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-IBRARY ^
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IRVINE
14,1
MUNERA PULVERIS
MUNERA PULVERIS
SIX ESSAYS
ON THE ELEMENTS OF
POLITICAL ECONOMY.
FV
JOHN RUSKIN,
HONORARY STUDENT OF CHRIST CHURCH, AND HONORARY FELLOW
OF CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE, OXFORD.
TENTH THOUSAND.
LONDON :
GEORGE ALLEN, 156, CHARING CROSS ROAD.
1904.
[A// rights reserved.']
Printed by Pali.antyne, Hanson 6'' Co
At the Ballantyne Press
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE vii
CHAP.
I. DEFINITIONS o , I
II. STORE-KEEPING 2"]
III. COIN-KEEPING 76
IV. COMMERCE HO
V. GOVERNMENT I29
VI. MASTERSHIP I73
APPENDICES 207
INDEX 219
PREFACE
1. The following pages contain, I believe,
the first accurate analysis of the laws of Poli-
tical Economy which has been published in
England. Many treatises, within their scope,
correct, have appeared in contradiction of the
views popularly received; but no exhaustive
examination of the subject was possible to any
person unacquainted with the value of the
products of the highest industries, commonly
called the " Fine Arts ; " and no one acquainted
with the nature of those industries has, so
far as I know, attempted, or even approached,
the task.
So that, to the date (1863) when these
Essays were published, not only the chief
conditions of the production of wealth had
remained unstated, but the nature of wealth
itself had never been defined. "Every one
via PREFACE.
has a notion, sufficiently correct for common
purposes, of what is meant by wealth," wrote
Mr. Mill, in the outset of his treatise ; and
contentedly proceeded, as if a chemist should
proceed to investigate the laws of chemistry
without endeavouring to ascertain the nature
of fire or water, because every one had a
notion of them, "sufficiently correct for common
purposes."
2. But even that apparently indisputable
statement was untrue. There is not one
person in ten thousand who has a notion
sufficiently correct, even for the commonest
purposes, of " what is meant " by wealth ; still
less of what wealth everlastingly is, whether
we mean it or not ; which it is the business
of every student of economy to ascertain.
We, indeed, know (either by experience or in
imagination) what it is to be able to provide
ourselves with luxurious food, and handsome
clothes; and if Mr. Mill had thought that
wealth consisted only in these, or in the means
of obtaining these, it would have been easy
for him to have so defined it with perfect
scientific accuracy. But he knew better : he
knew tliat some kinds of wealth consisted in
PREFACE. IX
the possession, or power of obtaining, other
things than these; but, having, in the studies
of his hfe, no clue to the principles of essential
value, he was compelled to take public opinion
as the ground of his science ; and the public,
of course, willingly accepted the notion of a
science founded on their opinions.
3. I had, on the contrary, a singular advan-
tage, not onty in the greater extent of the field
of investigation opened to me by my daily
pursuits, but in the severity of some lessons
I accidentally received in the course of
them.
When, in the winter of 185 1, I was collect-
ing materials for my work on Venetian archi-
tecture, three of the pictures of Tintoret on the
roof of the School of St. Roch were hanging
down in ragged fragments, mixed with lath
and plaster, round the apertures made by the
fall of three Austrian heavy shot. The city of
Venice was not, it appeared, rich enough to
repair the damage that winter; and buckets
were set on the floor of the upper room of the
school to catch the rain, which not only fell
directly through the shot holes, but found its
way, owing to the generally pensions state of
X PREFACE.
the roof, through many of the canvases of
Tintoret in other parts of the ceihng.
4. It was a lesson to me, as I have just said,
no less direct than severe ; for I knew already
at that time (though I have not ventured to
assert, until recently at Oxford,) that the
pictures of Tintoret in Venice were accurately
the most precious articles of wealth in Europe,
being the best existing productions of human
industry. Now at the time that three of them
were thus fluttering in moist rags from the
roof they had adorned, the shops of the
Rue Rivoli at Paris were, in obedience to a
steadily-increasing public Demand, beginning
to show a steadily-increasing Supply of elabo-
rately finished and coloured lithographs, re-
presenting the modern dances of delight,
among which the cancan has since taken a
distinguished place.
5. The labour employed on the stone of one
of these lithographs is very much more than
Tintoret was in the habit of giving to a picture
of average size. Considering labour as the
origin of value, therefore, the stone so highly
wrought would be of greater value than
the picture ; and since also it is capable ot
PREFACE. XI
producing a large number of immediately sale-
able or exchangeable impressions, for which
the " demand " is constant, the city of Paris
naturally supposed itself, and on all hitherto
believed or stated principles of political eco-
nomy, was, infinitely richer in the possession
of a large number of these lithographic stones,
(not to speak of countless oil pictures and
marble carvings of similar character), than
Venice in the possession of those rags of mil-
dewed canvas, flaunting in the south wind and
its salt rain. And, accordingly, Paris provided
(without thought of the expense) lofty arcades
of shops, and rich recesses of innumerable
private apartments, for the protection of these
better treasures of hers from the weather.
6. Yet, all the while, Paris was not the
richer for these possessions. Intrinsically,
the delightful lithographs were not wealth,
but polar contraries of wealth. She was, by
the exact quantity of labour she had given to
produce these, sunk below, instead of above,
absolute Poverty. They not only were false
Riches — they were true Del^i which had to be
paid at last — and the present aspect of the
Rue Rivoli shows in what manner.
Xll PREFACE.
And the faded stains of the Venetian ceiling,
all the while, were absolute and inestimable
wealth. Useless to tlieir possessors as for-
gotten treasure in a buried city, they had in
them, nevertheless, the intrinsic and eternal
nature of wealth ; and Venice, still possessing
the ruins of them, was a rich city ; only, the
Venetians had not a notion sufficiently correct
even for tne very common purpose of inducing
them to put slates on a roof, of what was
" meant by wealth."
7. The vulgar economist would reply that his
science had nothing to do with the qualities
of pictures, but with their exchange-value
only ; and that his business was, exclusively,
to consider whether the remains of Tintoret
were worth as many ten-and-sixpences as the
impressions which might be taken from the
lithographic stones.
