY. 
 
 austere school were altogether right. Those con- 
 demnations of luxury which, with so much unanimity 
 and so much eloquence, have been pronounced alike 
 by the philosophers and sages of antiquity, and by 
 the fathers of the Church, and the orators of the 
 Christian pulpit, are completely justified by the re- 
 searches of modern science. They were ignorant of 
 political economy, but they were inspired by the 
 instinct of justice and of right, and, after the 
 Christian era, by the idea of charity and of human 
 brotherhood. 
 
 All that is really luxury cannot be other than 
 immoral, unjust, and inhuman. Let us hear what 
 one of the fathers of political economy has to say on 
 this : " Those persons," said J. B. Say, " who by means 
 of great talents or the possession of great power seek 
 to spread the taste for luxury are guilty of conspir- 
 ing against the well-being of nations." 
 
 Luxury consists, as we have seen, in the consump-
 
 LUXURY IS UNJUSTIFIABLE. VJ 
 
 tion of what has cost great labour to produce, for the 
 satisfaction of spurious needs. When labour is so 
 necessary to procure for mankind the satisfaction of 
 legitimate needs, when so many human beings still 
 live in almost entire destitution, can it be good or 
 even legitimate to use a large proportion of the forces 
 placed at our disposal by capital and labour for the 
 production of superfluities which, indeed, in many 
 cases, we had better be without ? 
 
 In order to emphasise clearly the point wherein 1 
 venture to differ from M. Baudrillart, I will take one 
 of his own examples, that of diamonds. M. Blanqui, 
 writing of the Kohinoor or " Mountain of Light," had 
 said : " Diamonds have always seemed to me very 
 foolish and useless things, although women always 
 covet them as the chiefest of ornaments." M. Baudrill- 
 art replies that for the year 1878, to say nothing of 
 the ten preceding years, diamonds found represented 
 a value of 350 millions, that more than 20,000 work-
 
 a* LUXURY. 
 
 men are employed in getting them out of mines, 
 and more than 3000 lapidaries of Holland, Belgium, 
 and France in cutting them, and that these earn good 
 salaries, half-a-crown for the apprentices, and the 
 master lapidaries from 12s. to 16s. "Is all this," 
 he asks, finally, " of no use at all ? " 
 
 It is my opinion that a thing may be valued at 
 enormous sums, and be, not only quite useless, but 
 very harmful. The Chinese buy from the English 
 16,000,000 worth of opium ; this is worse than useless. 
 It is a poison, and the Emperor of China would do 
 well to fling into the sea all the cases of this abomin- 
 able narcotic which England palms off upon him. 
 These are what I call false riches. To maintain that 
 wealth consists of labour is, as Bastiat says, nothing 
 but a aisyphism, or making work for work's sake. I 
 see thousands of workers, it is true, at work in the 
 mines or in the shops, and receiving good salaries. 
 But if the diamonds which they are finding, or cut-
 
 LUXURY IS UNJUSTIFIABLE. 
 
 ting, have no other effect than to excite bad feeling, 
 to arouse vanity in those that possess them, and envy 
 in those who cannot, would it not be better to seek 
 the ocean-bed for these precious stones, in company 
 with the opium ? If these same workers were em- 
 ployed in making shirts, and shoes, and stockings for 
 those who have none, would there not be better cause 
 for congratulation ? For my own part, I would 
 rather see fifty women each wearing a dress that cost 
 a pound than one wearing a ball-dress which cost 
 400. 
 
 I am not calling for sumptuary laws, but I rejoice 
 when I see a country like Norway, and the mountain 
 Cantons of Switzerland, where no one buys diamonds, 
 but everyone has sufficient means to procure the 
 necessaries of life. 
 
 The main point, and the one which is most often for- 
 gotten, is this : every article of luxury costs much 
 labour could not this labour be utilized in a more
 
 30 LUXURY. 
 
 rational fashion ? If we take the case of an isolated 
 individual, we shall see more clearly the point of this. 
 Would any man be insane enough to devote three 
 years of his existence to making himself a piece of 
 jewelry which in point of fact will be of no real use to 
 him ? It is the phenomena of exchange which hide 
 from us the absurdity of it, the fact that he who wears 
 it has ordered it from some one else. But when we 
 consider the whole of humanity as one being, obliged 
 to satisfy his wants by his labour, we can see clearly 
 that it is folly for him to waste precious time in cut- 
 ting diamonds, if he still has often to walk with bare 
 feet The inhabitants of any country have but a 
 certain limited number of hours in the day to dispose 
 of; if they devote half this time to making useless 
 trifles, it is inevitable that half the population should 
 go without the necessaries of life. An Emperor of 
 China once said : " If one of my subjects is idle and 
 does not work then there is somewhere in my State
 
 LUXURY IS UNJUSTIFIABLE. 31 
 
 another who suffers from hunger and cold." To dig 
 a hole and fill it up again, to embroider shirt-fronts, 
 or set precious stones, is not really to work, for it is 
 not productive of the least utility. 
 
 My quarrel with M. Baudrillart is not for being 
 too indulgent towards what he calls " mischievous 
 luxury"; it is for admitting that there can be luxury 
 which is not mischievous. Luxury, to my thinking, 
 cannot be other than mischievous. The very word, it 
 seems to me, implies an idea of blame. When he 
 deals with " mischievous luxury," M. Baudrillart 
 attacks it eloquently and with energy. Let us hear 
 him : " Men were right in regarding as an axiom the 
 proposition: luxury is enervating. They were not 
 less right in adding : and it corrupts. It destroys the 
 manly energy of the mind by cultivating a taste for 
 mere enjoyment, and a pride in mere frivolity. It 
 kills the spirit of self-sacrifice, without which no 
 society can continue to exist; it undermines at once
 
 3* LUXURY. 
 
 the power of any lively impulse towards good, and of 
 any determined resistance of evil. Men live for the 
 sake of pleasure ; public spirit ceases to have any 
 motive power. Historians and moralists are unani- 
 mous in pointing out the inevitable decay which 
 follows on the worship of ease and refinement, and the 
 debasement of character which this produces. More 
 than ever, in our days, the mere owner of wealth, idle 
 and dissipated, seems a shocking anomaly. We are 
 finding it hard to accept the idea of rights without 
 duties. Luxury then brings moral discredit on owner- 
 ship, dissipating in frivolity and wrong-doing." 
 
 In another fine passage, M. Baudrillart sums up 
 Rousseau's diatribe against towns, though, he adds, 
 that in this matter we must not forget what statistics 
 show as to the advantages they procure and the virtues 
 they develop. "Towns are hot-beds of luxury and 
 corruption ! It is there that men's wants are over- 
 excited by a thousand stimulants, it is there that are
 
 LUXURY IS UNJUSTIFIABLE 33 
 
 crowded together all those species of delights which do 
 not wait upon desire but call it forth. There all the 
 vanities and all the vices spread in contagious competi- 
 tion. The art of frivolity settles on the ruins of the 
 useful arts, nay, the very necessary arts which serve 
 the needs of all are choked out of existence by this 
 flux of superfluities 'which are serviceable only to the 
 few. Every moment the revolting contrast strikes 
 one between excessive opulence and extreme misery 
 rags, tatters, and even nakedness, on the one hand, 
 and on the other the flaunting array of all the trap- 
 pings of opulence. Here, splendid dwellings ; there, a 
 hearth without a fire ; here, vice, elegant and gay; 
 there, vice in its most brutal form, the crime of those 
 who seek both vengeance on, and a participation in 
 this wealth which crushes them down. For them 
 there is temptation everywhere ; shops by thousands, 
 filled with all that the poor lack, displaying stores of 
 
 gold, jewels, and fine costumes. Out of this state of 
 
 c
 
 34 LUXURY. 
 
 things spring hatred and envy in the hearts of the 
 poor, raging there in secret, only to break out from 
 time to time in those tumults in which he who has 
 nothing seeks to enforce a claim to his share of 
 enjoyment." What more could be said even by the 
 most fervent disciple of the austere school, whom, 
 nevertheless, M. Baudrillart taxes with extravagance ? 
 But the point of difference is that he regards a certain 
 degree of luxury a moderate, and not immoral degree, 
 of course as an indispensable stimulus to work which 
 would not be found in the supply of necessary wants 
 alone. In this I cannot agree with him, and I will 
 proceed to give my reasons. 
 
 I admit with Stuart Mill that, in order to arouse 
 those races which are still in the savage state from 
 the sort of animal inertia and dull stagnation in which 
 they live, it may be good to excite in them new wants 
 which will make them work and contrive in order to 
 satisfy them. But among the nations of Europe it is
 
 LUXURY IS UNJUSTIFIABLE. 
 
 not the desire for consumption which needs stimulating. 
 " Nay, but see," says M. Baudrillart, " the wretched 
 creatures crowded into the cellars of Lille, the doss- 
 houses of London. They are happy in their dirt and 
 darkness, and have no desire to come out of it." I 
 ask, Is this reproach well-founded ? These unfortunate 
 creatures work, nevertheless; they toil and suffer to 
 earn subsistence. Can we reproach them with the 
 fact that what they can earn is so insufficient that it 
 drives ihem into holes and corners where a farmer 
 would not house his dogs or even his pigs ? The very 
 large majority of even a rich nation like the French 
 has not the lodging, furniture, raiment, or food, which 
 hygiene prescribes, and they all most certainly wish 
 for it. Is it possible that this desire for the necessaries 
 of life would not be strong enough to stimulate men 
 to work? It is the only stimulus of those who 
 perform manual labour, and it is precisely the idle who 
 seek for superfluities.
 
 3 LUXURY. 
 
 " But what will you do, wiseacres," cries M. Bau- 
 drillart, "with the thousands of artists and hundreds of 
 thousands of workmen who work in metals, stuffs, 
 ivory, wood, or gems, executing products of infinite 
 taste?" Yet, some pages further on, the eminent 
 economist himself answers this question, in refuting 
 the argument of those who maintain that " France 
 produces too much." " In what respect does she pro- 
 duce too much, this happy country of ours ? It is not 
 in respect of the whole sum of usefiA and pleasant 
 things in life for there are too many poor ! Show 
 me, if you can, the article which is produced in 
 superabundance. Is it flannel, when so many are 
 cold ? Is it corn, when so many lack bread ? " 
 
 Here lies the solution of the problem : those work- 
 men who work in ivory and in gems should produce 
 the flannel and the corn which you say are so much 
 wanted now, and the problem would be solved. The 
 same amount of work, but of a more useful kind.
 
 LUXURY IS UNJUSTIFIABLE. 37 
 
 "But you cannot distinguish," our author goes on to 
 urge, " between the superfluous which you mean to pro- 
 scribe and the necessary you wish to multiply." It is 
 true the idea of luxury is relative and depends on the 
 means of production : what is superfluous to-day will 
 be no longer so to-morrow, if the progress of the 
 mechanical arts have placed it within reach of all. 
 Yet, for all that, I hold that the distinction is always 
 easy to make : is an object worth the pain it would 
 require and the time it would take for me to make it 
 myself ? If so, it is not a luxury, and I am right in 
 securing it ; but if, in obtaining it, I divert human 
 effort from a channel in which it would be more useful, 
 I am wrong. I sacrifice things necessary to things 
 superfluous. I am making a bad use of my own 
 or my fellow-creatures' powers.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 IS LUXURY ANT EVIDENCE OR CAUSE OF MORAL 
 DEVELOPMENT ? 
 
 M. BAUDRILLART gives the following title to one of 
 his paragraphs: "Limited and scanty range of 
 wants a sign of inferiority. Material needs as 
 related to moral development." This is true of the 
 dawn of civilisation : later on it is true no longer. 
 Under the stimulus of want, man betakes himself to 
 labour, with coarse and clumsy implements at first 
 a rough flint, a stake hardened in the fire, the skele- 
 tons of fish, or a fragment of bone sharpened at the 
 point then by degrees with more and more elaborated 
 instruments of metal. As Ludwig Noire' brings out 
 
 go well in his excellent book Das Werkzeng (Tools), in 
 
 38
 
 NO CAUSE OF MORAL DEVELOPMENT. 39 
 
 the course of manufacturing implements, the human 
 creature manufactures also languages, and grows 
 rapidly into a higher degree of intelligence. Soon he 
 learns to co-ordinate and arrange his observations of 
 natural forces. Technical skill and science next come 
 into the field. Social relations are established, and 
 the rude manners of the savage are softened. Agri- 
 culture makes it to the interest of all who take it up 
 to maintain peace and good order. Man is no longer a 
 mere carnivorous animal, whose whole time is spent 
 in hunting prey, devouring and digesting it. The 
 leisure which he secures as the result of the greater 
 productivity of work opens to him the vast horizon 
 of intellectual and moral life. 
 
 As M. Baudrillart aptly expresses it, "In learning 
 to modify the things he sees around him, the man is 
 accomplishing his own education. They are not 
 more transformed than he is himself, when, of his 
 own accord, he sets himself to work on them with
 
 40 LUXURY. 
 
 thoughtful effort. His labour creates for him 'a 
 new world. We may even say, it makes a new 
 man of him ; in fine, it makes all that we mean by 
 man. Work brings forth new faculties. Work de- 
 mands prudence and forethought ; it pre-supposes 
 a knowledge of the relation of means to ends. Is 
 this all ? No ; it means also the establishment 
 of relations with other men, relations necessarily 
 of a reciprocal kind ; it means the first beginnings 
 of social life, properly so called. And this social 
 life will go on spreading, little by little, to the 
 ends of the earth, through the interchange of 
 services and of products of all kinds." 
 This fine panegyric of labour is completely justified 
 
 so long as it is applied to the production of ne- 
 cessaries, When it is devoted to the creation of 
 useless trifles, it is a culpable waste of time, which 
 is the stuff our lives are made of, and it given us 
 for higher ends; it is so much stolen from the
 
 NO CAUSE OF MORAL DEVELOPMENT. 41 
 
 training of the mind, and from the cultivation of 
 domestic and social relations. 
 
 So far from the extreme development of wants 
 being a sign of the progress of civilisation, it is in 
 times of laxity, corruption and decay that wants 
 become most numerous, and are carried to an ex- 
 treme of refinement. The Roman Empire serves as 
 example and proof of this. Roscher speaks well on 
 this point. There we see men occupied in the pursuit 
 of the impossible, and their ideal of luxury is to find 
 the highest pleasure in what is most perverse. As 
 Seneca says of Caligula : " Nihil tarn efficere con- 
 cupiscebat quam quod posse effici negaretur. Hoc 
 est luxurise propositum gaudere perversis." Men thus 
 do violence to nature. Such an Emperor will join 
 Baiae to Pucciola by a bridge across the sea, solely 
 that he may pass along it in his triumphal car. Such 
 another will have mountains levelled or raised. 
 iEsop, the comedian, places before his guests a dish
 
 42 LUXURY. 
 
 consisting of the tongues of parrots which had learned 
 to speak; this represented a cost of 56,000. Hor- 
 tensius would water his trees with wine. I need go 
 no further ; the insane vagaries of the thirst of 
 enjoyment are well known to us all. I say then, have 
 we here any connection between the development of 
 wants and moral progress ? 
 
 It is the habit of economists, I know, and of the 
 general current of opinion also, to measure the degree 
 of civilisation of any country by its power of pro- 
 duction. The end is considered to be attained when 
 we arrive at counting by millions the tons of iron 
 which have been wrought, the yards of manufactured 
 cottons, or the tale of exports and imports. In such 
 a country, the wealthy lay the whole world under 
 contribution for the adornment of their palaces, and 
 the laying of their tables. In their cities, by the 
 blazing gas-lights, behind sheets of plate-glass, are 
 spread the glittering cut brilliants, finely-wrought
 
 NO CAUSE OF MORAL DEVELOPMENT. 43 
 
 gold, or silks of a thousand colours. And yet a 
 million of paupers are supported by official relief ; a 
 third of the population is entirely illiterate, another 
 third is without the necessaries of life, and there is 
 a talk of enlarging the prisons and proclaiming 
 martial law. It is no matter; this is the most 
 civilised country in the world. In another country 
 you may see honest country folks, owning their 
 houses and fields, winning by their own labour all 
 that is necessary for themselves. No one is without 
 a certain degree of ease and education. But nowhere 
 is there any luxury. This is considered a very back- 
 ward country. Such are the judgments passed 
 habitually nowadays. To my thinking they are 
 false and superficial, and produce the most fatal 
 consequences. 
 
 Man has a twofold existence, and therefore two 
 kinds of needs ; needs of the body, or corporeal needs ; 
 needs of the mind, or intellectual needs. He who
 
 44 LUXURY. 
 
 lives for his senses only will not hesitate, if he can 
 command by his riches or his power the work of 
 thousands of men, to employ it in satisfying all his 
 fancies, driven, it may be, to the pitch of insanity by 
 the insatiable pursuit of enjoyment, "lassata sed non 
 satiata." He, on the contrary, who cultivates the 
 life of the mind, will have few material wants, and 
 may even come to neglecting the most primary ones. 
 Take on the one hand Heliogabolus, or, better still, 
 that arch-type of imperial Rome in her sensuality and 
 luxury, Trimalcion. On the other, see John the 
 Baptist, living on locusts and wild honey ; or Saint 
 Paul, earning his bread by tent-making, as Spinoza did 
 later on by polishing the glass of watches. 
 
 The greatest of artists, Michael Angelo, once said to 
 his friend Condivi : " I, though I am rich, have always 
 lived like a poor man." " Yes," said Condivi to him, 
 " you have always lived like a poor man, because you 
 have always given away like a rich map-" In which
 
 NO CAUSE OP MORAL DEVELOPMENT, 45 
 
 of these types do we find the highest moral develop- 
 ment ? 
 
 A certain level of culture creates wants, a still 
 higher level retrenches them. All that administers 
 to rational needs is legitimate and good, because we 
 must maintain the efficiency of our bodily forces, since 
 without them intellectual work becomes difficult or 
 impossible. But all that is yielded to spurious needs 
 is immoral and bad, because it is so much time taken 
 of one's own and of others, which might be better 
 employed. The great Reformers who have changed 
 the whole direction of thought in any country Moses, 
 Socrates, Buddha, Jesus have all lived on very little. 
 It is not at the shrine of luxury that the flame is 
 kindled which will purify humanity. We may almost 
 go so far as to say that moral greatness is, not in pro- 
 portion, but in inverse ratio to wants. 
 