But he would not venture, without reserve,
to make such an answer, if the example be
taken in horses, instead of pictures. The
most dull economist would perceive, and admit,
that a gentleman who had a fine stud of horses
was absolutely richer than one who had only
ill-bred and broken- winded ones. He would
PREFACE. XIU
instinctively feel, though his pseudo-science
had never taught liim, that the price paid for
the animals, in either case, did not alter the
fact of their worth ; that the good horse,
though it might have been bought by chance
for a few guineas, was not therefore less
valuable, nor the owner of the galled jade
any the richer, because he had given a hun-
dred for it.
8. So that the economist, in saying that
his science takes no account of the qualities
of pictures, merely signifies that he cannot
conceive of any quality of essential badness
or goodness existing in pictures ; and that he
is incapable of investigating the laws of wealth
in such articles. Which is the fact. But,
being incapable of defining intrinsic value in
pictures, it follows that he must be equally
helpless to define the nature of intrinsic value
in painted glass, or in painted pottery, or in
patterned stuffs, or in any other national pro-
duce requiring true liuman ingenuity. Nay,
though capable of conceiving the idea of intrin-
sic value with respect to beasts of burden,
no economist has endeavoured to state the
general principles of National Economy, even
XlV PREFACE.
with regard to the horse or the ass. And, in
fine, the modern political economists have been,
without exception, incapable of apprehending the
nature of intrinsic value at all.
9. And the first specialty of the following
treatise consists in its giving at the outset,
and maintaining as the foundation of all sub-
sequent reasoning, a definition of Intrinsic
Value, and Intrinsic Contrary-of- Value ; the
negative power having been left by former
writers entirely out of account, and the posi-
tive power left entirely undefined.
But, secondly : the modern economist, ignor-
ing intrinsic value, and accepting the popular
estimate of things as the only ground of his
science, has imagined himself to have ascer-
tained the constant laws regulating the relation
of this popular demand to its supply; or,
at least, to have proved that demand and
supply were connected by heavenly balance,
over which human foresight had no power. I
chanced, by singular coincidence, lately to see
this theory of the law of demand and supply
brought to as sharp practical issue in another
great siege, as I had seen the theories of in-
trinsic value brought, in the siege of Venice.
PREFACE. XV
10. I had the honour of being on the com-
mittee under the presidentship of the Lord
Mayor of London, for the victualHng of Paris
after her surrender. It became, at one period
of our sittings, a question of vital importance
at what moment the law of demand and supply
would come into operation, and what the
operation of it would exactly be : the demand
on this occasion, being very urgent indeed ;
that of several millions of people within a
few hours of utter starvation, for any kind
of food whatsoever. Nevertheless, it was
admitted, in the course of debate, to be
probable that the divine principle of demand
and supply might find itself at the eleventh
hour, and some minutes over, in want of carts
and horses ; and we ventured so far to inter-
fere with the divine principle as to provide
carts and horses, with haste which proved,
happily, in time for the need ; but not a
moment in advance of it. It was farther
recognised by the committee that the divine
principle of demand and supply would com-
mence its operations by charging the poor
of Paris twelve-pence for a penny's worth of
whatever they wanted ; and would end its
XVI PREFACE.
operations by offering them twelve-pence worth
for a penny, of whatever they didn't want.
Whereupon it was concluded by the committee
that the tiny knot, on this special occasion,
was scarcely " dignus viudice" by the divine
principle of demand and supply : and that we
would venture, for once, in a profane manner,
to provide for the poor of Paris what they
wanted, when they wanted it. Which, to
the value of the sums entrusted to us, it will
be remembered wc succeeded in doing.
II. But the fact is that the so-called
" Law," which was felt to be false in this case
of extreme exigence, is alike false in cases of
less exigence. It is false always, and every-
where. Nay, to such an extent is its existence
imaginary, that the vulgar economists are not
even agreed in their account of it ; for some
of them mean by it, only that prices are
regulated b}^ the relation between demand
and supply, which is partly true ; and others
mean that the relation itself is one with the
process of which it is unwise to interfere; a
statement which is not only, as in the above
instance, untrue ; but accurately the reverse
of the truth : for all wise economy, political
PREFACE. XVU
or domestic, consists in the resolved main-
tenance of a given relation between supply
and demand, other than the instinctive, or
(directly) natural, one.
12. Similarly, vulgar political economy
asserts for a " law " that wages are deter-
mined by competition.
Now I pay my servants exactly what wages
I think necessary to make them comfortable.
The sum is not determined at all by com-
petition ; but sometimes by my notions of
their comfort and deserving, and sometimes
by theirs. If I were to become penniless to-
morrow, several of them would certainly still
serve me for nothing.
In both the real and supposed cases the
so-called "law" of vulgar political economy
is absolutely set at defiance. But I cannot
set the law of gravitation at defiance, nor
determine that in my house I will not allow
ice to melt, when the temperature is above
thirty-two degrees. A true law outside of my
house, will remain a true one inside of it.
It is not, therefore, a law of Nature that
wages are determined by competition. Still
less is it a law of State, or we should not now
b
XVm PREFACE,
be disputing about it publicly, to the loss of
many millions of pounds to the country. The
fact which vulgar economists have been weak
enough to imagine a law, is only that, for the
last twenty years a number of very senseless
persons have attempted to determine wages
in that manner; and have, in a measure,
succeeded in occasionall}'^ doing so.
13. Both in definition of the elements of
wealth, and in statement of the laws which
govern its distribution, modern political eco-
nomy has been thus absolutely incompetent,
or absolutely false. And the following treatise
is not as it has been asserted with dull perti-
nacity, an endeavour to put sentiment in the
place of science ; but it contains tlie exposure
of what insolently pretended to be a science ;
and the definition, hitherto unassailed — and I
do not fear to assert, unassailable — of the
material elements with which political economy
has to deal, and the moral principles in which
it consists ; being not itself a science, but " a
system of conduct founded on the sciences,
and impossible, except under certain condi-
tions of moral culture." Which is only to
say, that industry, frugality, and discretion.
PREFACE. Xix
the three foundations of economy, are moral
quahties, and cannot be attained without
moral discipline : a flat truism, the reader may
think, thus stated, yet a truism which is
denied both vociferously, and in all endeavour,
by the entire populace of Europe; who are
at present hopeful of obtaining wealth by
tricks of trade, without industry; who, pos-
sessing wealth, have lost in the use of it even
the conception, — how much more the habit ? —
of frugality; and who, in the choice of the
elements of wealth, cannot so much as lose —
since they have never hitherto at any time
possessed, — the faculty of discretion.