 M. Renan has written a page on this subject 
 which is not easily forgotten. " The mistake lies," he
 
 46 LUXURY. 
 
 says, "not in proclaiming industry to be good and 
 useful, but in attaching too much importance to the 
 pursuit of perfection in certain details. In minor 
 matters, once a good thing has been produced, it is 
 little worth while to improve upon it indefinitely. 
 For if the aim of human life is happiness, this has 
 been very well realised in the past without these 
 superfluities, and if, as the wise think with good 
 reason, it is moral and intellectual grandeur which 
 alone is necessary, these accessories contribute very 
 little to it. History affords us examples of high intel- 
 lectual attainments and a golden age of happiness 
 which have been reached by men whose material state 
 was crude enough. The Brahmans in India, while 
 still living, as far as exterior civilisation was concerned, 
 on the level of the most backward societies, attained 
 an order of philosophical speculation which Germany 
 alone in our days has been able to surpass. The ideal 
 of the Gospels, unique and unsurpassable, in which the
 
 NO CAUSE OF MORAL DEVELOPMENT. 47 
 
 moral sense is wrought out with the most marvellous 
 delicacy, takes us into the midst of a life as 
 simple as that of our rural solitudes, a life in 
 which the complications of exterior things find but 
 little place. Far from the progress of art running 
 parallel with the progress made by any nation in 
 the taste for the comforts of life, we may say, 
 without paradox, that those times and those 
 countries in which the comforts of life have become 
 the main object of society, have been the least 
 highly gifted in the things of art." ("Essays on 
 Morals and Criticism.")
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 IS LUXURY NECESSARY FOR THE SAKE OF KEEPING 
 MACHINERY EMPLOYED? 
 
 WE will now turn to another set of considerations. 
 Bastiat, who in many of his writings preaches 
 moderation of desires, is yet driven, as it were in 
 
 spite of himself, in his "Economic Harmonies," to 
 justify luxury, and that for a reason which seems 
 to be a very serious one. "It is not possible," he 
 says, " to find a satisfactory solution to the problems 
 of machinery, of foreign competition, and of luxury, 
 so long as we regard wants as an invariable 
 quantity, and pay no heed to their indefinite capa- 
 city for expansion." To solve economic problems 
 
 then, according to Bastiat, we must urge men 
 
 48
 
 MA CHINE R Y EM PL YED. 49 
 
 incessantly to multiply and retine their wants, thus 
 setting political economy entirely at variance with 
 the whole of moral teaching, both ancient and 
 modern. Bastiat sees this. "I hear you say," he 
 proceeds, " Economist, you are caught tripping 
 already. You announced that your science was in 
 agreement with morality, and here you are justify- 
 ing sybaritism," which in fact he does. 
 
 What is his reply to this objection? "And you, 
 austere philosopher and preacher of morals, are 
 you content with satisfying the needs of primitive 
 man ? " But this is no answer at all. No matter 
 what the philosopher may do, Bastiat himself, 
 there is no doubt, as he himself puts it, declares 
 sybaritism to be necessary. 
 
 Let us see how be is led into this deplorable con- 
 tradiction, which does, it must be confessed, appear to 
 result from the doctrines of the orthodox Political 
 
 Economy. Machinery economises labour; the more, 
 
 D
 
 |o LUXURY. 
 
 therefore, machines are increased and perfected, the 
 fewer hours of labour are needed to obtain the same 
 products. To diminish the hours of work means to 
 diminish the demand for hands, and to throw out of 
 employment an increasing number of workers. In 
 order that they may be kept supplied with occupation, 
 it is necessary that, in proportion as actual wants are 
 satisfied with less effort, new wants should arise to 
 utilize those hours of labour which the perfecting of 
 mechanical engines and technical processes has left to 
 be disposed of anew. It thus appears that the in- 
 definite expansiveness of wants is indispensable, for 
 without it the indefinite progress of science and 
 mechanics must suppress an ever-increasing number 
 of workers. This is, in point of fact, the spectacle 
 presented to us by economic development. In 
 proportion as the necessaries of life were more 
 easily obtainable, spurious needs arose for this 
 countless array of elegant and costly trifles which
 
 MACHINE R Y RMPLO YED. 51 
 
 encumber our shops, and are bought by an ever 
 larger circle of consumers. Short of suppressing 
 machinery, there is thus no course left to us but 
 either to press on to sybaritism, or else to resign 
 ourselves to the extinction of a constantly increas- 
 ing number of workers. It is thus that a certain 
 school of Political Economy sets itself at variance 
 with traditional morality. 
 
 As I cannot admit that the moralists of antiquity 
 and the fathers of the Church were wrong in 
 urging us to limit our appetites and our desires, 
 I believe that there must be a solution to the 
 problem of machinery other than that indicated 
 by Bastiat. And this, I believe, is the following: 
 
 Machinery, producing more quickly, can ensure 
 to us either more products or more leisure. I 
 maintain that, when our rational wants are satisfied, 
 what we need is not to create a superfluity for the 
 satisfaction of spurious needs, but to apply our
 
 S* LUXURY. 
 
 leisure to the cultivation of our minds, and to the 
 enjoyment of the society of our fellows, and of 
 the beauties of nature and art. I compare humanity 
 to Robinson Crusoe on his island. At first, he must 
 work from morning till night, merely to keep him- 
 self alive; later on, by means of all kinds of 
 improved machinery, he can produce, in six hours 
 of work a day, everything that his rational wants 
 demand. Will he proceed to use the six additional 
 hours, now placed at his disposal, in wearying 
 himself further for the sake of clothing himself 
 in ribbons and velvets, in brocaded silks and laces ? 
 No, the higher he stands in elevation of mind and 
 in culture, the less he will think of such childishness. 
 He will desire only to enjoy God, nature, and 
 himself. 
 
 Machinery has been called the liberator of human- 
 ity. This is not so if machinery is to plunge us 
 deeper in the mire of matter by carrying sensuality
 
 MACHINERY EMPLOYED. 53 
 
 to a finer pitch ; but it will be true if it sets humanity 
 free from a great part of that severe labour, at the 
 price of which it gains its existence. " It is doubt- 
 ful," says John Stuart Mill, " whether all our 
 machinery has diminished by one hour the labour 
 of a single human being." Not only so, but men toil 
 nowadays more than ever before. Of old, night 
 brought men " sweet sleep and the oblivion of cares," 
 as says the Latin poet. Nowadays, in consequence 
 of the greater activity of industry, how many are 
 there who work all night long in mines, in sugar 
 factories, on steamers, on railways, in postal and 
 telegraph services; and, indeed, I know not where 
 besides ? As Hamlet says : " What might be toward 
 that this sweaty haste doth make the night joint 
 labourer with the day ? " Life in our civilised 
 countries has grown far more intense, and the ex- 
 penditure of nervous force far greater. We all, from 
 the summit of the social ladder to its base, from the
 
 54 LUXURY. 
 
 abi, .et minister, who succumbs under the mass of 
 business which overwhelms him, to the miner at the 
 bottom of the coal-pit, are becoming the slaves of a 
 gigantic social engine whose motion constantly 
 accelerates. It is not thus that machinery will en- 
 franchise the human race. It ought to secure men, 
 first, the more and more easy satisfaction of their 
 rational wants ; and next, more leisure, with, as a 
 consequence, a higher intellectual culture. 
 
 But, you will say, what are these " rational wants " 
 of which you speak so often ? Who is to mark the 
 limit ? Do you wish us once more to live on acorns, 
 and clothe ourselves with the skins of animals ? 
 
 By rational wants I understand those that reason 
 supports, and hygiene determines. The latter can 
 tell us with great exactness what nourishment, what 
 clothing, and what kind of lodging is most suited to 
 eaoh season and to any given climate. To this add 
 those inexpensive accessories that the progress of
 
 MACHINER Y EMPLO YED. 55 
 
 ndustry already places within reach of every one's 
 purse. J. B. Say defines luxury, rightly, as I think, 
 as " the use of those things that are rare and costly. 
 A thing that is costly represents much labour ana 
 much time. If it only satisfies a spurious want, we 
 are wrong in ordering it. There is no difficulty in 
 fixing the limit between rational and irrational 
 methods of consumption. Is the satisfaction which 
 this article affords you worth the time and effort 
 necessary for its production? This is the question 
 which must be asked in deciding each particular 
 case. 
 
 M. Baudrillart holds that luxury consists mainly in 
 what is superfluous. I agree rather with J. B. Say 
 that it consists in what is very costly. To take some 
 examples given by M. Baudrillart ; a penny Japanese 
 fan, or a mirror costing a few shillings, are, perhaps, 
 superfluities; but since they cost but a very small 
 amount of labour, the satisfaction they give is worth
 
 56 LUXURY. 
 
 this little sacrifice. When the cultivator drinks his 
 own wine which he could sell, perhaps, at eightpence a 
 gallon, this is not luxury. When a millionaire drinks 
 Johannisberg wine at 32s. a bottle, the expense for 
 him relatively is less ; but he consumes the equivalent 
 of twenty days' work. These twenty days, taken 
 from the whole time which humanity has to satisfy its 
 primary needs, of what avail were they? They 
 availed only to secure the fugitive enjoyment of a 
 certain flavour which it is difficult even for the most 
 delicate palates to appreciate. No one can hesitate 
 to pronounce this time wasted. But the fact escapes 
 general recognition under the complex phenomena of 
 exchange, though, already, it is beginning to be under- 
 stood : already the generality of men cry shame 
 at certain forms of foolish spending, even when 
 committed by those who can afford it without ruining 
 themselves. "It is a waste which cries out for 
 vengeance," we hear it said. It is, indeed, a waste of
 
 MA CHINER Y SMPLO YBD. $7 
 
 men's time, seeing that so many suffer too often from 
 cold and hunger. 
 
 When the eye of God beholds our earth, and on it 
 millions of men engaged in manufacturing useless 
 things, such as jewels and laces, or harmful things 
 like opium and spirits, side by side with millions of 
 other men in the extremity of want, how foolish, how 
 infantile, how barbarous must we appear to Him! 
 We pass our time in making ribbons and trinkets, 
 and we have not sufficient food or clothing! The 
 fathers of the Church came to this same conclusion, 
 guided by the light of the Gospels, and so did the 
 fathers of Political Economy, taught by the induc- 
 tions of science, before the sophistries by which 
 luxury is justified had poisoned the pulpits of our 
 Church and the chairs of our Universities.
 
 CHAPTER VH 
 
 THREE ASPECTS OF THE QUESTION OF LUXURY. 
 
 LUXURY may be considered from three different 
 points of view. First, as a question of morals, for 
 the individual as such: Within what limits is the 
 effort to satisfy wants favourable to the normal 
 development of human faculties ? Secondly, as a 
 question of economics : To what extent does luxury 
 serve to advance or hinder the accumulation of 
 wealth? Thirdly, as a question of right and 
 justice : Is luxury compatible with the equitable 
 distribution of products, and with the principle that 
 each man's remuneration should be in proportion to 
 the amount of useful labour accomplished by 
 
 him? 
 
 S
 
 THREE ASPECTS OF TEE QUESTION OF LUXURY. 59 
 
 The third aspect of the problem has scarcely ever 
 yet been touched upon. It has hitherto not been 
 clearly recognised that the principles of justice ought 
 to be applied to economic distribution. It must not 
 be forgotten, however, that Christian teaching, which 
 makes charity a positive duty, has always condemned 
 luxury, seeing that it leads men to squander in use- 
 less, and therefore unjustifiable, superfluities what 
 ought rather to be given to the poor.
 
 CHAPTER VIII, 
 
 LUXUBY AND THE IDEAL LIFE. 
 
 WE will first deal with luxury from the point of 
 view of the individual. Is it beneficial to him or the 
 reverse ? Let us put aside for the present all 
 considerations which concern his fellows, and the 
 duties towards them which justice and charity 
 demand. To answer the above question, we must 
 determine wherein consists human well-being, and 
 what is the aim and destiny of man. Clearly the end 
 to be attained is the normal development of all his 
 faculties, and the happiness which ensues there- 
 from. 
 
 Here the pessimists will arrest me, perhaps, by 
 
 60
 
 LUXURY AND THS. WEAL LIF*. 6l 
 
 saying that the more our faculties are developed, 
 the more they become sources of suffering to us ; that 
 "the man who thinks is a depraved animal;" that 
 the brute is happier than the so-called lord of 
 creation ; that the plant is still happier than the brute, 
 and the mineral than the plant ; and in fine, that 
 Nonentity, or the Buddhist Nirvana, is the supreme 
 felicity. 
 
 But I shall not pause to discuss here the doctrines 
 of Pessimism. Whatever Schopenhauer and Hart- 
 mann may say, it seems difficult to believe that all 
 this immense evolution starting Irom matter, diffuse 
 and amorphic, to result, after an infinite series of 
 transformations, in conscious personality and human 
 intelligence it is difficult, I say, to believe that this 
 vast process is nothing but an uninterrupted progress 
 in misery, leading up to final despair. From the 
 first beginnings of life, eveiy being aspires to self- 
 preservation and perpetuation, to constant growth
 
 6a LUXURY. 
 
 and expansion. It is the universal law of life, and 
 the conviction seems forced upon us that its accom- 
 plishment must be attended with satisfaction and 
 achieved with gladness. We must therefore strive 
 towards perfection ; and even were it true that our 
 happiness does not increase in proportion as we 
 approach nearer to it, might we not see in this the 
 proof that our destiny is not to be accomplished 
 entirely in this life on earth ? 
 
 Perfection for man consists in the full development 
 of all his forces, physical and intellectual, and of all 
 his emotions, his family affection and love of 
 humanity, his sense of the beautiful in nature and 
 in art. 
 
 Here we find ourselves confronted with two 
 different types of human perfection: the Christian 
 type, and the type conceived by the ancients. The 
 ideal of Christian perfection appears to me to be the 
 higher in all that concerns our duties to our fellows,
 
 LUXURY AND THE IDEAL LIFE. 63 
 
 our brothers, as it holds them, and in all those prac- 
 tices it imposes, of justice and of charity, which 
 the ancient philosophers saw only in confused and 
 uncertain outlines. But the Christian ideal neglects 
 the physical man, This is because it grew up 
 imbued with the idea that the world was shortly to 
 come to an end, and it, therefore, had only in view 
 "the kingdom of heaven which is at hand." This 
 it was which gave to the whole Christian conception 
 of life the ascetic colouring which has been so often 
 objected against it. It arose naturally enough as 
 a consequence of these ideas concerning the end of 
 the world. If this world is to come to an end 
 speedily, as the early Christians believed, and if 
 "the Lord will come in His kingdom before this 
 generation pass away," as the Gospel, or Good News 
 of the approaching new creation, foretold, no prudent 
 man can do other than make preparation for this 
 coming event. It is not therefore to the rule of
 
 64 LUXURY. 
 
 ascetic Christianity that we must look for guidance 
 as to the true life of the individual. If we took it 
 literally it would reduce us to the life of the 
 Anchorite, or even of a Stylite. 
 
 It is to Greece that we must look for an example 
 here. The young Greek cultivates by constant 
 exercise both the muscles of his body and the 
 faculties of his mind. He passes his mornings in 
 the Gymnasium, his afternoons in the open air, 
 conversing with philosophers and sages. He thus 
 achieves the desired ideal, " mens sana in corpore 
 sano." As Herbert Spencer justly says in his 
 excellent book on " Education," the essential thing is 
 to " maintain sound health, for of what avail are rank, 
 honours, and wealth, to an invalid or a valetudin- 
 arian ? " Greek life then must be our model, as it 
 has been in the English universities. The only 
 thing it lacks is manual labour, which among the 
 Greeks devolved upon slaves. This was a grave
 
 LUXURY AND THE IDEAL LIFE. 65 
 
 mistake, nay, let us rather say a grave crime, for it 
 was the violation of a natural law, and as such was 
 punished by inevitable decay. Nature demands 
 work from all. We all have certain needs, and we 
 are all supplied with organs, and an intelligence to 
 direct them in procuring the satisfaction of these 
 needs. All organic beings live thus by personal 
 effort. If we shift off upon others all the labour 
 necessary to procure our subsistence, we are in- 
 evitably punished by anaemia, by dyspepsia, by 
 melancholy, by spleen; in a word, by all the evik 
 which spring from idleness and ennui. The man 
 who desires to preserve as long as possible his health 
 and strength by obedience to the laws of nature will 
 exact from himself and regularly perform some 
 kind of bodily exercise. The ancients were careful 
 to do this : a good part of each day they devoted 
 to strengthening and exercising their muscles in 
 
 the bath or on the field of Mars. For the modern 
 
 E
 
 66 LUXURY. 
 
 man who has no slaves to serve him, gymnastic 
 exercises of no particular economic value ought to be 
 supplemented by the practice of arms, and by some 
 really useful kind of manual labour. This at once 
 preserves him from effeminacy and ultra-refinement. 
 
 Life among the ancients was elegant, but simple. 
 At Athens and at Rome, even the man of ease and 
 wealth did not crowd his house with such a quantity 
 of objects as is considered indispensable by us to-day. 
 Enter one of the houses at Pompeii ; you can there 
 understand at a glance the way the ancients under- 
 stood life, and the manner in which they lived it 
 First and foremost, they sought the beautiful in 
 everything, and in everything gave it the first place. 
 Art beautified everything, forums, baths, temples, 
 every part of a private house, court, garden, walls, 
 furniture, and even the humblest kitchen utensils. 
 But they had few needs, and but little means of 
 satisfying them. Their bedrooms were like convent-
 
 LUXURY AND THE IDEAL LIFE. 67 
 
 cells, with only room for a bed, a chair, and a small 
 chest, which would not even contain the wardrobe of 
 a working-man of to-day. Their garments were as 
 simple as those of the religious orders, consisting of 
 a linen tunic and a simple woollen cloak, which was 
 nothing but a plain piece of stuff draped on the 
 shoulders. Hence, it is easy to see why they had 
 no wardrobes. Changes of fashion were unknown, 
 and their costume remained the same for more than a 
 thousand years. In their repasts, too, the ancients 
 were simple and abstemious. Think of how Horace 
 was wont to sup, Horace who was yet an epicurean 
 
 " Vivitur parvo bene cui paternum 
 Splendet in mensa tenui Salinum." 
 
 Carrn. ii. 16. 
 
 "That man lives happily at a small coat who sees on his 
 frugal table the shining salt-box of his fathers." 
 
 In another passage, speaking of his meals, he says : 
 
 " Inde domum me 
 Ad porri et ciceris refero laganique catinum." 
 
 Sat i. 6, 115.
 
 68 LUXURY. 
 
 " Then I go home to my dish of leek* or peas, or it may be 
 some fritters." 
 
 Or again 
 
 " quando faba Pythagor cognate slmulque 
 Uncta satis pingui ponentur oluscula lardo ? " 
 
 Sat. ii. 6, 63. 
 
 " when will the beau, first cousin to Pythagoras, appear on 
 my table, and fine herbs seasoned with rich bacon-fat ? " 
 
 At Athens, people of the highest rank lived on very 
 little, as the Neapolitans do to-day. Each could say 
 with the philosopher, " Omnia mecum porto." " I 
 carry my all on my person." Those giant repasts of 
 Trimalcion, and the extravagant expenditure of some 
 of the emperors, are the fruit of the madness of 
 absolute power. We find nothing of the kind in 
 Greece, or even at Rome in ordinary life. In those 
 days a man's wants being few in number, he could 
 devote all his time to the cultivation of his faculties, 
 to aesthetic pleasures or cares of State, to gymnastics 
 or philosophy, to literature or politics, or the 
 drama.
 