14. Now if the teachers of the pseudo-
science of economy had ventured to state
distinctly even the poor conclusions they had
reached on the subjects respecting which it is
most dangerous for a populace to be indiscreet,
they would have soon found, by the use made
of them, which were true, and which false.
But on main and vital questions, no politi-
cal economist has hitherto ventured to state
one guiding principle. I will instance three
subjects of universal importance. National
Dress. National Rent. National Debt.
XX PREFACE.
Now if we are to look in any quarter for
a systematic and exhaustive statement of the
principles of a given science, it must certainly
be from its Professor at Cambridge.
15. Take the last edition of Professor Faw-
cett's Manual of Political Economy^ and form-
ing, first, clearly in your mind these three
following questions, see if you can find an
answer to them.
I. Does expenditure of capital on the pro-
duction of luxurious dress and furniture tend
to make a nation rich or poor ?
II. Does the payment, by the nation, of a
tax on its land, or on the produce of it, to a
certain number of private persons, to be ex-
pended by them as they please, tend to make
the nation rich or poor ?
III. Does the payment, by the nation, for
an indefinite period, of interest on money
borrowed from private persons, tend to make
the nation rich or poor ?
These three questions are, all of them,
perfectly simple, and primarily vital. Deter-
mine these, and you have at once a basis for
national conduct in all important particulars.
Leave them undetermined, and there is no
PREFACE. Xxi
limit to the distress which may be brought
upon the people by the cunning of its knaves,
and the folly of its multitudes.
I will take the three in their order.
1 6. (I.) Dress. The general impression on
the public mind at this day is, that the luxury
of the rich in dress and furniture is a benefit
to the poor. Probably not even the blindest
of our political economists would venture to
assert this in so many words. But where do
they assert the contrary ? During the entire
period of the reign of the late Emperor it was
assumed in France, as the first principle of
fiscal government, that a large portion of the
funds received as rent from the provincial
labourer should be expended in the manufac-
ture of ladies' dresses in Paris. Where is the
political economist in France, or England,
who ventured to assert the conclusions of his
science as adverse to this system ? As early
as the year 1857 ^ '"'^'^ done my best to show
the nature of the error, and to give warning
of its danger;* but not one of the men who
had the foolish ears of the people intent on
* Political Economy of Art. (Now " A Joy for Ever," —
Vol. XI. of the Revised Series of Entire Works, — pp. 47-56.)
XXll PREFACE.
their words, dared to follow me in speaking
what would have been an offence to the
powers of trade; and the powers of trade in
Paris had their full way for fourteen years
more, — with this result, to-day, — as told us
in precise and curt terms by the Minister of
Public Instruction,* —
"We have replaced glory by gold, work by
speculation, faith and honour by scepticism. To
absolve or glorify immorality ; to make much of
loose women ; to gratify our eyes with luxurj', our
cars with the tales of orgies; to aid in the man-
oeuvres of public robbers, or to applaud them ; to
laugh at morality, and only believe in success ; to
love nothing but pleasure, adore nothing but force;
to replace work with a fecundity of fancies ; to
speak without thinking ; to prefer noise to glory ;
to erect sneering into a system, and lying into
an institution — is this the spectacle that we have
seen? — is this the society that we have been? "
Of course, other causes, besides the desire
of luxury in furniture and dress, have been at
work to produce such consequences; but the
most active cause of all has been the passion
* See report of speech of M. Jules Simon, in Pall Mall
Gazette of October 27th, iSjt.
PREFACE. XXni
for these; passion unrebuked by the clergy,
and, for the most part, provoked by economists,
as advantageous to commerce; nor need we
think that such results have been arrived at
in France only; we are ourselves following
rapidly on the same road. France, in her
old wars with us, never was so fatally our
enemy as she has been in the fellowship
of fashion, and the freedom of trade : nor,
to my mind, is any fact recorded of Assyrian
or Roman luxury more ominous, or ghastly,
than one which came to my knowledge a few
weeks ago, in England ; a respectable and
well-to-do father and mother, in a quiet north
country town, being tui^ned into the streets
in their old age, at the suit of their only
daughter's milliner.
17. (II.) Rent. The following account of
the real nature of rent is given, quite accu-
rately, by Professor Fawcett, at page 112 of
the last edition of his Political Economy : —
" Every country has probably been subjugated,
and grants of vanquished territory were the ordi-
nary rewards which the conquering chief bestowed
upon his more distinguished followers. Lands
obtained by force liad to be defended by force ;
XXIV PREFACE.
and before law had asserted her supremacy, and
property was made secure, no baron was able to
retain his possessions, unless those who lived on
his estates were prepared to defend them. . . .*
As property became secure, and landlords felt that
the power of the State would protect them in all
the rights of property, every vestige of these feudal
tenures was abolished, and the relation between
landlord and tenant has thus become purely com-
mercial. A landlord offers his land to any one
who is willing to take it ; he is anxious to receive
the highest rent he can obtain. What arc the
principles which regulate the rent which may thus
be paid ? "
These principles the Professor goes on con-
tentedly to investigate, never appearing to
contemplate for an instant the possibility of
the first principle in the whole business — the
maintenance, by force, of the possession of
land obtained by force, being ever called in
question by any human mind. It is, never-
theless, the nearest task of our day to discover
how far original theft may be justly en-
countered by reactionary theft, or whether
reactionary theft be indeed theft at all; and
* The omitted sentences merely amplify the statement ;
they in no wise modify it.
PREFACE. XXV
farther, what, excluding either original or
corrective theft, are the just conditions of the
possession of land.
1 8. (III.) Debt. Long since, when, a mere
boy, I used to sit silently listening to the con-
versation of the London merchants who, all of
them good and sound men of business, were
wont occasionally to meet round my father's
dining-table, nothing used to surprise me
more than the conviction openly expressed
by some of the soundest and most cautious
of them, that " if there were no National
debt they would not know what to do with
their money, or where to place it safely." At
the 399th page of his Manual, you will find
Professor Fawcett giving exactly the same
statement.
" In our own country, this certainty against risk
of loss is provided by the public funds ; "
and again, as on the question of rent, the
Professor proceeds, without appearing for an
instant to be troubled by any misgiving that
there may be an essential difference between
the effects on national prosperity of a Govern-
ment paying interest on money which it spent
XXVI PREFACE.
in fireworks fifty years ago, and of a Govern-
ment paying interest on money to be employed
to-day on productive labour.
That difference, v^^hich the reader will find
stated and examined at length, in §§ 127-129
of this volume, it is the business of economists,
before approaching any other question relating
to government, fully to explain. And the para-
graphs to which I refer, contain, I believe, the
only definite statement of it hitherto made.
19. The practical result of the absence of
any such statement is, that capitalists, when
tliey do not know what to do with their money,
persuade the peasants, in various countries,
that the said peasants want guns to shoot each
other with. The peasants accordingly borrow
guns, out of the manufacture of which the
capitalists get a per-centage, and men of
science much amusement and credit. Then the
peasants shoot a certain number of each other,
until they get tired ; and burn each other's
homes down in various places. Then they
put the guns back into towers, arsenals, etc.,
in ornamental pattei-ns ; (and the victorious
party put also some ragged flags in churches).
And tlicn the capitalists tax both, annually,
PREFACE. XXVll
ever afterwards, to pay interest on the loan of
the guns and gunpowder. And that is what
capitahsts call " knowing what to do with their
money ; " and what commercial men in general
call " practical " as opposed to " sentimental "
Political Economy.
20. Eleven years ago, in the summer of
i860, perceiving then fully, (as Carlyle had
done long before), what distress was about to
come on the said populace of Europe through
these errors of their teachers, I began to do the
best I might, to combat them, in the series of
papers for the Cornhill Magazine, since pub-
lished under the title of Unto this Last. The
editor of the Magazine was my friend, and
ventured the insertion of the three first essays ;
but the outcry against them became then too
strong for any editor to endure, and he wrote
to me, with great discomfort to himself, and
many apologies to me, that the Magazine must
only admit one Economical Essay more.
I made, with his permission, the last one
longer than the rest, and gave it blunt con-
clusion as well as I could — and so the book
now stands; but, as I had taken not a little
pains with the Essays, and knew that they
XXVlll PREFACE.
contained better work than most of my former
writings, and more important truths than all
of them put together, this violent reprobation
of them by the Cornhill public set me still
more gravely thinking; and, after turning the
matter hither and thither in my mind for two
years more, I resolved to make it the central
work of my life to write an exhaustive treatise
on Political Economy. It would not have
been begun, at that time, however, had not
the editor of Fraser^s Magazine written to me,
saying that he believed there was something
in my theories, and would risk the admission
of what I chose to write on this dangerous
subject ; whereupon, cautiously, and at inter-
vals, during the winter of 1862-63, I sent him,
and he ventured to print, the preface of the
intended work, divided into four chapters.
Then, though the Editor had not wholly lost
courage, the Publisher indignantly interfered ;
and the readers of Frasrr, as those of the
Cornhill, were protected, for that time, from
farther disturbance on my part. Subsequently,
loss of healtli, family distress, and various
untoward chances, prevented my proceeding
with the body of the book ; — seven years have
PREFACE. XXIX
passed ineffectually; and I am now fain to
reprint the Preface by itself, under the title
which I intended for the whole.
21. Not discontentedly; being, at this time
of life, resigned to the sense of failure; and
also, because the preface is complete in itself
as a body of definitions, which I now require
for reference in the course of my Letters to
Workmen ; by which also, in time, I trust
less formally to accomplish the chief purpose
of Miinera Pulveris practically summed in
the two paragraphs 27 and 28 : namely, to
examine the moral results and possible rectifi-
cations of the laws of distribution of wealth,
which have prevailed hitherto without debate
among men. Laws which ordinary economists
assume to be inviolable, and which ordinary
socialists imagine to be on the eve of total
abrogation. But they are both alike deceived.
The laws which at present regulate the posses-
sion of wealth are unjust, because the motives
which provoke to its attainment are impure;
but no socialism can effect their abrogation,
unless it can abrogate also covetousness and
pride, which it is by no means yet in the wa}^
of doing. Nor can the change be, in any
XXX PREFACE.
case, to the extent that has been imagined.
Extremes of luxury may be forbidden, and
agony of penury relieved ; but nature intends,
and the utmost efforts of socialism will not
hinder the fulfilment of her intention, that a
provident person shall always be richer than a
spendthrift; and an ingenious one more com-
fortable than a fool. But, indeed, the adjust-
ment of the possession of the products of
industry depends more on their nature than
their quantity, and on wise determination
therefore of the aims of industry. A nation
which desires true wealth, desires it mode-
rately, and can therefore distribute it with
kindness, and possess it with pleasure ; but
one which desires false wealth, desires it
immoderately, and can neither dispense it with
justice, nor enjoy it in peace.
22. Therefore, needing, constantly in my
present work, to refer to the definitions of true
and false wealth given in the following Essays,
I republish them with careful revisal. They
were written abroad; partly at Milan, partly
during a winter residence on the south-eastern
slope of tlic Mont Salcve, near Geneva; and
sent to London in as legible MS. as I could
PREFACE. XXXI
write ; but I never revised the press sheets,
and have been obhgcd, accordingly, nov^? to
amend the text here and there, or correct it
in unimportant particulars. Wherever any
modification has involved change in the sense,
it is enclosed in square brackets; and what few
explanatory comments I have felt it necessary
to add, have been indicated in the same
manner. No explanatory comments, I regret
to perceive, will suffice to remedy the mischief
of my affected concentration of language, into
the habit of which I fell by thinking too long
over particular passages, in many and many
a solitary walk towards the mountains of
Bonneville or Annecy. But I never intended
the book for anything else than a dictionary of
reference, and that for earnest readers; who
will, I have good hope, if they find what they
want in it, forgive the affectedly curt expres-
sions.
The Essays, as originally published, were,
as I have just stated, four in number. I have
now, more conveniently, divided the whole into
six chapters; and (as I purpose throughout
this edition of my works) numbered the para-
graphs.
XXXJl PREFACE.
I inscribed the first volume of this series to
the friend who aided me in chief sorrow. Let
me inscribe the second to the friend and guide
who has urged me to all chief labour, TiiOMAS
CARLYLE.