 LUXURY AND THE IDEAL LIFE. 69 
 
 Modern luxury and the thousand and one require- 
 ments of modern comfort are attended by a twofold 
 inconvenience. First, there is valuable time wasted 
 in making the money which is spent on these useless 
 trifles, and then there is the waste of the little leisure 
 that remains on spending it. The whole man is thus 
 drawn into the vortex of material pursuits ; nothing 
 is left of him for the life of the mind and heart. 
 Look at the existence of a financier who counts 
 his millions by tens. His affairs generally, his 
 calculations, his clients, his colleagues take up his 
 whole day ; and in the evening also, in the midst of 
 all those pleasures for the sake of which he pursues 
 this chase for wealth, he is still dreaming of new 
 operations by which he may increase a fortune whose 
 revenues already are sufficient to cover a thousand 
 times over all the wants that he can imagine or con- 
 ceive. He is like one overwhelmed by the weight of 
 his possessions. No doubt, he is useful as a wheel in
 
 70 LUXURY. 
 
 the vast machinery of production ; but is he walking 
 in the path that leads to happiness and to perfection ? 
 " At Paris, you may see a man who has enough to 
 live upon till the day of judgment, but who yet works 
 incessantly and runs the risk of shortening his days 
 for the sake of increasing his means." (" Montesquieu, 
 Lettres Persanes.") This is the kind of life led by 
 those princes of opulence at New York, Astor, Vander- 
 bilt and Stewart, each of whom left a fortune of 
 more than 20,000,000. 
 
 The man of few wants has few cares. He is as gay 
 as the sky-lark or Lafontaine's cobbler who sings from 
 early dawa Thanks to the marvels of science and 
 mechanics, we produce in these days so much 
 wealth that the figures which measure it for the 
 statistician are so large as to amaze us and yet ours 
 is an age of sadness, of pre-occupation and overstrain. 
 Men do not laugh as once they laughed, nor find 
 amusement where onc they found it There is effort
 
 LUXURY AND THE IDEAL LIFE, 71 
 
 and anxiety everywhere, and everywhere men over- 
 reach and deceive each other. 
 
 Bossuet speaks on this point in his "Treatise on 
 Concupiscence," and one cannot fail to admire the 
 force and grandeur of his language. "The body it 
 is," he says, " which drags us down from the loftier 
 levels of thought, which chains us to the earth, when 
 we ought to be breathing the pure air of heaven." 
 Listen again to the great preacher, as he shows us in a 
 word what should be the goal of all our efforts : 
 " Why will you turn your very necessities into vanity ? 
 You must have a house to protect you from the air 
 which might injure you ; but this is your weakness. 
 You need nourishment to repair your forces, which 
 waste and consume every moment; another weak- 
 ness. You need a bed to lie on when you are tired, 
 where you may seek the slumber which swathes and 
 enfolds your reason : another deplorable weakness. 
 And all these needs, which are but witnesses and
 
 72 LUXURY. 
 
 proofs of your miserable weakness, you turn into 
 means of displaying your vanity, as if you would 
 exult in the very infirmities which compass you on 
 every side." 
 
 We sometimes find Bossuet pushing the doctrine of 
 self-denial to the extent of asceticism, but at 
 bottom must we not admit that he is right ? Is not 
 every one of our needs a weakness, a subservience to 
 infirmity, and a temptation to sacrifice true well- 
 being and the pursuit of right to sensuality ? Dig- 
 nity of life, uprightness of conduct, fidelity to prin- 
 ciple are not these most often to be found in con- 
 junction with great simplicity of living ? The fewer 
 one's wants, the more one is free to follow the dictates 
 of duty, and the less one is likely to be influenced by 
 the promptings of cupidity in important matters, 
 such as the choice of a career, of a wife, or of a 
 political party. 
 
 In England, we are told by Helvetius in his book,
 
 LUXURY AND THE IDEAL LIFE. 73 
 
 "On Mind," a cabinet minister went one day to a 
 member of the opposition in the House of Commons 
 in order to buy his vote, as was then the custom 
 frequently practised. He found the member dining 
 on a shoulder of mutton, and drinking only water, 
 and the response he met with was, "I should have 
 thought the simplicity of my repast might have saved 
 me the insult of your offer." 
 
 The memory of the greatest orator of the French 
 Revolution is tarnished by his venality. Why did 
 Mirabeau consent to touch a pension out of the king's 
 privy purse, if it was not to keep up his luxury and 
 his dissolute life? Whatever may be said against 
 him, I admire Jean Jacques Rousseau for obstinately 
 refusing all the gifts that were offered him, and con- 
 tinuing to live in his little room on the proceeds of 
 his music copying. 
 
 Diogenes one day saw a man drinking water from 
 the palm of his hand, and immediately threw away
 
 74 LUXURY. 
 
 his bowl to do likewise. Economically, he was 
 wrong, for there is more satisfaction and less trouble 
 in drinking from a glass than from one's hand ; but 
 the idea upon which he acted was, in my opinion, 
 sensible enough. 
 
 When discussing this question of luxury one day I 
 expressed a wish that instead of having feet which we 
 must constantly protect from stones and thorns as 
 well as from damp, we might have horses' hoofs, and 
 so dispense with shoes and stockings and all their 
 attendant discomforts. I was laughed at for this idea, 
 and it was nicknamed "Sabotism" (sabot = hoof ). 
 But I persist in believing with Bossuet that our 
 needs are so many weaknesses which divert us from 
 the ideal and overwhelm us in worldly interests. 
 Without wants, we might be like the lilies of the 
 Gospel, " which toil not, neither do they spin," or we 
 might even resemble those persons of independent 
 means who pass from one delightful spot to
 
 LUXURY AbD THE IDEAL LIFE. 75 
 
 another, enjoying at their ease the beauties of 
 nature. 
 
 I am not forgetting that man is so constituted that 
 in his present existence work is for him a necessary 
 condition of physical and moral health ; but is it not 
 desirable, to say the least, that this work should be 
 distributed in such a manner as to be nowhere so pro- 
 longed or so arduous as to brutalize him ? 
 
 Self-denial should not be allowed to go to the 
 length of producing coarseness of manners or a 
 numbed state of intelligence, still less, to the apothe- 
 osis of dirt, as in the case of St. Labre ; or to self- 
 mutilations, as practised by the fakirs : but of these 
 things we need have no fear, our age has no leanings 
 in this direction. The universal bent is towards a 
 refinement of sensuality, and it is this growing 
 tendency that we need to combat. 
 
 Let us have the courage to set up as models, 
 Socrates, whose vigorous frame, when in the army,
 
 76 LUXURY. 
 
 endured heat, cold and fatigue better than the 
 veterans, and who being without wants lived only 
 for philosophy and justice ; or, again, St. Paul, en- 
 during without shrinking every kind of trial im- 
 prisonment, stripes, shipwreck, poverty, "many 
 deaths" for the service of truth. The soul of an 
 apostle in a frame of iron- this is what we must 
 hold up to the admiration of our age, and the 
 imitation of our rising generation; not the pursuit 
 of an over-refined luxury for the pampering of 
 enervated tastes, and senses blunted by satiety.
 
 CHAPTER IX, 
 
 LUXURY IN EELATION TO THE PROSPERITY OF 
 NATIONS. 
 
 WE have in the next place to consider luxury from 
 the point of view of national prosperity, and to 
 ask ourselves if it has a favourable influence on it, 
 as some maintain. 
 
 It is on this point that the most dangerous form 
 of error is current. Those who indulge in large 
 expenditure on luxuries flatter themselves that 
 they are thereby benefiting their fellows, especially 
 of the labouring class ; and the governing classes 
 seem to have the same idea, for there are certain 
 functionaries who are allowed special grants for 
 
 the express purpose of setting an example of this 
 77
 
 78 LUXURY. 
 
 kind of dissipation. The most elementary notions 
 of Political Economy show how completely falla- 
 cious is this idea. 
 
 The progress of industry depends on the growth 
 of capital, and capital comes by saving. The 
 ^ waste of money which luxury entails is the very 
 reverse of saving, and so far from giving an im- 
 pulse to industry, it retards it. We must here 
 recall the wise remark of John Stuart Mill : the 
 demand for any commodity does not furnish the 
 means of producing it. I may wish this year to 
 buy some velvet, to manufacture which machines 
 are required, and all kinds of mechanical ap- 
 pliances. My demand wiU not furnish this neces- 
 sary capital. This must be contributed by some- 
 one who, instead of consuming, has been saving. 
 We can therefore be useful to the working-classes, 
 and we can give them work to do, not by our- 
 selves consuming, but by increasing their consump-
 
 LUXUR Y AND THE PROSPERITY OF NA TIONS. 79 
 
 tion, while they produce the tools, engines, and 
 preliminary appliances necessary for a new manu- 
 facture. 
 
 So far from contributing to raise wages, luxury 
 retards their rise. When is it that the wages of 
 the working-classes rise, in point of fact? It is 
 when capital increases more rapidly than the 
 number of workmen, or, as Cobden puts it, when 
 two masters run after one man. But for two 
 masters to compete over one man in the labour 
 market, both must first have accumulated capital 
 by saving. It is therefore by saving, and not by 
 expensive luxury, that it becomes possible to start 
 new manufactures, and thus to employ more work- 
 men. 
 
 No doubt, in very rich countries luxury does 
 not, as a matter of fact, prevent the growth of 
 capital, since the national revenues are large 
 enough to suffice for both. Side by side with
 
 8o LUXURY. 
 
 the spendthrifts, we find the men who save 
 and who accumulate. When a man has a yearly 
 income which he counts by millions, he can in- 
 dulge a good many fancies and still make con- 
 siderable savings every year. Before the recent 
 financial crisis the annual increase of capital in 
 England was estimated at about 120 millions 
 sterling. This increase was employed in the creation 
 of new enterprises, not in England only, but all 
 over the world. Moreover, can there be any doubt 
 but that, if the practice of saving were yet more 
 general, the rise in value of the whole amount of 
 productive capital and the general growth of in- 
 dustry would attain still higher proportions ? 
 
 "But," it will be said, "at least you will not 
 deny that luxury is good for trade. This is an 
 axiom which every one admits." 
 
 J. B. Say tells a story a, propoa of this. When 
 at college he used to spend his Sundays at the
 
 LUXURY AND THE PROSPERITY OF NATIONS. 81 
 
 house of an uncle of his who went in for good 
 living seasoned with philanthropy. One day at 
 dessert the said uncle, having emptied an old bottle 
 of choice wine, broke his glasses with the remark : 
 "Everyone must get a living." This incident set 
 young Say thinking. He asked himself why, if 
 his uncle wished to make a livelihood for the work- 
 men, he did not break up all the glass and crockery 
 on his table, as well as his furniture and his 
 window-panes ? By this means he would give 
 still more employment. On the same plea it follows 
 that Nero was inspired by true economic principles 
 when he gang over the spectacle of Rome in 
 flames. 
 
 An economic writer of the time of the restoration 
 in Franco, and a professed champion of Protection, 
 by name Saint-Chamant, supposes the case of the 
 destruction of Paris by fire. As a citizen, he deplores 
 the calamity ; but as an economist he rejoices over it. 
 
 F
 
 8* LUXURY. 
 
 He thinks it an excellent thing for labour, to which 
 it cannot fail to give a tremendous impulse. 
 
 Now, this is the conclusion to which we are in- 
 evitably driven, so long as we regard not the result 
 of labour, but only labour in itself. This is the 
 fallacy which Bastiat has aptly called Sisyphiem. 
 Political Economy, if it proceeded on these lines, 
 would be the science, not of the production, but of 
 the destruction of wealth. It is evident that there 
 is some mistake here, and it is important that this 
 should be clearly disentangled, and once for all 
 refuted. 
 
 To quote Bastiat again : " We must distinguish 
 what we see from what we do not see." What we 
 see is the workman replacing what has been de- 
 stroyed : what we do not see is another workman 
 producing other articles which might have been 
 paid for by the money thus employed. Let us 
 admit, as the English proverb says, that " it is an
 
 LUXURY AND THE PROSPERITY OP NATIONS. 83 
 
 ill wind that blows nobody any good," or again, 
 "that every dark cloud has a silver lining." No 
 doubt, when J. B. Say's uncle broke his glasses, he 
 gave the glass manufactory work in supplying 
 him with others. But if he had not spent the money 
 thus, he might have bought some chairs and tables, 
 or some new and finer glass, by which means he 
 would have given as much in wages and have had 
 more goods himself. His own wealth, and conse- 
 quently that of hia country, would have been 
 increased. 
 
 At Paris the monuments which were burnt in 1871 
 are being rebuilt; undoubtedly this has given 
 occupation to many trades, but with the millions 
 spent on this the French might have raised other 
 monuments, or established schools, or laid down 
 many leagues of railroad. Ultimately, Paris would 
 have still had her monuments and palaces, while 
 France would have gained in addition new educational
 
 84 LUXbRY. 
 
 premises, or new means of transport, which, as it 
 is, she will only obtain at the price of new sacrifices. 
 
 " This is all very well," our opponents insist, " but 
 with these fine theories of yours, which are descended 
 in a direct line from the Porticoes, from the Thebaid, 
 or even from the tub of Diogenes, you would bring 
 starvation on thousands of tradesmen and of 
 artisans." 
 
 Let us examine this objection by the light of an 
 example. A rich banker devotes 40,000 a year to 
 dinners, balls, and entertainments of every kind, 
 and he induces those whom he invites to spend 
 perhaps three times as much again. The purveyors 
 of fashions, the tailors, milliners, hair-dressers, and 
 provision dealers, do a thriving trade and make 
 their golden pile. The public is delighted. " Trade 
 is brisk." There comes on the scene a preacher 
 imbued, not with the lax theories of the Church 
 of to-day, but with the holy rigour of the early
 
 LUXURY AND Tff PROSPERITY OF NATIONS. 85 
 
 fathers. He thunders against luxury. Society 
 listens, is touched; society reforms. No more balls, 
 no more festivities. Austerity is the prevailing 
 rdgime ; society seems made up of quakera What 
 will be the result of so great a change ? 
 
 It is clear that the banker and all his tribe are 
 not going to throw all their money into the river. 
 What will they do with it? One thing is certain, 
 they will want to make a profit on it. How, then ? 
 One has an outlying property long neglected; this 
 he improves, plants, and drains; he repairs the 
 buildings on it, and makes roads. Another has a 
 factory which he will enlarge. A third takes rail- 
 way shares, and thus, indirectly, lays down some 
 yards of railroad. In a word, every one of them 
 will set labour in motion, and labour of a useful 
 and productive kind, since they count on securing 
 interest on their investments. The same amount 
 of money will be spent for nowadays it is not
 
 86 LUXURY. 
 
 the fashion to bury one's gold underground. The 
 same amount of labour is set in motion, the same 
 number of workmen fed ; but these are at work in 
 the country where we do not see them, and no 
 longer in the hair-dresser's shop, or behind the 
 counter, or in the show-room, where they were 
 constantly in view. There is therefore no suppression 
 of labour, but it is diverted into new channela 
 
 But let us consider what difference this will make 
 to the wealth of the country. When the lights of 
 the ball-room are put out, and the entertainer has 
 seen the last of his guests, what remains to show 
 for it ? Nothing, unless it be the stings of wounded 
 vanity, the discomforts of an uneasy digestion, the 
 restlessness of over-strained nerves. Social capital 
 has diminished in two senses in commodities, and in 
 human strength. But in the other case supposed, 
 when the useful works, which gave as much em- 
 ployment, are terminated, there remains a field,
 
 LUXUR Y AND THE PROSPERITY OF NA TIONS. 87 
 
 well drained and manured, which will yield more 
 corn; a forest, better planted, which will give more 
 wood; a new machine set up which will turn out 
 more manufactured articles; a new line of railway 
 constructed which will carry men and merchandise 
 at cheaper rates. The country will be enriched and 
 will produce the more. Consequently, in the follow- 
 ing year the workman will be better off. The price 
 of commodities will diminish, and to work the 
 increased capital there will be a demand for fresh 
 hands; wages will rise. There will thus be profit 
 on both sides. 
 
 But there are yet other advantages. I have 
 hitherto supposed the same amount of capital, di- 
 vested from expenditure on luxury into useful 
 channels, to be able to maintain only the same 
 number of labourers in the country as it had done 
 in town. But it will, in point of fact, support a larger 
 number, for wages being lower and living less ex-
 
 88 LUXURY. 
 
 pensive in the country, the same money will pay 
 more workmen. In the second place, the production 
 of useful commodities and of the necessaries of life is 
 much more stable than that of luxuries, which can 
 be more readily dispensed with upon occasion. 
 When public confidence is shaken, at the time of any 
 political or economic crisis, and the revenue is de- 
 clining, it will be in the direction of these factitious 
 wants that economies will first be practised, by which 
 means the workmen engaged in the manufacture of 
 luxuries will be thrown out of employment. Also 
 the changes of fashion will no longer be productive 
 of such suffering as at present. I have often seen in 
 Flanders young girls and children making what is 
 known as Valenciennes lace. The fashion changes in 
 favour of Brussels lace, Alencon or Venetian point ; 
 and these busy workers have their wages lowered 
 to a point which brings hunger and suffering upon 
 them. Nothing is more heart-breaking than to see
 
 LUXURY AND THE PROSPERITY OF NATIONS. 89 
 
 the spindle in these delicate, skilful, and most in- 
 dustrious fingers paralysed by the caprice of some 
 celebrated dressmaker. Thus luxury not only arrests 
 the accumulation of capital, but also employs less 
 labour, and that of a more precarious and irregular 
 kind, than the production of useful commodities. 
 
 " But all the same," I hear some one say, " money 
 must circulate." Nonsense again, I answer. The 
 circulation in itself is not what matters. Money 
 circulates nowhere more rapidly than at the gaming 
 table. Millions are there lost and won, but wherein 
 is the country the richer ? Money will always 
 circulate, at least, as long as you do not bury it in 
 an old pot ; the important point is whether in pass- 
 ing from hand to hand it has realised an equivalent 
 in permanent improvements and the satisfaction of 
 real human wants, or whether, instead of this, it has 
 created the mass of useless trifles in which the 
 sensual, the vain, and the frivolous take delight.
 
 90 LUXURY. 
 
 On some great occasion we give a display of fire- 
 works which cost 8,000. The philosopher, the 
 theologian, and the economist disapprove ; the idlers 
 look on and applaud. " Does not the money remain 
 in the country ? " This is folly and nothing else. 
 No doubt the money remains, but wealth to the 
 amount that it represents has been dissipated. 
 There were here two kinds of capital, the one in 
 money, the other in powder. This powder might 
 have been used for the extraction of coal or other 
 minerals from the earth, or for tunnelling a 
 hill or an isthmus for the passage of trains or vessels. 
 When the fireworks have gone off, nothing remains 
 but the money. The second capital has vanished in 
 smoke. To consume is always to destroy. What we 
 have to insist on is that this destruction should give, 
 as compensation, satisfaction to real wants, or the 
 creation of some new means of production. 
 