23. I would that some better means were in
my power of showing reverence to the man
who alone, of all our masters of literature, has
written, without thought of himself, what he
knew it to be needful for the people of his time
to hear, if the will to hear were in them :
whom, therefore, as the time draws near
when his task must be ended, Republican and
Free-thoughted England assaults with im-
patient reproach ; and out of the abyss of her
cowardice in policy and dishonour in trade,
sets the hacks of her literature to speak evil,
grateful to her ears, of the Solitary Teacher
who has asked her to be brave for the help of
Man, and just, for the love of God.
Denmark Hill,
2^th November, 1871.
MUNERA PULVERIS
" Tk maris kt terk.k numeroque carentis aren.«
Mensorem cohibent, Archyta,
PULVERIS exigui prope litus parva Matinum
MUNERA."
CHAPTER I.
DEFINITIONS.
I. As domestic economy regulates the acts and
habits of a household, Political Economy regu-
lates those of a society or State, with reference
to the means of its maintenance.
Political economy is neither an art nor a
science ; but a system of conduct and legisla-
ture, founded on the sciences, directing the
arts, and impossible, except under certain con-
ditions of moral culture.
2. The study which lately in England has
been called Political Economy is in reality
nothing more than the investigation of some
A
2 MUNERA PULVERIS.
accidental phenomena of modern commercial
operations, nor has it been true in its inves-
tigation even of these. It has no connection
whatever with political economy, as understood
and treated of by the great thinkers of past
ages ; and as long as its unscholarly and unde-
fined statements are allowed to pass under the
same name, every word written on the subject
by those thinkers — and chiefly the words of
Plato, Xenophon, Cicero, and Bacon — must be
nearly useless to mankind. The reader must
not, therefore, be surprised at the care and in-
sistance with which I have retained the literal
and earliest sense of all important terms used in
these papers ; for a word is usually well made
at the time it is first wanted; its youngest
meaning has in it the full strength of its youth ;
subsequent senses are commonly warped or
weakened ; and as all careful thinkers arc sure
to have used their words accurately, the first
condition, in order to be able to avail ourselves
of their sayings at all, is firm definition of
terms.
3. By the " maintenance " of a State is to
be understood the support of its population in
healthy and happy life ; and the increase of
I. DEFINITIONS. 3
their numbers, so far as that increase is con-
sistent with their happiness. It is not the
object of political economy to increase the
numbers of a nation at the cost of common
health or comfort ; nor to increase indefinitely
the comfort of individuals, by sacrifice of sur-
rounding lives, or possibilities of life.
4. The assumption w^hich lies at the root
of nearly all erroneous reasoning on political
economy, — namely, that its object is to accumu-
late money or exchangeable property, — may be
shown in a few words to be without founda-
tion. For no economist would admit national
economy to be legitimate which proposed to
itself only the building of a pyramid of gold.
He would declare the gold to be wasted, were
it to remain in the monumental form, and
would say it ought to be employed. But to
what end ? Either it must be used only to
gain more gold, and build a larger pyramid, or
for some purpose other than the gaining of
gold. And this other purpose, however at
first apprehended, will be found to resolve
itself finally into the service of man ; — that is
to say, the extension, defence, or comfort of
his life. The golden pyramid may perhaps be
4 MUNERA PULVERIS.
providently built, perhaps improvidently ; but
the wisdom or folly of the accumulation can
only be determined by our having first clearly
stated the aim of all economy, namely, the ex-
tension of life.
If the accumulation of money, or of ex-
changeable property, were a certain means of
extending existence, it would be useless, in
discussing economical questions, to fix our
attention upon the more distant object — life —
instead of the immediate one — money. But
it is not so. Money may sometimes be accu-
mulated at the cost of life, or by limitations
of it ; that is to say, either by hastening the
deaths of men, or preventing their births. It
is therefore necessary to keep clearly in view
the ultimate object of economy ; and to deter-
mine the expediency of minor operations with
reference to that ulterior end.
5. It has been just stated that the object of
political economy is the continuance not only
of life, but of healthy and happy life. But all
true happiness is both a consequence and cause
of life : it is a sign of its vigour, and source of
its continuance. All true suffering is in like
manner a consequence and cause of death. I
I. DEFINITIONS. 5
shall therefore, in future, use the word " Life "
singly : but let it be understood to include in
its signification the happiness and power of the
entire human nature, body and soul.
6. That human nature, as its Creator made
it, and maintains it wherever His laws are
observed, is entirely harmonious. No physical
error can be more profound, no moral error
more dangerous, than that involved in the
monkish doctrine of the opposition of body to
soul. No soul can be perfect in an imperfect
body : no body perfect without perfect soul.
Every right action and true thought sets the
seal of its beauty on person and face ; every
wrong action and foul thought its seal of dis-
tortion; and the various aspects of humanity
might be read as plainly as a printed history,
were it not that the impressions are so com-
plex that it must always in some cases (and,
in the present state of our knowledge, in all
cases) be impossible to decipher them com-
pletely. Nevertheless, the face of a consist-
ently just, and of a consistently unjust person,
may always be rightly distinguished at a
glance ; and if the qualities are continued by
descent through a generation or two, there
6 MUNERA PULVERIS.
arises a complete distinction of race. Both
moral and physical qualities are communicated
by descent, far more than they can be de-
veloped by education, (though botli may be
destroyed by want of education) ; and there is
as yet no ascertained limit to the nobleness of
person and mind which tlic human creature
may attain, by persevering observance of the
laws of God respecting its birth and training.
7. We must therefore yet farther define the
aim of political economy to be " The multipli-
cation of human life at the highest standard."
It might at first seem questionable whether we
should endeavour to maintain a small number
of persons of tlie highest type of beauty and
intelligence, or a larger number of an inferior
class. But I. shall be able to show in the
sequel, that the way to maintain the largest
number is first to aim at the highest standard.
Determine the noblest type of man, and aim
simply at maintaining the largest possible
number of persons of that class, and it will
be found that the largest possible number of
cveiy healthy subordinate class must neces-
sarily be produced also.
8. The perfect type of manhood, as just
I. DEFINITIONS. 7
Stated, involves the perfections (whatever we
may hereafter determine these to be) of his
body, affections, and intelligence. The mate-
rial things, therefore, which it is the object
of political economy to produce and use, (or
accumulate for use,) are things which serve
either to sustain and comfort tlie body, or
exercise rightly the affections and form the
intelligence.* Whatever truly serves either
of these purposes is " useful " to man, whole-
some, healthful, helpful, or holy. By seeking
such- things, man prolongs and increases his
life upon the earth.