 All consumption is, at bottom, a form of exchange.
 
 L UXUR Y AND 7 HE PROSPER!! Y OF NA TIONS. 91 
 
 You give a certain actual value : what do you get in 
 exchange? Bodily strength and mental nourish- 
 ment ? then you have struck a good bargain. The 
 means of exciting pride and vanity, which are less 
 than nothing worth ? then you have bargained badly. 
 
 It follows from what has been said above that the 
 State pursues a senseless and blameworthy policy in 
 encouraging its functionaries by grants " for cost of 
 representation " to set an example of luxury ; for by 
 this means it puts a check on the growth of capital ; 
 hence on industry and on the rise of wages. It is 
 desirable, on the contrary, for those who represent 
 public authority to lead simple and even austere lives. 
 With a view to this, the democracies of Switzerland 
 and the United States of America make less difference 
 in the amount of salaries. The lower grades are 
 more highly paid, and the superior leas than 
 with us. 
 
 Economists have unsparingly denounced, and with
 
 92 LUXURY. 
 
 good reason, the subsidies paid to theatres by large 
 towns on the Continent. I would allow the most 
 ample expenditure for the spread of light and know- 
 ledge of healthy notions of morality, or the taste for 
 the beautiful. But who would dare to say that the 
 stage as it now is, except at such places as the Theatre 
 Fran9ais, has any share in forming taste and elevating 
 the mind ? As Rousseau says, in his letter to d'Alem- 
 bert on theatres, " public money is spent in opening 
 schools of bad examples and a hot-bed of corrupt 
 manners." Is it just that the poor should pay for the 
 pleasure of the rich, and that contributions should be 
 levied on all to assure ticket-holders their seats at half- 
 price ? Too often what is really wanted, instead of a 
 public grant, is a suppression of the license on the 
 score of injury to public morality. Here again it is 
 generally pleaded that theatrical displays "circulate 
 money and are good for trade." We have already ex- 
 posed the pernicious fallacies contained in this plea.
 
 L UXUR V AND THE PROSPERITY OP NA TIONS. 93 
 
 Owing to the fact that economic analysis had not 
 in those days displayed the absurdity of these 
 notions, we find many contradictory statements on 
 this subject in writers of the 18th century. Voltaire 
 in several passages condemns luxury; but in the 
 " Mondain " and others of his writings he extols it, 
 owing to the influence exerted on him by the then 
 celebrated " Fable of the Bees," which is an elaborate 
 apology for luxury. In Montesquieu this incoherence 
 and hesitancy is still more marked. He goes to the 
 root of the matter, and sees clearly that luxury is a 
 cause of demoralisation and decay, and yet he is 
 paralysed in his denunciation of it by the belief, 
 which he shared with all his century, that luxury is a 
 source of wealth. Thus he says: "Fashion is an 
 important matter; the increasing frivolity of men's 
 minds is ever multiplying new branches of trade." 
 Voltaire reproduces the same idea in his defence of 
 the worldling:
 
 9* LUXURY. 
 
 41 Sachez surtout que le luxe eiirichit 
 Un grand Etat, s'il en perd un petit. 
 Le pauvre y vit de vanite"s des grands. " 
 
 " Know then that luxury, my friends, which ruins the small State, 
 Will bring prosperity and wealth and splendour to the great ; 
 The rich man's vanities become the poor man's livelihood. " 
 
 La Fontaine, too, echoes the universal misconcep 
 tion: 
 
 " Je ne sais d'homme n&essaire 
 Que celui dont le luxe e"pand beaucoup de biens. 
 Nous en usons, Dieu soit. Ndtre plaisir occupe 
 L* artisan, le vendeur . . . ." 
 
 "I know no man so necessary as he whose luxury scatters 
 treasures everywhere. Heaven only knows how much we con- 
 sume 1 But our pleasures give occupation to the artisan and 
 tradesman." 
 
 Even Rousseau thinks that "luxury may be 
 necessary to give the poor a livelihood." But he, 
 it is true, goes on to say: "Yet if there were no 
 luxury, there would be no poor." 
 
 It is of paramount importance to uproot from the 
 public mind this fundamental error of believing
 
 LUXUR Y AND TBE PROSPERITY OF NA TIVNS. 95 
 
 that luxury is economically useful, because it feeds 
 labour. Let it be clearly understood that ostenta- 
 tion, idleness, and debauchery fritter away the re- 
 sources which might otherwise be so advantageously 
 utilized. The precepts of morality will not, it is to 
 be feared, meet with an immediate response; but, 
 at least, let no one flatter himself in future that in 
 cutting the corn before it ia ripe, and devouring 
 capital at its source, he is rendering a service to his 
 fellow-men, 
 
 Sismondi in his "New Principles of Political 
 Economy " (Bk. ii. Ch. 2.) makes this statement: " If 
 the wealthy classes suddenly resolved to live by 
 labour as the poor do, and to add their income to 
 their capital, the working-classes would be brought 
 to desperation, and would die of starvation very 
 soon." Sismondi forgets that in order to add their 
 income to their capital they would have to spend it 
 on machines, or on agricultural improvements, in
 
 96 LUXURY. 
 
 investments of every kind, and that thus they would 
 give employment to as many workmen as in buying 
 useless luxuries. 
 
 It is, however, true that any sudden change in 
 the direction of the revenue would ruin those to 
 whom it had previously given a livelihood, supposing 
 them to be unable to perform the new kinds of 
 labour required. It would therefore be desirable 
 that the change should be accomplished gradually. 
 But there is no reason to fear as yet that the wealthy 
 classes will all at once betake themselves to russet 
 gowns and coarse broth.
 
 CHAPTER X, 
 
 LUXURY AND JUSTICE. 
 
 WE have said that there was a third aspect in 
 which we must regard luxury : namely, in its rela- 
 tion to law and equity. We must in fact ask 
 ourselves whether luxury is compatible with justice ? 
 The whole of Christian tradition, from its source 
 downwards, answers this question in the negative. 
 How many passages might we not cite from the 
 Gospels to this effect ! Lazarus is received into 
 Abraham's bosom, while the rich man is cast into 
 torments. " It is easier for a camel or a cable of 
 camel's hair to pass through the needle's eye, than 
 
 for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God." 
 
 9/ o
 
 98 LUXURY. 
 
 " Woe unto them that are rich, for they find their 
 happiness in this world." Luxury, which is the 
 selfish and unprincipled use of wealth, thus stands 
 absolutely condemned by Christian ethics. 
 
 The fathers of the Church recognise a kind of 
 equality of rights. Those who have a superfluity of 
 wealth cannot lawfully spend it all on themselves. 
 It is their duty to share it with those who lack even 
 the bare necessaries of life. As Salvien says, " the 
 rich is only the steward of the poor." M. Baudrillart 
 quotes a passage from a sermon of Bourdaloue 
 on Almsgiving in which this doctrine is most 
 explicitly set forth : " According to the law of 
 nature," he says, " all things ought to be the common 
 property of all. As all men are equally men, no 
 one man by himself and by his own nature has any 
 rights more extensive or better established than 
 any other. Thus it seemed natural that God should 
 give them the good things of the earth that they
 
 L VXUR Y AND JUSTICE. 99 
 
 might gather its fruits, each according to his present 
 need. . . . When the rich man gives alms, let 
 him not flatter himself on the score of liberality, 
 for in giving it he is but acquitting himself of a 
 debt which the poor can lawfully claim from him, 
 and which he cannot without injustice refuse." The 
 Church, however, has but one remedy to offer for this 
 inequality of conditions and the luxury which results 
 from it : and this remedy is almsgiving, always alms- 
 giving, and nothing else. But what is to be done 
 when Political Economy, by an appeal to facts, 
 demonstrates that almsgiving engenders idleness, 
 mendicity, inertia, and debasement of character, and 
 that when ultimately analysed it is seen to be 
 iniquitous, since it is itself exploited in one form or 
 other, by rent or by taxation, from those who toil for 
 the benefit of those who do not? J. B. Say, who 
 may be called the Adam Smith of France, shows 
 very clearly that a too unequal distribution of wealth
 
 ioo LUXURY. 
 
 is the source of luxury. " The too great inequality 
 of fortunes is hostile to every form of consumption 
 properly so called. It developes imaginary wants, 
 and at the same time real wants are less and less 
 efficiently supplied. The extremity of misery and 
 the surfeit of wealth stand everywhere side by side. 
 The toil wrung from one portion of humanity pro- 
 vides for the needs of the other portion. Splendid 
 colonnades, and loathsome hovels; the rags of 
 poverty, and the exacting demands of luxury ; in a 
 word, the most useless profusion in the midst of the 
 most urgent need." 
 
 Montesquieu admits with Bourdaloue that "pri- 
 vate fortunes have increased only at the cost 
 of a loss of necessary physique to a large part 
 of the nation : this loss, then, must be made good 
 to them." And how does he propose to do this ? 
 By certain kinds of expenditure on the part of the 
 rich, to be imposed, if need be, by the Government
 
 L UXVR Y AND JUSTICE. 101 
 
 The great political writer's solution is even worse 
 than the great pulpit orator's. The authors of the 
 French Revolution, and the compilers of the French 
 Civil Code caught a glimpse of the true solution 
 and endeavoured, though with insufficient logic, 
 perhaps, to follow it up. This solution consists in 
 bringing about such a distribution of wealth as to 
 endow the largest possible number of citizens with 
 property in some shape or form. Let every one 
 hold some property in land or in stocks or de- 
 bentures ; in a word, a little capital. Demowatise 
 property. The result will be that every man will 
 enjoy the produce of his own labour to the full, and 
 this baneful luxury, which is the inevitable result of 
 extreme inequality, and which is condemned no less 
 by economic science than by Christianity, will alto- 
 gether disappear. Then, if the progress of mechanics 
 allows of the multiplication and refinement of pro- 
 ducts, at least they will be brought within the reach
 
 102 LUXURY. 
 
 of all This is the state of things which already ex- 
 ists in those countries where civil laws, and the 
 usurpations of feudalism and royalty, have not 
 destroyed the agrarian system or the forms of 
 property handed down from primitive times. 
 
 Voltaire, who, like the rest of his contemporaries, 
 said many foolish things on the subject of luxury, 
 has yet a very sensible passage relating to it in his 
 ' Dictionnaire Philosophique." "If by luxury we 
 mean everything over and above what is actually 
 necessary, then luxury is a natural result of human 
 progress; and, to be logical, every one who opposes it 
 ought to believe with Rousseau that the ideal state 
 of happinesi and virtue for man is that not even of 
 the savage, but of the ourang-outang. It is felt, how- 
 ever, that it would be absurd to regard as an evil 
 commodities which all men enjoy. The word luxury, 
 therefore, is generally restricted to those superfluities 
 which only a small number of individuals can in-
 
 L UXUR Y AND JUSTICE. 103 
 
 dulge. In this sense, luxury is a necessary out- 
 come of property without which no society could 
 exist and of a great inequality of fortunes which 
 is the result, not of proprietary rights in themselves, 
 but of bad laws. Luxury then is the offspring 
 of bad laws, and by good laws it may be destroyed. 
 Moralists should address their sermons to legislators, 
 and not to private individuals, because it is possible 
 in this order of things that a man virtuous and en- 
 lightened should have power to make reasonable 
 laws, while it is not to be expected from human 
 nature that all the rich men of a country should give 
 up, for virtue's sake, procuring themselves in exchange 
 for money all the varied enjoyments of the pleasure- 
 seeking and the vain."
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 STATE LUXUET. 
 
 THERE is, in my opinion, but one kind of luxury 
 which is justifiable, and that is public or State luxury, 
 and this only on condition that it is well and wisely 
 directed. 
 
 M. Baudrillart has some excellent remarks on 
 this subject. Here are some of them : " From 
 time to time the State will invite the public to enjoy 
 certain pleasures, such as public gardens, fountains, 
 or theatrical displays. Again, it will display the 
 treasures of beauty to multitudes who are cut off 
 from the possession of statuary or paintings. It keeps 
 up museums for the arts, libraries for science and 
 
 literature, exhibitions and shows for industry. In all 
 
 104
 
 STATS LUXURY. 105 
 
 its forms, in fact, this collective luxury, if well 
 directed, is profitable to all. It raises the general 
 level and fertilises the genius of production. This 
 kind of luxury furthermore has one striking ad- 
 vantage : it takes away from pomp and display 
 that character of selfishness and isolation which it 
 bears when it is the affair only of private individuals. 
 It places within reach of the many enjoyments which 
 are the habitual portion only of the rjch, and which 
 are by them displayed only to a few, and by transient 
 glimpses." 
 
 In the last chapter of this book which we 
 have so much quoted, M. Baudrillart examines the 
 question of the reforms to be introduced into State 
 luxury, and his views on this point are very just and 
 very useful. The more democratic society becomes, 
 the more the State is justified in intervening to 
 encourage true art, which is the only form of luxury 
 it should allow itself. At Athens, under Pericles, two
 
 io6 LUXURY. 
 
 thirds of the revenue was devoted to public monu- 
 ments. Pindar says in the 7th Olympiad : " In the 
 day when the Khodans shall erect an altar to 
 Minerva, a rain of gold will fall upon the isle." The 
 golden rain which falls on any people when litera- 
 ture and the fine arts are encouraged as they deserve 
 to be, is a shower of pure and disinterested delights. 
 
 Felix: Ravaison justly says, in speaking of Art in 
 the Schools (" Dictionaaire de Pe'dagogie et d'lnstruc- 
 tion Primaire ") : " Though education ought at first to 
 be carried on by means of real things and medels, 
 this is only that these may serve as vehicles to carry 
 the mind upwards to the sublimest intellectual 
 heights." Would the baser superfluities, and coarse 
 and degrading kinds of consumption hold so much 
 place in the desires of the masses if these could 
 learn, in ever so small a measure, to take delight in 
 that kind of divine and healthful intoxication, which 
 is produced through the ear and through the eye, by
 
 STATE LUXURY. 107 
 
 sweet harmonies and by fair proportions ? Might 
 not the man of the people, on whom the curse of 
 matter weighs with so heavy a load, find the best 
 kind of alleviation for his hard condition, if his eyes 
 were open to what Leonardo da Vinci calls la belleza 
 delmo'ado, " the beautiful things of the earth;" if he 
 too were thus prepared to enjoy the splendours which 
 he sees profusely scattered through all this vast uni- 
 verse, and which, becoming, as Pascal puts it, percept- 
 ible to the heart, will soften his sadness, and give him 
 a presentiment and foretaste of higher destinies ? 
 
 This is a question which touches on so many 
 different interests that a whole volume might be 
 written upon it I will not dwell on it further here. 
 I am completely at one with M. Baudrillart in his 
 conclusions on this point, and I believe that states- 
 men and administrators would find in his book much 
 excellent advice to follow.
 
 CHAPTER XH 
 
 LUXURY AS CONNECTED WITH DIFFERENT FORMS 
 OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 I HAVE still a few words to say on luxury as con- 
 nected with different forms of government. The 
 subject is so vast that I cannot here do more than 
 touch the fringe of it. M. Baudrillart has a 
 chapter on it, and many of his remarks are pro- 
 foundly true. But here again I am inclined to be a 
 little more of a puritan than ha He seems to admit 
 that under a monarchy a certain measure of luxury 
 is a necessity. " The monarchy could hardly be sup- 
 posed to do without external state. A certain amount 
 of this is necessary to monarchical institutions." 
 Further, he believes that Montesquieu, if he wrote 
 
 to-day, would no longer say as he does: "In the 
 
 108
 
 DIFFERENT FORMS OF GO VERNMENT. 109 
 
 republics, where there is equality of wealth, there 
 can be no luxury; it is indeed in this very thing 
 that the excellence of a republic consist*, and the 
 less luxury there is, the more perfect the republic. 
 In all republics where this equality is not lost 
 sight of, the commercial instinct and the promptings 
 of industry and virtue combined make it possible 
 to every one to live on his own resources, and con- 
 sequently there is little or no luxury." I believe, 
 on the contrary, that Montesquieu would find, in 
 the general aspect of the world to-day, many good 
 reasons for not changing his opinion. There ought 
 not to be luxury either in monarchy or republic. 
 
 " We are talking of humanity as it is, and not of 
 humanity as it might be," says M. Baudi illart. 
 
 No doubt we must take the actual for our start- 
 ing-point; but in treating of moral science it is 
 no less certain that our search ehould be for what 
 might be, and above all for what ought to be. There
 
 I ro LUXURY. 
 
 is an ideal to be pursued ; this it is which economists, 
 to my mind, have too often forgotten. 
 
 In olden times the pomp and pageant of kings 
 was, no doubt, useful, not to the people, but for 
 the maintenance of the throne; for which, as did 
 the ceremonial of religion, it inspired a superstitious 
 awe and reverence. The sovereign, in the blaze 
 of magnificence which surrounded his throne, 
 appeared as an all-powerful deity. Luxury was 
 one of the bases of power. To-day these splendours 
 no longer have power to impose ; they only irritate ; 
 this is proved by the response made by the regicides 
 some time ago at Berlin, Madrid, and Naples. 
 " Why did you wish to kill the king ? " Passanante 
 was asked. And he replied: "Because he is the 
 chief among the spoilers of the people who are 
 reduced to misery by their exactions. I have no 
 hatred against King Humbert in himself, for he 
 is good and devoted."
 
 DIFFERENT FORMS OF GOVERNMENT. in 
 
 Montesquieu thinks that & monarchy must surround 
 itself with luxury and corruption to prevent the 
 people from longing for liberty. The kings of 
 to-day understand that devotion to public ends 
 and simplicity of life are the best titles to the love 
 of their country. King Humbert, like his father, 
 Victor Emmanuel, who was a soldier and huntsman, 
 has a horror of pomp and ceremonial. At Vienna 
 again, while on the "Ring," superb palaces are 
 springing up,, the Emperor of Austria continues to 
 live in the old fortress of his ancestors, and he is 
 right in not desiring another. King Leopold of 
 Belgium comes upon his private purse for the 
 means of generously encouraging literature, art, 
 and agriculture, and of furthering that great phil- 
 anthropic work, the civilisation of Central Africa. 
 Is not Queen Victoria also foolishly reproached 
 for setting an example of economy? The people 
 would be still less likely to forgive luxury
 
 na LUXURY. 
 
 in the high dignitaries of a republic than in 
 kings. It would shock them as a kind of scandal, 
 for they would see in it the ostentation of a 
 parvenu, whose superfluities would be taken from 
 the necessaries of the workers. 
 