On the other hand, whatever does not serve
either of these purposes, — much more whatever
counteracts them, — is in like manner useless
to man, unwholesome, unhelpful, or unholy;
and by seeking such things man shortens
and diminishes his life upon the earth.
9. And neither with respect to things useful
or useless can man's estimate of them alter
their nature. Certain substances being good
for his food, and others noxious to him, what
he thinks or wishes respecting them can
neither change, nor prevent, their power. If
* See Appendix I.
8 MUNERA PULVERIS.
lie cats corn, lie will live ; if nightshade, he
will die. If he produce or make good and
bcautifid things, they will Re- Create him;
(note the solemnity and weight of the word);
if bad and ugly things, they will "corrupt"
or "break in pieces" — that is, in the exact
degree of their power. Kill him. For every
hour of labour, however enthusiastic or well
intended, which he spends for that which is
not bread, so much possibility of life is lost
to him. His fancies, likings, beliefs, however
brilliant, eager, or obstinate, are of no avail
if they are set on a false object. Of all that
he has laboured for, the eternal law of heaven
and earth measures out to him for reward,
to the utmost atom, that part which he ought
to have laboured for, and withdraws from him
(or enforces on him, it may be) inexorably,
that part which he ought not to have laboured
for until, on his summer threshing-floor, stands
his heap of corn ; little or much, not according
to his labour, but to his discretion. No
"commercial arrangements," no painting of
surfaces, nor alloying of substances, will
avail him a pennyweight. Nature asks of
him calmly and inevitably. What have you
-DEFINITIONS.
found, or formed — the right thing or the
wrong ? By the right thing you shall live ;
by the wrong you shall die.
10. To thoughtless persons it seems other-
wise. The world looks to them as if they
could cozen it out of some ways and means
of life. But they cannot cozen IT : they can
only cozen their neighbours. The world is not
to be cheated of a grain; not so much as a
breath of its air can be drawn surreptitiously.
For every piece of wise work done, so much
life is granted ; for every piece of foolish
work, nothing ; for every piece of wicked
work, so much death is allotted. This is as
sure as the courses of day and night. But
when the means of life are once produced,
men, by their various struggles and industries
of accumulation or exchange, may variously
gather, waste, restrain, or distribute them ;
necessitating, in proportion to the waste or
restraint, accurately, so much more death.
The rate and range of additional death are
measured by the rate and range of waste ;
and are inevitable ; — the only question (deter-
mined mostly by fraud in peace, and force in
war) is, Who is to die, and how ?
lO MUNERA PULVERIS.
II. Sucli being the everlasting law of
human existence, the essential work of the
political economist is to determine what are
in reality useful or life-giving things, and by
what degrees and kinds of labour they are
attainable and distributable. This investiga-
tion divides itself under three great heads ;
— the studies, namely, of the phenomena,
first, of Wealth ; secondly, of MONEY ; and
thirdly, of RiCHES.
These terms are often used as synonymous,
but they signify entirely different things.
" Wealth " consists of things in themselves
valuable ; " Money," of documentary claims to
the possession of such things ; and " Riches "
is a relative term, expressing the magnitude
of the possessions of one person or society
as compared with those of other persons or
societies.
The study of Wealtli is a province of natural
science : — it deals with the essential properties
of things.
The study of Money is a province of com-
mercial science : — it deals with conditions of
engagement and exchange.
The study of Riches is a province of moral
I. DEFINITIONS. I I
science : — it deals with the due relations of
men to each other in regard of material pos-
sessions ; and with the just laws of their asso-
ciation for purposes of labour.
I shall in this first chapter shortly sketch
out the range of subjects which will come
before us as we follow these three branches
of inquiry.
12. And first of WEALTH, which, it has been
said, consists of things essentially valuable.
We now, therefore, need a definition of
"value."
"Value" signifies the strength, or "avail-
ing " of anything towards the sustaining of
life, and is always twofold ; that is to say,
primarily, INTRINSIC, and secondarily, EFFEC-
TUAL.
The reader must, by anticipation, be warned
against confusing value with cost, or with
price. Value is tJie life-giving power of any-
thing ; cost, the quantity of la'rour required to
produce it ; price, the quantity of labour xvhicJi
its possessor zvill take in exchange for it. * Cost
[* Observe these definitions, — they are of much import-
ance. — and connect with them the sentences in italics on
next page.]
12 MUNERA PLLVERIS.
and price are commercial conditions, to be
studied under the head of money.
13. Intrinsic value is the absolute power of
anything to support life. A sheaf of wheat
of given quality and weight has in it a measur-
able power of sustaining the substance of the
body; a cubic foot of pure air, a fixed power
of sustaining its warmth ; and a cluster of
flowers of given beaut}' a fixed power of en-
livening or animating the senses and heart.
It does not in the least affect the intrinsic
value of the wheat, the air, or the flowers, that
men refuse or despise them. Used or not,
their own power is in them, and that particular
power is in nothing else.
14. But in order that this value of theirs
may become effectual, a certain state is neces-
sary in the recipient of it. The digesting,
breathing, and perceiving functions must be
perfect in the human creature before the food,
air, or flowers can become of their full value
to it. TJie production of effectual value, there-
fore, always involves two needs : first, tJie pro-
duction of a tiling essentially useful ; then t)i£
production of the capacity to use it. Where the
intrinsic value and acceptant capacity come
I. DEFINITIONS. I 3
together there is Effectual value, or wealth;
where there is either no intrinsic value, or no
acceptant capacity, there is no effectual value ;
that is to say, no wealth. A horse is no wealth
to us if we cannot ride, nor a picture if we
cannot see, nor can any noble thing be zvcalth,
except to a noble person. As the aptness of the
user increases, the effectual value of the thing
used increases; and in its entirety can co-exist
only with perfect skill of use, and fitness of
nature.
15. Valuable material things may be con-
veniently referred to five heads :
(i.) Land, with its associated air, water, and
organisms.
(ii.) Houses, furniture, and instruments.
(iii.) Stored or prepared food, medicine, and
articles of bodily luxury, including clothing.