 A mischievous notion has become current, to the 
 effect that happiness consists in great wealth. It 
 is for the chiefs of a great republican State to show 
 that the highest functions are compatible with 
 the greatest simplicity, and that they are some- 
 thing quite other than a means of procuring for 
 one's self all the refinements of sensuality and 
 prida 
 
 Montesquieu was right in maintaining that demo- 
 cracy excludes luxury because it discourages extreme 
 inequality. " If in any State," he says, " riches are 
 equally distributed, there will be no luxury, for it 
 is founded only on commodities that one procures 
 through the labour of othera"
 
 DIFFERENT FORMS OF GOVERNMENT. 113 
 
 " History sufficiently shows us," says M. Courcelle- 
 Seneuil, "that luxury springs up only among those 
 who acquire wealth without work either by gambling, 
 or by war, or by intrigue." 
 
 We must not forget that all the ancient demo- 
 cracies perished under the stress of social conflicts. 
 The same danger is always before our eyes, and it 
 breaks out from time to time in fearful catastrophes. 
 
 Enlightened by the knowledge of these facts, no 
 writer has understood better than did Aristotle the 
 formidable problem presented by the establishment of 
 a democratic system. In his admirable work, the 
 " Politics," he shows at once the peril and the 
 remedy. " Inequality," he says, " is the source of all 
 revolutions." (Bk. V., chap, i.) " Men being equal 
 in one respect have desired to be in all; equal in 
 liberty, they have desired an absolute equality. 
 Not obtaining it, they are persuaded that they are 
 
 mulcted of their rights, and raise an insurrection." 
 
 H
 
 H4 LUXURY. 
 
 The only method, he believes, of preventing in- 
 surrections and revolutions is to avoid too great 
 inequality. " Let even the poorest," said he, " have 
 a little inheritance." This is precisely what was 
 effected by the French Revolution, and it is a fact 
 that twice over the established order has been 
 maintained by these very " country folk " with their 
 small inheritances. 
 
 It is in this same direction that we must continue 
 to move. The popularisation of property is the only 
 solid basis of democracy. When the head of every 
 family owns a little land, a house, some stocks, or 
 bonds, or some stable source of income, there will no 
 longer be any social revolution to fear. The labour- 
 ing classes, from their infancy, and in their schools, 
 must be bought to acquire the practice and habit of 
 thrift. The government must facilitate in every 
 possible way the acquisition of property ; repeal all 
 the laws which tend to keep it in the hands of a
 
 DIFFERENT FORMS OF GO VERNMENT. 1 1 S 
 
 few, and substitute for them laws calculated to bring 
 it within reach of the greatest possible number. 
 
 As for the leisured classes, it is their duty to assist 
 this emancipatory movement. A strict application 
 to work, love of the fields and country, simplicity of 
 life, high moral and intellectual culture these are 
 the examples they must set before the eyes of the 
 people. 
 
 Christianity was right : wealth has its obligations. 
 Those who have at their disposal the net produce of 
 the country ought to use their superfluous wealth, 
 not in multiplying and refining material enjoyments, 
 or in exciting the unhealthy promptings of vanity 
 and pride, but in works of public usefulness, as do 
 already many leading citizens in America, and more 
 than one Sovereign in Europe. The Gospel has 
 brought salvation, even in this world. The ancient 
 democracies perished in corruption and civil strife 
 because, being founded on slavery, they could not
 
 n6 LUXURY. 
 
 maintain a just social organisation. Modern de- 
 mocracy will escape these perils if it succeeds in 
 realising the ideal proposed by Christ, and imaged by 
 the Lord's Supper of primitive times that of true 
 human brotherhood. 
 
 Voltaire, on his side, was also right ; it will not be 
 the sermons of preachers nor the arguments of 
 economists that will bring about the disappearance of 
 luxury, but the slow and continuous progress of 
 institutions and of laws.

 
 CHAPTEE L 
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY AS RELATED TO OTHER BRANCHES 
 OF SOCIAL SCIENCE. 
 
 POLITICAL Economy is closely connected with the 
 other sciences of the same group; those, namely, 
 which deal with philosophy, religion, morality, law, 
 and politics. The object of Political Economy is 
 to determine what laws and what institutions are 
 most favourable to the productivity of labour, and 
 ultimately to the growth and just distribution of 
 
 wealth. 
 
 \ 
 I have found in the " Eocycloprodeia Americana," 
 
 what I think is a very good definition of Political 
 Economy. "The object of Political Economy is to 
 
 study the constitution of governments and laws, 
 
 119
 
 120 LA W AND MORALS IN POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 judicial, social, and financial institutions, education, 
 religion, manners and customs, the soil, the 
 geographical position, climate, the arts, in so far 
 as all these circumstances affect the character and 
 condition of nations relatively to public wealth, 
 that is to the production, distribution, and con- 
 sumption of all things useful and agreeable in 
 life 
 
 Rousseau almost defined it when at the first 
 appearance of the " Contrat Social," he said : " I 
 wish to discover if there can be in the civil order 
 some legitimate and stable system of administration, 
 taking men as they are and laws as they ought to 
 be. I shall endeavour always, in this investigation, 
 to associate the dictates of right with those of 
 interest, so that justice and utility may not be in 
 any degree at variance." The alliance of right with 
 interest, of justice with utility this is the main 
 and most important point.
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY. i 
 
 It is too often forgotten that this is the light in 
 which the creators of Political Economy, the Phy- 
 siocrats in France, and Adam Smith in England, 
 regarded the science which they founded. " Political 
 Economy," says the latter, "regarded as a branch of 
 science for statesmen and legislators, has two proper 
 objects: to render the citizens capable of procuring 
 for themselves abundant means of subsistence, and 
 to furnish the government with a revenue propor- 
 tionate to the public service; in a word, to enrich 
 the people and the sovereign." We have, then, to 
 deal with State laws and not with natural laws. 
 
 But, it has been said, it is not then a science at 
 all, it is an art : and it has been proposed to 
 constitute on the one side a science, to deal with 
 general and inevitable laws, and on the other an 
 art, to study the methods of applying these laws. 
 But this is to forget tliat if we apply the term art 
 to every kind of knowledge which pursues an end,
 
 122 LA W AND MORALS IN POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 all the moral sciences would deserve this name. 
 Moral Science properly so called does not content 
 itself with describing human passions as they are, 
 it lays down what men ought to do, what duties 
 they should fulfil, and what virtues they ought to 
 practise. Jurisprudence aims at determining what 
 laws ought to be adopted in order that justice may 
 be done. Political science studies what are the 
 forms of government and of institutions that ought 
 to flourish among any given people in order that 
 they may attain the highest degree of civilisation 
 and of prosperity of which they are capable. 
 
 The moral sciences have all the same end in view : 
 to lead men up to good, to happiness, to perfection. 
 Need they, therefore, be called arts ? I think not. 
 Art begins only when we study the means of 
 winning acceptance for the rules of action which 
 these sciences have discovered. 
 
 The economist ought to have in view an ideal :
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 namely, the well-being of all, in conformity with the 
 prescriptions of what is just. He will then seek out 
 what laws and what institutions lead to this, taking 
 into account human nature in general, and the 
 temperament of each people in particular, and relying 
 on the facts presented to him by history, by statistics, 
 and by the descriptions of different countries he 
 can obtain. He will draw out the relations of 
 cause and effect and deduce from thence practical 
 rules. 
 
 Thus an immense horizon opens before us. We are 
 no longer occupied only in stating these so-called 
 natural laws of which we hear so much, and which 
 are nothing but simple truisms, or in analysing with 
 more or less detail the effects of the law of supply 
 and demand, but in studying what are the laws and 
 what the institutions which a society ought to adopt 
 in order to arrive at the highest good. 
 
 In this order, a preliminary question presents itself
 
 124 LAW AND MORALS IN POLITICAL ECONOMY, 
 
 which brings out the close connection between 
 economic and political science. Which form of 
 government is most favourable to the increase of 
 wealth? This point is not dealt with in manuals, 
 but some writers, among them Montesquieu and 
 Tocqueville, have thrown light upon it. 1 will quote, 
 for instance, such words as these, in the " Eprit des 
 Lois : " " Countries are not cultivated by reason of 
 their fertility, but by reason of their liberty." 
 "Despotism is like the savage who cuts down the 
 tree to gather the fruit." I may refer likewise to the 
 following admirable chapters. " How in the 
 democratic state equality is established by laws" 
 (v. 6), and that entitled "Luxury in China," which 
 contains a burning satire on the abuses of the ancient 
 regime l ; again the 13th Book : " On the relation 
 
 l Our ancestors,' said an Emperor of the Tang dynastj, 
 ' considered it a maxim that if there was one man who did no 
 labour, and one woman who altogether failed to spin, then thsre 
 was someone in the empire who suffered from hunger and cold,'
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 125 
 
 which the levying of taxes and the greatness of 
 public revenues bear to liberty ; " the 18th, " On laws 
 in connection with the nature of the soil ; " the 20th, 
 " On laws in relation to commerce," and, finally, the 
 whole book which deals with population. 
 
 Rousseau again puts forth here and there very 
 profound views on this subject, as when he shows by 
 the examples of Greece, Rome, and the Italian 
 Republics that the agitations produced by liberty are 
 less fatal than the repose of despotism. " Riots and 
 civil wars are formidable enough to those in authority; 
 but it is not they which cause the real unhappiness 
 of the people." Their true prosperity or calamity 
 springs out of their permanent conditions. When all are 
 crushed under the yoke, then everything droops and 
 
 and on this principle he caused an immense number of 
 monasteries of bonzes to be destroyed. So many men being 
 occupied in making the clothes for one, how in the world can 
 there fail to be many who lack clothing ? There are ten men to 
 consume the revenue to one who labours to produce it : how in 
 the world can thero fail to be numbers who lack nourishment ? "
 
 ia6 LA W AND MORALS IN POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 withers, and their rulers destroy them at their ease 
 " uhi solitudinem faciunt pacem apellant " they 
 have made a desert, and call it peace. Greece was 
 vigorous and flourishing of old, in spite of the most 
 cruel wars ; blood flowed in torrents, and, neverthe- 
 less, the fields were covered with men. 
 
 " It seemed," said Machiavelli, " that in the midst 
 of murders, proscriptions, civil wars, our republic 
 became but the more powerful : the virtue of its 
 citizens, their manners, their independence, had 
 more effect in strengthening than all its dissensions 
 in weakening it. A little agitation gives a spring 
 to the mind, and it is less to peace than to liberty 
 that the race owes what prosperity it has." This 
 is an instance of how history throws light on 
 economic problems. 
 
 Rousseau makes another remark which is 
 strikingly true: "Our laws ought to be such that 
 as a means of acquiring abundance, labour should
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY. is; 
 
 be always necessary and never useless." And again, 
 a saying which constantly occurred to my mind 
 when I was travelling recently in Russia : " At 
 each palace which I see rise in the capital, in my 
 mind's eye I seem to see a whole country-side 
 reduced to ruins." 
 
 If anyone wishes to have an idea of the effect 
 of bad government let him read the history of the 
 decay of Spain from Philip II. onwards, or let him 
 cross the deserted plains, the bare hill-sides, the 
 fever-stricken valleys of Asia Minor, and think of 
 the wealthy cities and the immense populations 
 which in the olden days inhabited that beautiful 
 country. 
 
 Tocqueville has drawn a never-to-be-forgotten 
 picture of the influence of democracy in the pur- 
 suit of wealth. "All the causes that nourish in 
 the human heart the love of the good things of 
 this world develope commerce and industry.
 
 128 LA W AND MORALS IN POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 Equality is one of these causes. It favours com- 
 merce, not directly in giving men a taste for business, 
 but indirectly in strengthening and universalising 
 in men's minds the desire for well-being." "I do 
 not know," he says again, "if one could name a 
 single commercial and manufacturing people, from 
 the Tyrians down to the Florentines and the English, 
 which has not been a free people. There is there- 
 fore a close relation and necessary connection be- 
 tween these two things, liberty and industry." 
 
 How clearly he points out the danger involved, 
 even from a purely economic point of view, in seek- 
 ing salvation from absolute power ! " Men who have 
 a passion for material enjoyment usually discover 
 how much the agitations produced by liberty dis- 
 turb their prosperity long before they perceive how 
 liberty itself serves to ensure it, and when the least 
 sound of popular passion penetrates the petty 
 pleasures of their private life, they are aroused and
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 129 
 
 disquieted at once; for a long time the fear of 
 anarchy keeps them incessantly in suspense, and 
 always ready to part with their liberty at the first 
 symptoms of disorder. A nation which expects 
 from its government nothing but the maintenance 
 ot order is already, in its heart, a slave : it is the slave 
 of its own prosperity, and at any moment the man 
 may appear who will actually place it in chains." 
 Here we have the events of 1852 predicted long 
 beforehand. 
 
 The same writer shows also great insight and 
 observation in the chapters in which he describes 
 the characteristics of modern industry, and the rela- 
 tions between employer and employed which result 
 therefrom. 
 
 In Dupont White's clever and thoughtful works 
 we see again at every page the close connection 
 between Economics and Politics. 
 
 Another chapter might be written, and would con- 
 
 i
 
 130 LA W AND MORALS IN POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 tain more than one piquant and instructive paragraph, 
 on the influence exerted by different forms of worship 
 on the productivity of labour and the prosperity of 
 nations. What renders labour productive is the 
 application of science to industry, and the mainten- 
 ance of justice in laws. Every religion, then, which 
 condemns the study of nature, or which consecrates 
 deep-seated iniquities or great absurdities, would 
 prove an obstacle to economic progress. The ancient 
 religion of China, and the creed of Zoroaster, both 
 placed agriculture and the planting of trees in the 
 rank of acts of piety. Hence the great prosperity of 
 China and Persia afterwards, while to this day the 
 Parsees in India are almost all very rich, and the 
 Chinese make their fortunes everywhere. 
 
 The Mosaic creed proved also very conducive to the 
 progress of economic well-being. It transformed the 
 barren rocks of Palestine into an extremely flourish- 
 ing and fertile country, with an abundant food
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 131 
 
 supply, and ten times richer and more populous than 
 the Palestine of our time. Before our eyes to-day, 
 the followers of Moses become everywhere the kings 
 of commerce and of finance. In some countries, such 
 as those of Eastern Europe, where the population has 
 not yet wholly recovered from the effects of oppres- 
 sion, as soon as the way is open to free competition, 
 the Jews carry the day so triumphantly against all 
 comers that exceptional measures are passed to 
 handicap them, and sometimes they are even mas- 
 sacred, as in Russia. 
 
 Mahomedanism has been the ruin of all countries 
 where it has reigned supreme, with the exception of 
 Egypt, which, thanks to the beneficent Nile, it could 
 not altogether devastate. Its dogmas differed but little 
 from those of Judaism ; but it established despotism, 
 disdained science, and inculcated a habit of fatalistic 
 indifference this was quite sufficient to sterilize 
 everything. The cult which began by burning the
 
 132 LAW AND MORALS IN POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 library of Alexandria could not be favourable to the 
 advance of enlightenment, nor, consequently, to the 
 accumulation of wealth. 1 
 
 Christianity, by preparing the way for the enfran- 
 chisement of all mankind, and by introducing every- 
 where ideas of equality and justice, brought about the 
 magnificent expansion of modern civilisation. To be 
 convinced of this we have only to compare the 
 powerful position of the Christian States with those of 
 other countries, and to note that the freest and most 
 prosperous peoples are precisely those which by re- 
 ligious reform have approached most nearly to the 
 principles of the Gospel. More than this, the sects 
 which have applied these principles in almost all their 
 strictness the Quakers in England and America, the 
 Mennonites in Holland and Germany, have no 
 paupers, and almost all their members are in easy or 
 opulent circumstances. A Quaker lives exactly as 
 1 See my book on the Balkan Peninsula, II. Oh. 9>
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY. 133 
 
 Jesus would have men live, and as Political Economy 
 to-day advises. He works steadily and with ardour ; 
 he is sober ; he avoids luxury in his clothing and in 
 his house ; he helps his fellow-men, and at the 
 same time he saves; he thus fructifies industry, 
 creates capital, and lays the foundations of liberty. 
 It is the spirit of the Pilgrim Fathers to which is due 
 the astonishing development of the United States.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY AS RELATED TO MORALITY. 
 
 QUESTIONS of morality lie at the very roots of 
 Political Economy. For of what, in fact, does its 
 subject-matter consist ? The accumulation of wealth. 
 But what is wealth ? It is, as Roscher justly says, 
 everything which satisfies a true human need a need, 
 that is, worthy of human nature and recognised by 
 human reason ; in a word a rational need. 
 
 Now, who is to say what are rational needs ? It is 
 for hygiene to determine what are the real require- 
 ments of the body, and it is for morality to prescribe 
 within what limits it is right to give tkem satisfaction. 
 
 The moral law condemns on the one hand the asceti- 
 
 134
 
 ECONOMY AS RELATED TO MORALITY. 135 
 
 cism which canonises Simon Stylites for living perched 
 on the summit of a column, or Saint Labre for living in 
 dirt and idleness; and, on the other hand, the Sybarite 
 who awakens amid the scent of rose leaves and whom 
 the service of a thousand domestics cannot satisfy 
 
 It is not right to so abuse and mortify the body that 
 it can no longer be the instrument of the mind, but 
 neither is it right to soften and enervate it so that 
 it keeps us incessantly occupied with its fancies. The 
 Greeks, as I said before, may serve us as models in 
 this respect. They took much thought for the body, 
 but only to fortify and invigorate it so that it might be 
 insensible of fatigue, proof against the weather, and 
 almost beyond the reach of disease. At the same 
 time, they carried on the cultivation of the mind by 
 discussions on philosophy and politics, and by the 
 pursuit of art considered as a means of education. 
 
 Moral teaching at all times has preached moder- 
 ation of desires. On the other hand, most economists
 
 136 LA W AND MORALS IN POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 regard it as a cause for congratulation that the de- 
 sires of man are unlimited : because thus, however 
 rapid progress machinery may make, there will 
 always be as much work to be done. Of these con- 
 flicting doctrines, which is the right one ? Evidently 
 that held by the moralists. If machinery shortens 
 the time necessary for affording satisfaction to 
 rational wants, are we to use this leisure which 
 science has won for us in manufacturing useless 
 trifles, solely to make work? This is what Bastiat 
 calls "sisyphism," that is, making work for work's 
 sake, digging holes in order to fill them up, pouring 
 water into the Danaid's cask; and yet Bastiat de- 
 clared this sisyphism to be necessary for solving the 
 problem of machinery. Shall we invent childish 
 fancies, for no reason but to give employment to 
 workmen ? A sensible man, having once by per- 
 fecting his processes of work arrived at procuring 
 what he requires in a day's work of eight hours, will
 
 ECONOMY AS RELATED TO MORALITY. 137 
 
 not surely devote the rest of his day to embroidering 
 his cuffs or carving himself trinkets. Like the 
 Athenian citizen he will put on a garment of wool 
 and go to hear Socrates lecture, to applaud a play of 
 Sophocles, or to carry on a discussion with De- 
 mosthenes. It is thus that the human race should 
 employ itself. See the shops in our large towns : 
 what lost labour does this innumerable variety of 
 useless objects represent, and how much better it 
 would have been to have devoted it to the manu- 
 facture of necessaries ! The supreme utility of 
 machinery is not to allow of the indefinite develop- 
 ment of luxury, but to assure to everyone the neces- 
 saries of life, and to leave men leisure for cultivation 
 of their minds, for the enjoyment of nature and of 
 the society of their fellowmen. Our material wants 
 are the chains which enslave us. To satisfy them re- 
 quires a sacrifice of time, the precious and too scanty 
 material of which our lives are made. He who be-
 
 138 LA W AND MORALS IN POLITICAL ECONOMY, 
 
 comes their slave renounces liberty to devote himself 
 in peace to the pleasures of an idle life. 
 
 Economists have "been wrong to disregard on this 
 point the words of moralists, both pagan and Chris- 
 tians. True economic science is in complete agreement 
 with true morality. 
 
 It is the moralist again who must deal with this 
 fundamental question : is everything wealth which 
 has an exchangeable value ? Dupont de Nemours, the 
 latest of the Physiocrats, exiled from France at the 
 Restoration, wrote on the 22nd of April, 1815, from the 
 vessel which was carrying him to America to J. B. 
 Say, reproaching him for having confined the domain 
 of Political Economy within too narrow limits. " It 
 is," he maintains, " the science of justice applied to all 
 social relations. You hold that everything that can 
 be exchanged is wealth. Lais and Phryne take in 
 exchange for their favours large sums of money: 
 must we conclude from this that they are wealth-
 
 ECONOMY AS RELATED TO MORALITY. 139 
 
 producers, and that a country is prosperous in pro- 
 portion to the number of girls it contains who make 
 money by their charms ? No," he adds truly, " good 
 women are the nation's true treasures, whose price 
 is in inverse proportion to their passing from hand 
 to hand." 
 
 An author writes an immoral book, which sells to 
 a hundred editions and brings him in 2000. Those 
 who buy it are worth less than they were before they 
 read it: they will fulfil their duties less efficiently. 
 Is this book, whose sale has brought such enormous 
 profits to publisher and author, a form of wealth ? 
 
 The English sell the Chinese 12 millions worth of 
 opium yearly : is that really wealth ? Clearly not. 
 As a matter of fact, if the Emperor had all this opium 
 flung into the sea, so far from China's losing by it, 
 she would gain immensely by having fewer of her 
 people brutalised and incapable of working. Can 
 that be called wealth the loss of which enriches ?
 
 140 LA W AND MORALS IN POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 Opium has a value for the merchant, when he finds 
 people foolish enough to give him in exchange for 
 it the money which will procure him useful com- 
 modities. But for the nation and for the race it has 
 no value, since it serves only to produce stupefaction 
 and idiocy. It is the same in a less degree with 
 tobacco and strong liquors. These are poisons 
 produced at the cost of labour and capable of ex- 
 change, hence, according to the economists, they are 
 forms of wealth and yet their complete destruction 
 would be a benefit to mankind. We must then 
 distinguish between true and false wealth, and it is 
 to morals and hygiene that we must look to make 
 this important distinction. 
 
 The influence of the moralist is felt at every step 
 in dealing with economic questions. The basis of 
 credit is confidence, and confidence rests on the 
 security of honesty and of good laws. Where 
 commercial good faith is lacking, credit cannot exist,
 
 ECONOMY AS RELATED TO MORALITY. 141 
 
 or the rate of interest will be exorbitant. There 
 would be an end of industry if there were never a 
 cashier but drained the contents of the cash-box, 
 not a treasurer but manipulated his accounts, not a 
 director but made false balance-sheets in order to 
 dispose of his shares, not a promoter of enterprise 
 but applied for starting companies that he might rob 
 the public. We do not expect to see commodities mul- 
 tiply and commerce flourish in a Forest of Bondy; and 
 it is not hard to discover why the East is not like 
 England. Countries where there is no honesty among 
 officials suffer severely from this cause. Russia and 
 Turkey afford every day sad examples of this. 
 
 Moral forces act powerfully on the productivity 
 of labour. The workman who, as the saying i, 
 has his heart in his work, and who fulfils his task 
 from a sense of duty, or even of self-respect, will do 
 by far the best work. He would not do half the 
 amount, of course, if he thought of only applying the
 
 LAW AND MORALS IN POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 famous rule of self-interest, which consists in giving 
 the least possible quantity at the highest possible 
 price. 
 
 How important, again, is commercial honesty in 
 the delivery of goods! The salesman who deceives 
 his customers, especially those in foreign countries, 
 closes this opening not only for himself but also for 
 the country to which he belongs. 
 
 The landlord who does not press his tenants too 
 hard, but helps them when they are in trouble, and 
 thus establishes kindly relations between himself 
 and them, averts that hostility between class and 
 class which is the peril of the future. 
 
 The well-known population question, which in 
 Political Economy overshadows all others, must be 
 solved mainly by considerations which belong to 
 the domain of morals. What is wanted to ensure 
 that the number of inhabitants shall not outstrip 
 the available food supply? Foresight, prudence,
 
 ECONOMY AS RELATED TO MORALITY. 143 
 
 and self-restraint alone are wanted, and these are all 
 virtues which presuppose moral force. 
 
 The creation of capital is often a virtuous act, 
 especially on the part of people in modest circum- 
 stances. It involves the renunciation of an im- 
 mediate enjoyment for the sake of a future good ; 
 and this again requires moral force. As for con- 
 sumption in general, which, as we have seen, ulti- 
 mately gives the cue to production, it is determined 
 entirely by the more or less moral direction which is 
 given to life. It is through a decline of morals that 
 a people comes to spend on strong drink an amount 
 sufficient to set it entirely free from misery and want, 
 and it is from the same cause that the rich set 
 the example of prodigality and disorderly living. 
 
 The ancients, and even Montesquieu, believed that 
 the increase of wealth leads nations inevitably into 
 effeminacy and decay. This is how they explain 
 the downfall of empires. It is true that if a people,
 
 144 LAW AND MORALS IN POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 on emerging from primitive simplicity, grows rapidly 
 rich without at the same time acquiring the neces- 
 sary moral force to enable it to make a good use of 
 its wealth, then this latter will become a source of 
 immorality and the cause of its ruin. This it is 
 which we see going on to-day in the United States. 
 Democracies have always been ruined by excessive 
 inequality rather than by excess of wealth. But 
 a whole book would be necessary to deal fully with 
 such considerations as these.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY AS RELATED TO LAW. 
 
 WITHOUT Political Economy it is impossible to go at 
 the root of law, just as without the study of law 
 one cannot go at the root of Political Economy. 
 The best jurists are those who are also economists, 
 and the best economists those who are also jurists. 
 But this fact has not been fully recognised by 
 either side, and hence both are often superficial. 
 
 The old school of economic science paid almost no 
 attention whatever to questions of law. It conceived 
 of man as acting in complete liberty, following 
 economic laws that were everywhere necessary and 
 
 everywhere the same. In this region of abstraction 
 
 145 *
 
 146 LA W AND MORALS IN POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 there was no need to consider civil institutions and 
 established laws. All that was required was the 
 entire abolition of State interference, by which was 
 understood only the abolition of certain restrictions 
 on individual liberty, such as customs, guild-master- 
 ships and laws against usury. It was altogether 
 forgotten that the State also intervenes in imposing 
 certain forms of property and of inheritance, in a 
 word, the whole civil code, and that, consequently, to 
 call for the absolute suppression of State intervention 
 was to ask for a return to the savage state. 
 
 It was thought that the so-called natural laws of 
 Political Economy were the same for all nations and 
 for all countries. " Political Economy," said one of the 
 late Chancellors of the Exchequer, Mr. Lowe, " does not 
 belong to any people in particular. It is founded on 
 the characteristic attributes of human nature, and no 
 power can change it." These are pure abstractions. 
 It is true that no legislator can change the human
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY AS RELATED TO LAW. 147 
 
 body or its faculties, can give a man four arms or 
 root out bis love of self. But he can teach him to 
 regulate his egoism by inspiring him with an enthu- 
 siasm for justice, charity, and progress. Further, if 
 the law keeps three parts of the population in slavery, 
 as at Athens or at Rome, economic laws will have a 
 quite different effect from what they have in countries 
 where liberty reigns. And again the distribution of 
 wealth in a country where entail is by law established 
 will differ widely from that in a country under the 
 system of equal partition. 
 
 In all societies, except, perhaps, where primitive 
 barbarism lingers, a man's liberty has play only 
 within the limits imposed by judicial institutions and 
 government regulations. The student who is not 
 content with mere vague and abstract theories will 
 find it necessary first to study the influence of these 
 laws and of these institutions. They are not the 
 same in different countries and at different times, and
 
 148 LAW AND MORALS IN POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 they modify profoundly the system of production, and 
 still more the distribution of wealth. Thus Sir 
 Henry Maine tells us that in Central India the well- 
 known law of supply and demand almost entirely 
 fails to apply, since everything is regulated by cus- 
 tom. The distribution of the products of the soil is 
 very differently carried out, according as the system 
 of land-tenure in a country is that of metayage 
 (or petty farming on half profits) or of leasehold, 
 hereditary or otherwise ; that of small or large pro 
 perties ; that of communal ownership or private owner- 
 ship. Different forme of inheritance produce essenti- 
 ally different and corresponding modifications in the 
 economic system ; as, for instance, in France, democra- 
 tising the possession of land ; in England, on the con- 
 trary, concentrating it in the hands of a few great 
 families. Wages will be much more variable in a 
 country where the workmen are crowded into large 
 industrial centres, where they must at any price sell
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY AS RELATED TO LAW. 149 
 
 their labour, than in a country where the artisans are 
 scattered, as in Switzerland, over the fields and plains 
 and can thus supplement their resources by the culti- 
 vation of their little plot of land. 
 
 Can we speak of money without asking, what silver 
 and gold coins does the law allow to be universally re- 
 ceived as payment, and to cancel every debt ? If we 
 study credit, we cannot fail to take account of the 
 laws which concern banking, lending at interest, 
 bankruptcies and trading companies. The relations 
 of men and things, and of men among themselves are 
 evidently determined by law. Political Economy 
 must therefore necessary assimilate the philosophy 
 and history of law. 
 
 These sciences, it is true, ought not to be confused 
 the one with th other, but yet the one cannot be 
 studied without the other. It is impossible other- 
 wise to discuss thoroughly the doctrines of So- 
 cialism. Socialists have, in fact, maintained that
 
 ISO LAW AND MORALS IN POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 the economic condition of wages is the result of 
 existing institutions, and they demand the reform 
 of the latter, because they are, as they believe, the 
 real cause of misery. If we are to reply to them 
 with anything more than mere vague generalities, we 
 must work back to the subject of civil law, and 
 examine how far they are necessary and useful, and 
 how far they are prejudicial to national prosperity 
 and the well-being of each and all. 
 
 We have seen that the civil organisation of a 
 society determines to a very great extent its methods 
 in the production and distribution of wealth, and 
 that consequently a knowledge of law is indispensable 
 to the economist. The knowledge of Political 
 Economy is no less necessary to the legislator who 
 gives his vote to make laws, to the judges who apply 
 them, and to the jurists who interpret them. No 
 doubt when one is content with mere dissertations on 
 the meaning of the text, the special commentaries are
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY AS RELA TED TO LAW. 151 
 
 all that one needs ; but if one wishes to trace back 
 the enactments of law to their source, there are in 
 many cases economic reasons which supply the key 
 to difficulties of interpretation. I shall prove this by 
 passing rapidly in review the principal divisions of 
 the code, beginning with that of property, which lie 
 at the base of all social order. 
 
 Why do we allow to certain persons, under the 
 name of property, the exclusive right to dispose of 
 certain things? Those who hold the theory of 
 natural rights will say it is because this right is the 
 sine qud non of man's individual development and of 
 his liberty. He must have a domain in which he 
 can act as master, otherwise he is a slave. Property 
 is the external sphere of liberty ; it is therefore a 
 natural right. This theory is incomplete if it is not 
 based on Political Economy, and, in any case, it 
 appears too absolute. It is only because man has 
 wants to satisfy that he needs to have certain things
 
 152 LAW AND MORALS IN POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 at his own exclusive disposal. What good would the 
 distinction between mine and thine be to the angels ? 
 Would you say that if men, like the early Christians, 
 animated by a profound religious sentiment, should 
 hold everything in common, they should cease to be 
 free? Is not rather the most perfect liberty to be 
 found in the most absolute detachment from worldly 
 interests ? Further, would it not appear to be suffi- 
 cient to apply this exclusive right only to objects of 
 consumption produced by personal activity ? Ig it 
 necessary to extend it to the soil, to capital, to the 
 very instruments of production? Clearly this can- 
 not be decided on d priori grounds. We must bring 
 in economic considerations in order to solve the 
 question. Workmen, farmers, even directors and 
 managers, all work by means of capital, and on land 
 which does not belong to them : are they by this 
 means deprived of " the external sphere of their 
 personal liberty ? " If property is the sine qud non
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY AS RELATED TO LAW. 153 
 
 of liberty, how comes it that so many millions of men 
 have none ? We see, therefore, that natural right 
 without Political Economy will not suffice to give us 
 a solid basis for property. 
 
 According to the theory of Roman law, which 
 has been taken up by modern Jurists, property is 
 derived from occupation. He who assumed control 
 over an object which hitherto belonged to no one, 
 res nullius, acquires the power of disposing of it to 
 the exclusion of all others. This explanation is even 
 less satisfactory than the preceding. For an act to 
 give rise to a right, the act must be legitimate in 
 itself, and it must be, at the same time, just and useful 
 that this act should so give rise to a right. So far 
 from founding the legitimacy of property on occupa- 
 tion, we have first to demonstrate the legitimacy of 
 the occupation in itself. Now this, as above stated, 
 rests on an erroneous hypothesis. There is in reality 
 no such thing as a res nulliu9. Every territory,
 
 154 LAW AND MORALS IN POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 with all that it contains, before the establishment of 
 private property, belongs to the tribe or nation ; this 
 latter may, it is true, determine that the first who 
 encloses a piece of land or takes a piece of game 
 becomes thereby the possessor of it ; but in this case, 
 it is the law which creates the property, and if it 
 does so it is from motives of general utility of the 
 economic kind. Is it enough for me to plunge my 
 sword into a field or plant my flag upon a continent 
 in order that I may become the owner thereof ? And 
 can I, merely by the exercise of my will, trace the 
 limits of my right ? Evidently not. It is in the 
 name of justice, and not from a mere act of appropria- 
 tion, that the right to dispose of an object is to be 
 vindicated. Thus occupation can be a mode of 
 acquiring property sanctioned by law. It cannot be 
 itself the judicial basis of property. 
 
 No, the economists will tell you labour is the true 
 basis of property. Is it not just and expedient that
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY AS RELATED TO LAW. 155 
 
 he who creates the value of an object, and he who 
 fertilizes the soil, should become the owner of the one 
 and of the other ? Here property is founded on a 
 purely economic basis. We can, of course, take as 
 the ideal to be attained such a system of civil institu- 
 tions as will ensure to each, out of the sum total of 
 the national produce, a part proportioned to the share 
 he has had in the work of production; but economists 
 have failed to see where their theory would lead. It 
 is this very theory that has furnished the Socialists 
 with their most dangerous weapons. If it is labour 
 which creates value, they say, then the whole pro- 
 duct of labour ought to go to the labourer. Labour, 
 you say, is the basis of property. If this is so, then 
 pray explain to us how it comes to pass that in every 
 age and in all countries they who labour have no 
 property, and they who have property do not labour 
 It is clear that the theory of the economists, if it 
 is to be the foundation of the social system of
 
 156 LAW AND MOKALS IN POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 the future, ia not that of the system which exists 
 to-day. 
 
 There remain to consider the theories of the 
 social contract, and of law. The first supposes that 
 in the beginning men made an agreement that they 
 would substitute private property for common pro- 
 perty. This is evidently an imaginary transaction, 
 but, even were it real, it could not serve as a basis 
 for an existing institution. How could civilised 
 societies hold themselves bound by a contract formed 
 by our ancestors while still in a state of savagery ? 
 The only thing that is really important is the 
 motive which should lead them to set aside the 
 system of common property. This motive was the 
 consideration that the change would give more in- 
 dividual freedom, more inducement to labour, and, as 
 a result, the better cultivation of the soil This is, 
 in fact, the reason why, in the course of history and 
 by successive stages of progress, the private owner-
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY AS RELATED TO LAW. 157 
 
 ship of the soil has been gradually substituted for 
 the collective ownership. And this reason is evi- 
 dently of the economic order. 
 
 The theory of the social contract has lost credit, 
 but the theory which derives property from positive 
 law still has many adherents. It is so far evident 
 that it is the law which defines property and which 
 determines its privileges, obligations, limits, and 
 modes of acquisition ; but the moral law is not 
 made by the legislator. He can even lay down 
 rules contrary to equity, as in sanctioning slavery. 
 His decisions are legitimate only on condition that 
 they are consistent with justice and with public 
 order. At any given time, for any given people, 
 there is a system, a set of institutions, which is more 
 favourable than any other to the well-being and 
 progress of the individuals and of the society. Laws 
 which approximate to this system are good laws, 
 those which are averse to it are bad laws. This is
 
 158 LA W AND MORALS IN POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 RIGHT, or the moral law, that is to say, the right 
 course, the shortest and best path towards perfec- 
 tion. This order or system is evidently not the same 
 for all times and for all peoples. Institutions that 
 are excellent for civilised men would lead savages 
 to their ruin. It is for the wise to discover the 
 right and for the legislator to proclaim it. To pre- 
 tend that a legislator creates right is as much as 
 to say that man creates truth. If private property 
 is the form most favourable to liberty, and to the 
 well-being of man, it must be established by law. 
 If another form of property would be more advan- 
 tageous, then it must be adopted. In seeking the true 
 basis of institutions, therefore, it is not enough to 
 point to the laws which create them, we must go 
 back to the reasons which render these laws just 
 and good. 
 