(iv.) Books.
(v.) Works of art.
The conditions of value in these things are
briefly as follows : —
16. (i.) Land. Its value is twofold; first,
as producing food and mechanical power;
secondly, as an object of sight and thought,
producing intellectual power.
14 MUNERA PULVERIS.
Its value, as a means of producing food
and mechanical power, varies with its form (as
mountain or plain), with its substance (in soil
or mineral contents), and with its climate. All
these conditions of intrinsic value must be
known and complied with by the men who
have to deal with it, in order to give effectual
value ; but at any given time and place, the
intrinsic value is fixed : such and such a piece
of land, with its associated lakes and seas,
rightly treated in surface and substance, can
produce precisely so much food and power,
and no more.
The second element of value in land being
its beauty, united with such conditions of
space and form as are necessary for exercise,
and for fulness of animal life, land of the
highest value in these respects will be that
lying in temperate climates, and boldly varied
in form ; removed from unhealthy or danger-
ous influences (as of miasm or volcano) ; and
capable of sustaining a rich fauna and flora.
Such land, carefully tended by the hand of man,
so far as to remove from it unsightlinesses and
evidences of decay, guarded from violence, and
inhabited, under man's affectionate protection,
I. — DEFINITIONS. I 5
by every kind of living creature that can
occupy it in peace, is the most precious
"property" that human beings can possess.
17. (ii.) Buildings, furniture, and instru-
ments.
The value of buildings consists, first, in per-
manent strength, with convenience of form,
of size, and of position ; so as to render
employment peaceful, social intercourse easy,
temperature and air healthy. The advisable or
possible magnitude of cities and mode of their
distribution in squares, streets, courts, etc. ;
the relative value of sites of land, and the
modes of structure which are healthiest and
most permanent, have to be studied under this
head.
The value of buildings consists secondly in
historical association, and architectural beauty,
of which we have to examine the influence on
manners and life.
The value of instruments consists, first, in
their power of shortening labour, or otherwise
accomplishing what human strength unaided
could not. The kinds of work which are
severally best accomplished by hand or b}^
machine; — the effect of machinery in gathering
I 6 MUNERA PULVERIS.
and multiplying population, and its influence
on the minds and bodies of such population ;
together with the conceivable uses of machinery
on a colossal scale in accomplishing mighty
and useful works, hitherto unthought of, such
as the deepening of large river channels ; —
changing the surface of mountainous districts ;
— irrigating tracts of desert in the torrid zone ;
— breaking up, and thus rendering capable of
quicker fusion, edges of ice in the northern
and southern Arctic seas, etc., so rendering
parts of the earth habitable which hitherto
have been lifeless, are to be studied under
this head.
The value of instruments is, secondarily, in
their aid to abstract sciences. The degree in
which the multiplication of such instruments
should be encouraged, so as to make them, if
large, easy of access to numbers (as costly
telescopes), or so cheap as that they might, in
a serviceable form, become a common part of
the furniture of households, is to be considered
under this head.*
* I cannot now recast these sentences, pedantic in their
generalization, and intended more for index than statement,
but I must guard the reader from thinkinsi; that I ever wish
I. DEFINITIONS. I /
1 8. (iii.) Food, medicine, and articles of
luxury. Under this head we shall have to
examine the possible methods of obtaining
pure food in such security and equality of
supply as to avoid both waste and famine :
then the economy of medicine and just range
of sanitary law : finally the economy of luxury,
partly an aesthetic and partly an ethical
question.
19. (iv.) Books. The value of these con-
sists,
First, in their power of preserving and com-
municating the knowledge of facts.
Secondly, in their power of exciting vital
or noble emotion and intellectual action.
They have also their corresponding negative
powers of disguising and effacing the memory
of facts, and killing the noble emotions, or
exciting base ones. Under these two heads we
have to consider the economical and educa-
tional value, positive and negative, of litera-
ture ; — the means of producing and educating
for cheapness by bad quality. A poor boy need not always
learn mathematics ; but, if you set him to do so, have the
farther kindness to give him good compasses, not cheap ones,
whose points bend like lead.]
B
I 8 MUNERA PULVERIS.
good authors, and the means and advisabihty
of rendering good books generally accessible,
and directing the reader's choice to them.
20. (v.) Works of art. The value of these
is of the same nature as that of books ; but the
laws of their production and possible modes
of distribution are very different, and require
separate examination.
21. II.— Money. Under this head, we shall
have to examine the laws of currency and
exchange ; of which I will note here the first
separate principles.
Money has been inaccurately spoken of as
merely a means of exchange. But it is far
more than this. It is a documentary expres-
sion of legal claim. It is not wealth, but
a documentary claim to wealth, being the
sign of the relative quantities of it, or of the
labour producing it, to which, at a given time,
persons, or societies, are entitled.
If all the money in the world, notes and
gold, were destroyed in an instant, it would
leave the world neither richer nor poorer than
it was. But it would leave the individual
inhabitants of it in different relations.
Money is, therefore, correspondent in its
I. DEFINITIONS. I 9
nature to the title-deed of an estate. Though
the deed be burned, the estate still exists, but
the right to it has become disputable.
22. The real worth of money remains
unchanged, as long as the proportion of the
quantity of existing money to the quantity
of existing wealth or available labour remains
unchanged.
If the wealth increases, but not the money,
the worth of the money increases ; if the
money increases, but not the wealth, the worth
of the money diminishes.
23. Money, therefore, cannot be arbitrarily
multiplied, any more than title-deeds can. So
long as the existing wealth or available labour
is not fully represented by the currency, the
currency may be increased without diminution
of the assigned worth of its pieces. But when
the existing wealth, or available labour, is once
fully represented, every piece of money thrown
into circulation diminishes the worth of every
other existing piece, in the proportion it bears
to the number of them, provided the new piece
be received with equal credit ; if^^fiot, the
depreciation of worth takes place, according to
the degree of its credit.
20 MUNERA PULVERIS.
24. When, however, new money, composed
of some substance of supposed intrinsic value
(as of gold), is brought into the market, or
when new notes are issued which are supposed
to be deserving of credit, the desire to obtain
the money will, under certain circumstances,
stimulate industry : an additional quantity of
wealth is immediately produced, and if this be
in proportion to the new claims advanced,
the value of the existing currency is undepre-
ciated. If the stimulus given be so great as
to produce more goods than are proportioned
to the additional coinage, the worth of the
existing currency will be raised.