 We have now passed rapidly in review the five 
 principal theories concerning the origin of property.
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY AS RELATED TO LAW. 159 
 
 They all, in whatever of truth they contain, rest 
 ultimately on considerations which belong to the 
 economic order. At bottom, the motives which 
 justify private property are very simple. In the 
 first place, it is just to recompense an individual 
 for his trouble and his sacrifices by allowing him the 
 fruits of his toil In the second place, to give a 
 person the entire disposal of the objects produced 
 by him, and even of a portion of the soil, is the best 
 means of inducing him to produce the greatest pos- 
 sible amount, and hence, to better his own condition 
 and to contribute his share to the national wealth. 
 It is, therefore, economic utility which is the true 
 basis of property, and this it is which determines 
 what shall be its privileges, obligations and limits. 
 It is for economic reasons also, that rights of property 
 are more or less extensive, according to the different 
 objects to which they refer : being almost absolute in 
 relation to objects which are moveables, but already
 
 160 LAW AND MORALS IN POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 limited when we come to arable land; still more 
 restricted for houses and forests, and finally, for mines 
 and railways closely hedged in by the intervention of 
 public authority. 
 
 The true foundation of property is very clearly 
 brought out by the reasons which are alleged for 
 establishing this new right which has been called 
 that of intellectual property, the right of the author, 
 inventor, patentee, trade marks, and limited com- 
 panies. There are two motives which prompt this 
 novelty : one of justice, and one of utility. It is 
 just that the composer of a book or work of art, the 
 inventor of an industrial process, the founder of a 
 business firm, should have some recompense for his 
 merit and for his efforts. And further, this is the best 
 means of multiplying good books and pictures, and 
 of encouraging useful inventions by which the whole 
 society will profit. It has been thought well to 
 limit the duration of rights, because a monopoly for
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY AS RELATED TO LAW. 161 
 
 a certain number of years seemed enough to 
 stimulate genius, and after that it seemed better 
 that all should be able to profit by the idea, without 
 paying tribute to the descendants of the one who 
 first conceived it. This was thought to be the best 
 means of harmonising public and private interests. 
 Experience alone, that is the observation of the 
 results attained, can decide how far this plan has 
 been successful. It is the same with every other 
 form of property. Not by philosophical deductions, 
 but by a study of facts, by the light of history and 
 statistics, can it be determined what restrictions it 
 is right to impose on private property, having regard 
 to the objects to which it applies. 
 
 Let us take some more detailed instances : why 
 were servitudes established ? For economic reasons. 
 It is expedient that I should have an outlet for my 
 water, or use the party-wall for the support of my 
 beams, it may not suit you that I should do so,
 
 162 LAW AND MORALS IN POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 but from considerations of general interest the law 
 allows it me. My estate is enclosed within yours : 
 it is expedient that I should be able to cultivate it : 
 you will have to allow me a right of way through 
 yours. 
 
 In the matter of prescription we can see clearly 
 how rights give way before economic interest. A 
 right is in its nature perpetual ; it ought not, there- 
 fore, to be extinguished by the lapse of time. 
 Nevertheless, Roman law, and modern law following 
 its steps, laid down that whoever occupies an estate 
 10 or 20 years in good faith and by just title acquires 
 a right of property in it, even against the will, and 
 perhaps without the fault of the real owner. Why 
 have we this deflection from the strictness of judicial 
 principles ? Hear what the jurists reply ; they call 
 in economic considerations in support of it : He who 
 gives additional value to a holding, who keeps it up, 
 who improves it, incorporates with it, as it were, a
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY AS RELATED TO LAW. 163 
 
 part of himself. It is like an outcome and an 
 extension of his own person. This argument con- 
 tains the whole theory of the economists. Further- 
 more, property cannot remain long in suspense 
 without injury to the public interest. Troplong, in 
 his well-known " Treatise on Prescription," sets forth 
 these considerations in a manner worthy of Adam 
 Smith or J. B. Say. It is Political Economy which 
 ultimately decides these questions. 
 
 After property, the system of inheritance has 
 most influence on the distribution of wealth. Free 
 contract, upon which the economists base everything, 
 does not come into play until each man's share has 
 been decided by the laws of succession and bequest. 
 On what are these laws founded ? Not on natural 
 rights, the jurists say. Heirs, even when they are 
 children, have no absolute right to the inheritance, 
 since they can be entirely shut out from it. On the 
 other hand, the presumed or even the expressed wish
 
 164 LA W AND MORALS IN POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 of the deceased is not law, since many codes lay 
 restrictions on him. It is economic interest again 
 which has served as the basis for various systems of 
 inheritance. At Rome, a man's will decides the re- 
 version of his goods : the last testament is sovereign : 
 uti legasset ita Jus esto. Among the Germanic tribes, 
 as among the Slavs and in primitive times generally, 
 there was no will. The children were, so to speak, 
 co-proprietors, or rather the estates were the posses- 
 sion of the family regarded in the eye of the law 
 as a perpetual entity; successive generations had 
 only a life interest in them. Among the Germanic 
 tribes, as in Great Russia to-day, heredity came 
 into play only with regard to the furniture, the house, 
 and the small adjoining enclosure. The possession 
 of land was temporary, and for life only. 
 
 Why has heredity been established ? Not cer- 
 tainly from the motive of justice. According to 
 modern ideas, merit and demerit cannot be handed
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY AS RELATED TO LAW. 165 
 
 down. We no longer admit that "the curse of 
 the Almighty descends from generation to genera- 
 tion." My father occupied a high position because 
 he was worthy of it ; that is no reason why it should 
 afterwards pass to me. In the same way, if he 
 had committed a crime, it would not be just to 
 make me bear the penalty. Responsibility is a 
 personal matter ; every one should be treated accord- 
 ing to his personal merit or demerit. The lazy 
 ought always to suffer the immediate consequences 
 of his idleness, and the laborious man to enjoy the 
 fruits of his work. The considerations which have 
 led to the establishment of heredity and the causes 
 which have guided the history of its development 
 were exclusively economic. If the father has no 
 certainty that the fruits of his toil, and still more 
 of his savings, will pass to his children, he will dis- 
 play far less activity, and he will consume at once 
 all that he produces. Production will thus be less
 
 166 LAW AND MORALS IN POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 and the formation of capital nil. Inheritance is 
 therefore useful as a stimulus to the accumulation 
 of wealth. To what degree ought collateral succes- 
 sions to extend ? Evidently, not beyond the degree 
 at which they can act as an encouragement to work 
 and saving ; carried further, they will be nothing 
 but a source of law-suits. It is for this reason that 
 many jurists propose to limit them to the fifth or 
 sixth degree. 
 
 Should the father of a family be free to dispose 
 of the whole of his fortune after his death, or should 
 a reserve be established in favour of his children ? 
 Most economists are in favour of absolute testa- 
 mentary freedom. M. Le Play, with a wealth of argu- 
 ments and facts which has carried conviction to many, 
 makes out that the enforced reserve is one of the 
 chief causes of social disorganisation on the Continent. 
 
 This fatal clause, he says, ruins paternal authority, 
 destroys the continuity of industrial enterprises, in-
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY AS RELA TED TO LA W, 167 
 
 duces the minute sub-division of land, and causes a 
 crowd of other evils to arise. The authors of the 
 French Civil Code aimed at furthering the progress 
 of equality, and of placing property in the hands of 
 the largest possible number. For this reason they 
 abolished entail, substitution, and the absolute free- 
 dom of bequest. Who judged rightly, the authors 
 of the Civil Code, or M. Le Play? This is a 
 difficult question to answer, and has to be regarded 
 on many different sides. I cannot even attempt to 
 deal with it here. All I wish to prove is that in 
 order to discover which of the two systems is the 
 best, we must turn to economic considerations, and 
 examine which of the two is most conducive to public 
 prosperity. 1 
 
 1 The arguments on both sides of this question have been 
 well summed up by M. V. Thiry, Rector of the University of 
 Liege (On Reserve and Freedom of Bequest). M. Thiry, who pro- 
 nounces in favour of reserve, brings out clearly the economic 
 aspect of the question. "Of all the civil laws relating to 
 goods," he says, "none are of more importance than those which
 
 1 68 LAW AND MORALS IN POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 Let us examine now the other branches of the Civil 
 Code, the guardianship of minors, the marriage con- 
 tract and its various regulations, legal and conven- 
 tional communities, the institution of the dowry, the 
 contracts of sale and hire, privileges and hypotheca- 
 tions, and throughout them all it will be seen that 
 what the legislator has had in view was the 
 preservation, the good administration, and the easy 
 transfer of wealth. And this is precisely the object 
 of political economy. The aim of the different social 
 sciences is the same: to carry man to the highest 
 pitch of perfection which he is capable of attaining. 
 Only each one deals with the things that are in its 
 proper domain. The science of law determines the 
 
 regulate the patrimony we leave behind us. On these laws 
 depend not only the just distribution of the wealth of the de- 
 ceased, as well as the more or less active creation of new wealth 
 by ita means ; but also, they exert a powerful influence on the 
 constitution of the family, on the inter-relations of its members, 
 and on the harmony and affection which ought to prevail among 
 them, and through this channel, on public order generally."
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY AS RELATED TO LAW. 169 
 
 relations of men to things and to each other. Poli- 
 tical Economy, studying the effects of actual laws, 
 dictates to law-makers the rules they ought to lay 
 down. 
 
 Commerce and industry, in proportion as they de- 
 velop, occupy an ever larger place in modern law. The 
 branches which deal with them acquire more import- 
 ance every day. The attention of the bar is most 
 frequently called to matters having reference to 
 mines, railways, factories, great enterprises of all 
 kinds for employing the capital of the nation. Joint- 
 stock companies, bankruptcies, regulation of ac- 
 counts, responsibility in matters of transport, give 
 rise every day to disputes of the greatest importance. 
 The wealth represented by titles of all kinds already 
 far exceeds the amount of property in land, and thus 
 law-suits concerning the former kind deal with much 
 more extensive interests than those which relate to 
 landed property. Is it not therefore indispensable
 
 170 LA W AND MORALS IN POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 for a rising barrister to be thoroughly conversant 
 with Political Economy in order that he may deal 
 with all these essentially economic questions ?
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY AS BELATED TO HISTORY. 
 
 I HAVE a few remarks to make in conclusion. The 
 jurist cannot ignore the leading facts of history, since 
 law, as is more and more admitted, is of historic 
 growth. Now, in tracing back the causes which pro- 
 duced the rise and fall of nations, we find them to be 
 always economic. This is very easily accounted for. 
 Is not the power of empires founded on the growth of 
 population and of wealth, and when these once begin 
 to diminish, is not decay the inevitable result ? 
 
 Western civilisation began in Egypt, where the 
 people had their riches brought to their feet, as it 
 
 were, ready-made, by the Nile. Their prosperity, 
 
 lyl
 
 172 LAW AND MORALS IN POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 thus favoured by heaven, held its own against all re- 
 verses, because it was the work of nature and not of 
 man. The Greek republics all succumbed under the 
 pressure of the social difficulty, which harasses and 
 threatens modern society to-day. In early days, 
 when everything was at a low level, all the citizens 
 had some little property, and the legislators tried, by 
 a great variety of expedients, which Aristotle enume- 
 rates, to maintain equality of conditions. In the 
 presence of slavery, a free man could not or would 
 not live by his own labour, and thus when he had 
 no other possession left him but his arms, he be- 
 came a menace to the existing order. In proportion 
 as the rich absorbed more of the national wealth, 
 the proletariat increased in numbers. Hence the 
 struggle between rich and poor, which broke out, not 
 all at once, but successively in all parts. After a 
 series of revolutions and counter revolutions, and suc- 
 cessive periods of anarchy and despotism, which
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY AS RELA TED TO HISTOR Y. 173 
 
 alternately engendered each other, this struggle 
 brought about the loss of liberty and of prosperity, 
 and finally resulted in the ruin of the State. 
 
 The history of the Roman Empire teaches us a like 
 lesson. At first we see Italy scattered over with 
 small republics ; their peasants free, industrious, and 
 equal, all bearing the sword, cultivating each a 
 little domain, and keeping up large flocks and herds 
 on the common pastures. These republics were 
 similar in all respects to the primitive cantons of 
 Switzerland. Rome herself was one of these at the 
 first. She was already powerful at a time when her 
 great men still drove the plough with their own 
 hands. But the constant wars she waged were the 
 ruin of the plebeians. The patricians would en- 
 croach on the common lands, the ager publics which 
 was always being enlarged by the confiscation of 
 vanquished territory. War furnished them with 
 slaves to work them. Thus the " latif undia " were
 
 174 LA W AND MORALS IN POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 formed. Tiberius Gracchus, returning from Spain 
 across Italy, beheld nothing but deserted plains 
 everywhere. The free man has disappeared; culti- 
 vation has ceased; there remain nothing but immense 
 pastures over which wander herds of cattle and 
 slaves. Gracchus sees the cause of the evil. He 
 desires to do what has been done by the French 
 Revolution, to multiply small proprietorships by an 
 equitable division of the ager publicus. But neither 
 his agrarian laws, nor those of Licinius, and a score 
 of other Tribunes of the Plebs, nor yet the distribut- 
 ing of lands made by victorious generals, had power 
 to arrest the advancing progress of large properties, 
 and the destruction of freemen. Inequality goes on 
 increasing. The rich and powerful enrich themselves 
 still further out of the spoils of provinces the trial 
 of Verres shows us by what means. The number of 
 poor goes on increasing. When the republic has 
 become the prey of a few oligarchs who dispute the
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY AS RELA TED TO HISTOR Y. 175 
 
 supremacy among themselves, then she is ripe for a 
 despotism. Although from time to time power may 
 fall into the hands of good men, the empire, on the 
 whole, only accelerates the causes that are leading to 
 social disorganisation. The depopulation spreads 
 from Italy to the provinces. When the barbarians 
 swarm in, they occupy by degrees the vacant spaces. 
 The latifundia and slavery have been the ruin of 
 everything. 
 
 In the whole of modern history there is no more 
 striking fact than the rapid fall of Spain from the 
 1 6th century onwards. Up to the time of Charles V. 
 she is populous, rich, very well cultivated, enjoy- 
 ing a greater measure of local independence than 
 any other people, full of prosperous industries ot 
 all kinds leather work at Cordova, arms at Toledo, 
 stuffs at Segovia, silks at Seville, felts at Valencia. 
 By a series of political crimes and economic mistakes, 
 the Jews, banks and commerce, the Moors, agriculture,
 
 176 LAW AND MORALS IN POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 are one by one exterminated ; labour is subjected to 
 fines; industry handicapped by senseless taxation; 
 activity and initiative killed by despotism and 
 theocracy ; every one ruined by imposts. The foun- 
 tain of wealth dries up; the population melts away; 
 farms are abandoned ; the despoplados or desert 
 spreads its confines. Like Italy, after the time of 
 the Gracchi, Castille becomes a great pasture land 
 for the sheep of the mestra. Even the Court itself 
 is reduced to misery. Only the convents are rich 
 and populous. In less than a hundred years, Spain, 
 which once made Europe tremble, is reduced to be 
 no more than a State of the third rank. During 
 this time, liberty and commerce are founding the 
 greatness, first of Holland and then of England, who 
 rule by turns upon the ocean. Here, again, we have 
 the effects of economic causes. 
 
 In M. Taine's fine book on " The Origins of Con- 
 temporary France" there is a chapter which ought
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY AS RELATED TO HISTORY. 177 
 
 to be read in this connection, on the fearful misery of 
 France under the old regime. It is a companion 
 picture to that of Spain under the descendants of 
 Philip II. Here again the land lies waste, the most 
 industrious citizens are proscribed by intolerance, 
 marriages are sterile, population diminishes, misery 
 becomes general. Despotism here as elsewhere accom 
 plishes its accursed work of ruin and desolation. 
 
 How has it come about that the German Empire 
 has passed from the hands of Austria into those of 
 Prussia ? A Hohenzolleran, petty Margrave of 
 Nuremberg, and very economical, lends some money 
 to the magnificent Emperor Sigismund, who is very 
 lavish. The latter, not being able to pay his creditor 
 either interest or capital, hands over to him in pay- 
 ment the March of Brandenburg. Out of this grows 
 Prussia, who among her arid sands has made her way 
 by economy. Frederic II., type of his race, formed the 
 nation on his own model : having no personal wants, 
 
 M
 
 1 78 LA W AND MORALS IN POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 he devotes all his means to the State. He improves 
 the breed of horses, founds model farms, builds 
 schools, makes roads and dikes, and thus, notwith- 
 standing some disastrous wars, enriches his country, 
 while Louis XIV. and XV. were ruining theirs. On 
 the fateful day of Sadowa, modest Prussia stood 
 supplied with the most perfect instruments of war, 
 because she had known how to manage her limited 
 resources with the strictest economy, and by this 
 means she conquered Austria, a country much more 
 wealthy, much more powerful, but always badly 
 administered. 
 
 See again what is happening in the East. In the 
 last war between Russia and Turkey (1877), the 
 latter succumbed in spite of the bravery of her 
 soldiers, less by the victories of her enemies than 
 by her own economic incompetence. The Turks 
 have reduced to barrenness every country they 
 occupy; they have never taken any measures to
 
 POLITICAL ECONOMY AS RELA TED TO HISTOR Y. ijg 
 
 encourage labour. They have even allowed roads and 
 bridges to fall into ruins which were made before 
 their time. They have no knowledge of how to 
 create capital, and by their detestable system of 
 imposts they hinder others from accumulating it. 
 Thus the Ottoman empire, attacked by an incurable 
 economic malady, has declined steadily. It has lost 
 its provinces one by one. Its boundaries have 
 shrunk. Its population has diminished. The 
 revenues squandered, the treasury empty, bankruptcy 
 ensues, and proves the destruction of credit. The 
 introduction of railways, the working of mines, 
 and the larger forms of industry would scarcely 
 better the condition of the Turks, for these works 
 would bring profit chiefly to the Christians, who 
 would thus become their masters. 
 
 Thus it has been clearly shown that economic 
 causes are at work in producing the rise and fall 
 of empires. 
 
 THE END.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE AUTHOR'S WORKS. 
 
 Extracts from the Bibliographic Academique (1886 edition). 
 
 DE LAVBLEYB, 0., living at Liege, born at Bruges in 
 1822; docteur en droit; professeur d'e"conomie politique et 
 d'e"conomie industrielle & I'Universit^ de Liege, membre de 
 1'Acade'mie royale de Belgique, correspondant de 1'Institut 
 de France, des Lincei de Rome, des Academies royales de 
 Lisbonne, de Madrid, de Belgrade, etc. Dr. Honoris caus 
 of Edinburgh, Wttrzburg, etc. 
 
 WORKS PUBLISHED BY THE ACADEMIE 
 ROYALE DE BELGIQUE. 
 
 Rapport sur les m4moires de concours de 1869 relatifs a une 
 description statistique d'une commune dea Flandres. 
 
 Rapport sur les m<$moires de concours de 1872 relatifs a la th^orie 
 ^conomique du capital et du travail. 
 
 Rapport sur les me'moires de concours de 1874 relatifs au me'me 
 sujet. 
 
 Du respect de la propri6t4 privet sur mer en temps de guerre, 
 lecture faite en se'ance publique de la Classo des lettres le 13 ma, 
 1877.
 
 La democratic et 1 "economic politique, discoura prononc comme 
 directeur de la Classe des lettres en stance publique du 8 mai 1878. 
 Ce diacours a et6 publie aussi en allemand, 8vo. Eisenach, 1878. 
 
 Rapport sur lea memoires de concoura de 1880 relatifs 1'histoire 
 dea claaaes rurales en Belgique jusqu'a la fin du XVIII. siecle 
 
 Rapport sur lea memoires de concours de 1881 coucernant 1'histoire 
 des finances publiques de la Belgique depuis 1830. 
 
 Sur divers objets de bronze antique trouves a Angleur, pros de 
 Liege. 
 
 Rapport sur les memoires de concours de 18S2 relatifa &, 1'organisa- 
 tion des institutions charitables en Belgique, et sur les finances 
 publiques de la Belgique depuis 1830. 
 
 Notes bibliographiques sur divera ouvrages. 
 
 Rapport sur un travail de M.O. Merten : Etude sur Francois 
 Huet. 
 
 Rapport sur le memoire de concoura de 1886, concernant les 
 anciens corps de metiers et les aasociationa cooperatives dans les 
 temps modernes. 
 
 Notice necrologique sur H.-Q, Moke. Annuaire. Annee 1870. 
 
 WORKS NOT PUBLISHED BY THE ACADEMIE 
 DE BELGIQUE. 
 
 Album d'Oatende. Dessins par Louis Ghemar et E. Manche, obi. 
 fol. Ostende, 1841. 
 
 Histoire de la langue et de la litterature provencales, 347 pp. 8vo. 
 Brussels, 1845 ; Meinoire couronn^ au concours universataire. 
 
 Hiatoire des rois francs, 2 vols. 12mo. Brussels, 1847-1848. 
 
 L'arme"e et 1'enseignement, 20 pp. 8vo. Brussels, 1848. 
 
 Le Senat beige. Etude politique, 68 pp. 8vo. Brussels, 1851. 
 
 Etudes historiques et critiques sur le principe et les consequences 
 de la liberte du commerce international, iv.-146 pp. 8vo. Brussels, 
 1857.
 
 Debate sur 1'enseignement primaire dans lea Chambres hollandaises 
 (session de 1857), 79 pp. 8vo. Gand, 1858. 
 
 Du progres des peuples anglo-saxons, 47 pp. 8vo. Brussels, 1859. 
 
 De 1'enseignement obligatoire, 57 pp. 12mo. Brussels, 1859. 
 
 La question de 1'or en Belgique, 81 pp. 12mo. Brussels, 1860. 
 
 Les Nibelungen. Traduction nouvelle, pre"c6de"e d'une etude sur 
 la formation de 1'^popee, lxxix.-357 pp. 12mo. Brussels, 1861. 
 
 Me'moires de Sir Robert Peel. Brussels, 1861-1862 ; 2 vols. in-8 ; 
 Traduction de 1'anglais. 
 
 Questions contemporaines, 353 pp. 12mo. Brussels, 1863. 
 
 Etudes d'6conomie rurale. La Nerlande ; pre'ce'de'e du rapport 
 de M. Le"once de Lavergne sur 1'Economie rurale de la Belgique, 
 xxiii.-360pp. 12mo. Brussels, 1864. 
 
 Le march monetaire depuis cinquante ans. 8vo. Paris, 1865 ; 
 German transl. sub. lit. : Die Geld- und Handelskrisen, 8vo. Cassel, 
 1865. 
 
 La Saga des Nibelungen dans les Eddas et dans le Nord scandinave. 
 Traduction preceded d'une tude sur la formation des 6pope"es 
 nationales, 390 pp. 12mo. Brussels, 1866. 
 
 L'Edda. Traduction des poemes scandinaves, 12mo. Brussels, 
 1866. 
 
 La Lombardie et la Suisse. Etude d'^conomie rurale, 12mo. 
 Paris, 1869 ; Portugese, transl. sub. lit. ; A Lombardia, a Suissa e o 
 monte Rosa (D'Venacio Deslandes), 178 pp. 8vo. Lisboa, 1871. 
 
 La question du grec et la re"forme de 1'enseignement moyen. 
 Quelques pieces du proces, recueillies et mises en ordre, 138 pp. 
 8vo. Brussels, 1869. 
 
 Etudes et essais, 12mo. Paris, 1869. 
 
 La Prusse et 1'Autriche depuis Sadowa, 2 vols. 12mo. Paris, 
 1870. (Articles publics dans la Revue des Deux Mondes,) 
 
 Idem ; German transl. sub. lit. : Die cesterreich-ungarische Mo- 
 narchie nach dem Kriege von 1866. Pest, 1869. 
 
 Essai surles formes de gouvernement dans les soci6t4s modernes,
 
 192 pp. 12mo. Pom, 1872. Extrait de la Revue des Deux Mondes. 
 Italian transl. in Bibliotheca di Scienzie politiche. 
 
 L'instruction du peuple, 488 pp. 8vo. Paris, 1872 ; two Dutch 
 transls. , one Swedish sub. lit. : Var Tids Folksundervisning, of versatt 
 och forsedt met eft tillagg rorande Folkskolevaseudets nuvarande 
 stallning inom de trenne Skandinaviska Landerna, af Hugo Hamil- 
 ton, 119 pp. 12mo. Stockholm, 1872. 
 
 Des causes actuelles de guerre en Europe et de 1'arbitrage, 8vo. 
 Brussels, 1863 ; English transl. 
 
 Rapport sur le prix Guinard. L'epargne dans l'4oole. Brussels, 
 1873. 
 
 Le parti clerical en Belgique. Avers, 60 pp. 4to., 1873 ; 111 pp. 
 12mo. Brussels, 1874 ; English and Dutch transls. 
 
 Une lecpn de droit public a 1' University de Louvain, 8vo. 
 Brussels, 1874. 
 
 De la propriety de aes formes primitives, 395 pp. 8vo. Paris, 
 1874. Five editions. English, German, Danish and Russian 
 transls. 
 
 Essai sur l'4conomie rurale de la Belgique, 402 pp. 8vo. Brussels, 
 1862 ; transls. 2nd edn. 18mo. Paris, 1875. 
 
 Lea actes de la Conference de Bruxelles et la participation de la 
 Belgique a la Conference de Saint-Petersbourg, 36 pp. 8vo. Brussels, 
 1875. 
 
 Du respect de la propri6t4 privee en temps de guerre. Rapport 
 prsent & 1'Jnstitut de droit international (aout 1875, 49 pp. 8vo.) 
 Brussels, 1876 ; German transl. 
 
 II congresso dei socialist! dell a Cattedra ad Eisenach. Lettera al 
 direttore del Oiornale degli ficonomisti, 20 pp. 8vo. Padua, 1875. 
 
 Le protestantisme et le catholicisme dans leurs rapports avec la 
 Iibert6 et la prosp6rit6 des peuples. Etude d'dconomie sociale, 39 
 pp. 8vo. Brussels, 1875; 61 pp. 12mo, 1876; English, with introd. 
 by W. E. Gladstone; German, Dutch, Portugese, Swedish, Hungar- 
 ian, Modern-Greek, Polish, Italian, Spanish, Chech transls.
 
 De 1'avenir dea peuplea catholiquea. Etude d'&onomie socinle, 
 8vo. Paris, 1875. (Reprint of the above work.) 
 
 La monnaie bim^tallique, 8vo. Brussels, 1876 ; English and 
 German tranals. 
 
 L'avenir religieux dea peuples civilised, 30 pp. 8vo. Brussels, 
 1876 ; German, Spanish, Portugese, Swedish and Modern-Greek 
 transls. 
 
 L'Afrique centrale et la Conference g&>graphique de Bruxelles, 87 
 pp. 18mo. Brussels, 1877. 
 
 L'Afrique centrale et la Conference g^ographique de Bruxelles. 
 Lettres et d6couvertes de Stanley, 220 pp. and 2 maps, 18mo. 
 Brussels, 1878. 
 
 Histoire de la liberte" dana 1'antiquite et le chriatianisme, par lord 
 Acton, preface d'Em. de Laveleye, 98 pp. 12mo. Brussels, 1878. 
 
 Congres agricole international de Paris, 1878. L'agri culture 
 beige. Rapport pre"aent6 au nom dea societea agricoles de la Belgi- 
 que, cclxxix.-377 pp. and map, 8vo. Brussels, 1878. 
 
 Consideration aur la constitution beige, introduction k 1'histoire 
 du Congres par Theodore Juate. Brussels, 1879. 
 
 La crise 6conomique et lea ohemina de for vicinaux, 23 pp. 8vo. 
 Brussels, 1877. 
 
 Lettres d'ltalie, 1878-1879, 394 pp. 12mo. Brussels, 1880. 
 
 Congres international du commerce et de 1'industrie. La question 
 mon6taire. Section d'6conomie politique, 15 pp. 8vo. Brussels, 
 1880. 
 
 La question mone"taire en 1881, 80 pp. 8vo. Brussels, 1881. 
 
 Le bimetallisme international, 30 pp. Paris, 1881 ; English 
 transl. 
 
 Le credit agricole, 10 pp. 8vo. Brunsela, 1881. 
 
 Le vice paten te, 40 pp. 8vo. Brussels, 1882. 
 
 Elements d'economie politique, 325 pp. 12mo. Paris, 1882; (2 
 eds.) English, Dutch, Italian, Chech, Polish, Portugese, Serbian, 
 and Bulgarian transls.
 
 Le socialisme oontemporain, 1st ed. 8vo. Brussels ; 2nd et 3rd 
 eds., 333 pp. 12mo. Paris. English, German, Swedish, Chech, and 
 Russian tranals. 
 
 Nouvelles lettrea d'ltalie, 218 pp. 8vo. Brussels, 1884 ; English 
 transl. 
 
 Le vice legalise", 30 pp. 8vo. Brussels, 1884 ; English transl. 
 
 La crise re'cente en Belgique, 25 pp. Paris, 1885 ; English transl. 
 
 La P^ninsule des Baldans, 2 vols. 12mo. Brussels, 1886 ; English, 
 German, and Bulgarian transls. 
 
 La propri6t6 collective en divers pays, 60 pp. 8vo. Brussels, 1886. 
 
 La crise et la contraction monetaire, 15 pp. 8vo. Paris, 1886 ; 
 Spanish transl. (Buenos- Ayr -es) and Serbian transl. 
 
 La crise et sea remedes, 100 pp. Vemriers, 1886. 
 
 COLLABORATION. 
 
 "La Flandre lib^rale," Gand (1848-1849), " La libre Recherche," 
 "Revue trimestrielle," "Revue britannique," "Revue germanique,'' 
 ' ' Re vue desDeux- Mondes, " ' ' Exposition universelle de Paris en 1 867, " 
 " Jnry beige Documents et Rapports," "Moniteur beige," "Revue de 
 Belgique," ' ' Cobden Club Essays, " " Revue de Droits international^ de 
 legislation comparee," "The Fortnightly Review," "Journal de Liege," 
 " L'lnd^pendanco beige," " The Times," " The Daily News," "The 
 Academy," "The Penn Monthly Magazine," "Journal des Econo- 
 mistes," "Giornale degli Economisti," " Nederlandsch Museum," 
 " Patria Belgica," " Rotterdamsche Courant," " La Flandre 
 liberate, " Gand (1876-1879), "Bankers' Magazine," New York, 
 "Nuova Antologia" (Rome), " Der Staats-Socialist " (5th Nov. 
 1880), "L'Economiste franqais," " Revue scientifique," "Jahrbticher 
 fur national OZkonomie," "Het Volksbelang," "Bibliotheque Gilon."
 
 PRINCIPAL MAGAZINE ARTICLES NON REPRODUCED 
 IN VOLUME FORM. 
 
 Revue des Deux Mondes : Lea partis en Belgique, 1 Aug. 1864. 
 La mounaie inlernatiouale, Apl. 1867. Le voyage de la Novare, 15 
 Jan. 1868, (transl. into Portugese). Deak Ferencz, 15 Aug. 1869, 
 (transl. into Hungarian). La libertie de 1'enseignement sup6rieur en 
 Belgique 15 Apl. 1870. La question agraire en Irlande et en Angle- 
 terre, 15 June, 15 July, 1870. Le regime parlementaire en Italic, 
 1 May 1871. La nouvelle politique de la Russie, 15 Nov. 1871. La 
 crise re"cente en Belgique, 15 Jan. 1872, (transl. into Dutch and 
 Swedish). Les Latifundia de 1'Agro Romano, 1 June 1872. Les 
 progres de 1'enseignement en Russie, 15 Apl. 1874. Le Gouverne- 
 ment de la R6publique des Provinces-Unies, 15 Aug. 1874. Leslois 
 des Brehons, 15 Apl. 1875. Les tendances nouvelles de Pe'conomie 
 politique 15 July 1875, (transl. into English and German). La pro- 
 duction et la consommation actuelle des me"taux pre"cieux 1 Aug. 1878. 
 Grandeur et decadence de PInternationale, 15 Mch. 1880, (transl. 
 into Dutch). Bakounie, 1 June 1880, (transl. into Hungarian). La 
 Russie et 1'Angleterre en Orient, 15 July 1880. Le Luxe, 1 Nov. 
 
 1880, (transl. into Portugese in Brazil). Clifie Leslie, 15 Aug. 1881, 
 (transl. into English at New York). Le president Garfield, 1 Oct. 
 
 1881, (transl. into Swedish, Dutch, Portugese, and Spanish). Le 
 regime parlementaire et la democratic, Doc. 1882. La democratic 
 aux Etats-Unis et en Suisse, 1 Oct. 1886. La transformation du 
 gouvernement local aux Etats-Unis, 1 Aout, 1889. Un precurseur, 
 Dupont, White, 1 Dec. 1889. 
 
 Revue de Belgique : De I'utilite 1 du theatre, Jan. 1869. La revanche 
 de la France, Jan. 1872. Une Ie9on de droit public a rUniversite" de 
 Louvain, Jan. 1874, (as pamphlet 17 pp. 8vo.). Le double pro- 
 gramme du parti liberal, Jan. 1877, (as pamphlet 27 pp. 8vo.).- De 
 la difficulte de fonder la Ubert6 en France, Nov. 1877. Le eenateur
 
 Reyntiena, Apl. 1879. La bataille des e"talons, May 1881, (transl. 
 into English). La separation de 1'Englise et de 1'Etat, Aug. 1881, 
 (repr. at Paris as preface to the work of M. Minghetti under same 
 title). L'histoire de 1'agriculture en Italie, Jan. 1882, (as pamphlet 
 21 pp.). L'Allemague et 1'Italie, Feb. 1882. La question 6gyptienne, 
 Aug. 1882, (as pamphlet 25 pp.). La modernite" dans 1'art, Oct. 1882. 
 L'instruction superieure pour les f emmes, 15 Nov. 1882. L' Associa- 
 tion Internationale au Congo, Dec. 1882. La crise du liberalism Dec. 
 1883, (as pamphlet 30 pp.). Cinq annes de regime constitutionnel 
 en Bulgaria, Oct. 1884. Lettres incites de Stuart Mill, Jan. 1885. 
 Les conditions 6conomiques du Congo, Apl. 1885. En Roumanie, 
 15 Jan. (transl. into Roumanian). Essaisde droit public, July 1886. 
 
 Fortnightly Review : The future of France, June 1871. The cleri- 
 cal party in Belgium, Nov. 1872, (transl. into French, Dutch, and 
 German). Alienation of public lands in Colonies, June 1874. The 
 European situation, July 1875. English interests, July 1877. 
 England and the war, Feb. 1873. Belgian politics, Aug. 1878. 
 Bismarck und seine Leute, Dec. 1878. Italian politics, Apl. 1879. 
 Austro-German Alliance, Dec. 1879. Bimetallism and Free trade, 
 July 1881. Egypt for the Egyptians, Dec. 1882. European terror, 
 Apl. 1883, (transl. into Danish). Townships in Scotland, June 1885. 
 
 Contemporary Review : Commonplace Fallacies concerning money, 
 Nov. and Dec. 18bl. Politics in Belgium, Apl. 1882. Progress and 
 Poverty, Nov. 1882. Progress of Socialism, Apl. 1883. Congo 
 neutralised, June 1883. The prospects of the French Republic, Nov. 
 1883. The liberal defeat in Belgium and its causes, Aug. 1884. 
 Wiirtzburg and Vienna, Nov. and Dec. 1884. The State versus 
 man, with the reply of Herbert Spencer, Apl. 1885, (repr. in French 
 in the Revue. Internationale of [Florence]) May 1885. Pessimism on 
 the Stage, Sept. 1885. The economic crisis and its causes, Men. 1886 
 (transl. into Spanish at Buenos- Ayres). The Situation in theEasth, 
 Nov. 1886. Future of religion, Oct. 1889. Two new Utopias, Jan. 
 1890. Communism. March 1890.
 
 Nineteenth Century : The future of God, Sept. 1881, (repr. in In- 
 ddpendance beige, Oct. 1881). Maritime capture, Aug. and Sept. 
 1882. 
 
 Flandre Liberal* : (Revue), 1848 : Les lettres de Michel Chevalier. 
 La critique d'art. Le parti catholique. Emploi de I'arm^e dans 
 les travaux publics. 
 
 Express europeen : Les m^saventures d'un parchemin, (transl. 
 into Danish and Swedish). Chasse a I'ours dans les Karpathes. 
 
 Encyclopedia americaiia : Commercial crisis. 
 
 Revue chr&ienne : La crise en Belgique, Jan. 1885, (transl. into 
 English in the Congregationalist, June 1885). La democratic et le 
 protestantisme, July 1886. 
 
 Journal des Economistes : La nouvelle ecole e'conomique, June 1879. 
 Les lois naturelles et l'6conomie politique, Apl. 1883, (as pamphlet 
 22 pp.). La crise et la contraction mone'taire, Mch. 1885, (transl- 
 into Spanish at Buenos- Ayres). 
 
 Jahrbucher fur national (Ekonomie : Regime agraire de 1'Oudhe, 
 Aug. 1880. 
 
 Revue politique et littdraire : Les troubles en Belgique, 11 Apl. 1886. 
 Hamlet, 25 Sept. 1886. Le gouvernement populaire, 1 Dec, 1886. 
 
 Nederlandach museum : Het Darwinism en net Rechtsvaardig- 
 heid's begrip, Dec. 1874. 
 
 European Correspondance : Church and State in Belgium, 19 
 Mch. 1887. 
 
 La Revue intemationale : Le Plebiscite, Feb. 1887. La refonne 
 du regime parlementaire, Nov. 1888. 
 
 The Forum : Civil Government and the Papacy, Ap. 1888. Perils 
 of Democracy, May 1889. Mutterings of War, Oct. 1889.
 
 THE RIVERSIDE MIESS LIMITED. DINURJH
 
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 University of California Library 
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