Arbitrary control and issues of currency
affect the production of wealth, by acting on
the hopes and fears of men, and are, under
certain circumstances, wise. But the issue of
additional currency to meet the exigencies of
immediate expense, is merely one of the dis-
guised forms of borrowing or taxing. It is,
however, in the present low state of economical
knowledge, often possible for governments to
venture Qn an issue of currency, when they
could not venture on an additional loan or tax,
because the real operation of such issue is
I. — DEFINITIONS. 2 I
not understood by the people, and the pressure
of it is irregularly distributed, and with an
unperceived gradation.
25. The use of substances of intrinsic value
as the materials of a currency, is a barbarism ;
— a remnant of the conditions of barter, which
alone render commerce possible among savage
nations. It is, however, still necessary, partly
as a mechanical check on arbitrary issues;
partly as a means of exchanges with foreign
nations. In proportion to the extension of
civilization, and increase of trustworthiness
in governments, it will cease. So long as it
exists, the phenomena of the cost and price of
the articles used for currency are mingled with
those proper to currency itself, in an almost
inextricable manner : and the market worth of
bullion is affected by multitudinous accidental
circumstances, which have been traced, with
more or less success, by writers on commercial
operations : but with these variations the true
political economist has no more to do than an
engineer, fortifying a harbour of refuge against
Atlantic tide, has to concern himself with the
cries or quarrels of children who dig pools with
their fingers for its streams among the sand.
2 2 MUNERA PULVERIS.
26. III. — Riches. According to the various
industry, capacity, good fortune, and desires
of men, they obtain greater or smaller share of,
and claim upon, the wealth of the world.
The inequalities between these shares, always
in some degree just and necessary, may be
either restrained by law or circumstance within
certain limits ; or may increase indefinitely.
Where no moral or legal restraint is put
upon the exercise of the will and intellect of
the stronger, shrewder, or more covetous men,
these differences become ultimately enormous.
But as soon as they become so distinct in their
extremes as that, on one side, there shall be
manifest redundance of possession, and on the
other manifest pressure of need, — the terms
" riches " and " poverty " are used to express
the opposite states ; being contrary only as
the terms " warmth " and " cold " are con-
traries, of which neither implies an actual
degree, but only a relation to otlier degrees,
of temperature.
27. Respecting riches, the economist has to
inquire, first, into the advisable modes of their
collection ; secondly, into the advisable modes
of their administration.
I. DEFINITIONS. 23
Respecting the collection of national riches,
he has to inquire, first, whether he is justified
in calling the nation rich, if the quantity of
wealth it possesses relatively to the wealth of
other nations, be large ; irrespectively of the
manner of its distribution. Or does the mode
of distribution in any wise affect the nature of
the riches ? Thus, if the king alone be rich —
suppose Croesus or Mausolus — are the Lydians
or Carians therefore a rich nation ? Or if a
few slave-masters are rich, and the nation is
otherwise composed of slaves, is it to be called
a rich nation ? For if not, and the ideas of a
certain mode of distribution or operation in
the riches, and of a certain degree of freedom
in the people, enter into our idea of riches as
attributed to a people, we shall have to define
the degree of fluency, or circulative character
which is essential to the nature of common
wealth ; and the degree of independence of action
required in its possessors. Questions which
look as if they would take time in answering.*
28. And farther. Since the inequahty, which
[* I regret the ironical manner in which this passage, one
of great importance in the matter of it, was written. The
gist of it is, that the first of all inquiries respecting the
24 MUNERA I'ULVERIS.
is the condition of riclies, may be established
in two opposite modes — namely, by increase of
possession on the one side, and by decrease
of it on the other — we have to inquire, with
respect to any given state of riches, precisely
in what manner the correlative poverty was
produced : that is to say, whether by being
surpassed only, or being depressed also; and
if by being depressed, what are the advantages,
or the contrary, conceivable in the depression.
For instance, it being one of the commonest
advantages of being rich to entertain a number
of servants, we have to inquire, on the one
side, what economical process produced the
riches of the master ; and on the other, what
economical process produced the poverty of the
persons who serve him; and what advantages
each, on his own side, derives from the result.
29. These being the main questions touch-
ing the collection of riches, the next, or last,
part of the inquiry is into their administration.
Their possession involves three great
economical powers which require separate
wealth of any nation is not, how mucli it has ; but whether it
is in a form that can be used, and in tlie jjossession of persons
who can use it.]
I. — DEFINITIONS. 2 5
examination : namely, the powers of selection,
direction, and provision.
The power of SELECTION relates to things
of which the supply is limited (as the supply
of best things is always). When it becomes
matter of question to whom such things are to
belong, the richest person has necessarily the
first choice, unless some arbitrary mode of
distribution be otherwise determined upon.
The business of the economist is to show how
this choice may be a Wise one.
The power of DIRECTION arises out of the
necessary relation of rich men to poor, which
ultimately, in one way or another, involves the
direction of, or authority over, the labour of
the poor; and this nearly as much over their
mental as their bodily labour. The business
of the economist is to show how this direction
may be a Just one.
The power of Provision is dependent upon
the redundance of wealth, which may of course
by active persons be made available in pre-
paration for future work or future profit; in
which function riches have generally received
the name of capital ; that is to say, of head-,
or source-material. The business of the
26 MUNERA PULVERIS.
economist is to show how this provision may
be a Distant one.
30. The examination of these three func-
tions of riches will embrace every final problem
of political economy ; — and, above, or before
all, this curious and vital problem, — wliether,
since the wholesome action of riches in these
three functions will depend (it appears) on the
Wisdom, Justice, and Farsightedness of the
holders; and it is by no means to be assumed
that persons primarily rich, must therefore be
just and wise, — it may not be ultimately pos-
sible so, or somewhat so, to arrange matters, as
that persons primarily just and wise, should
therefore be rich ?
Such being the general plan of the inquiry
before us, I shall not limit myself to any con-
secutive following of it, having hardly any
good hope of being able to complete so
laborious a work as it must prove to me ; but
from time to time, as I have leisure, shall
endeavour to carry forward this part or that,
as may be immediately possible; indicating
always with accuracy the place whicli the
particular essay will or should take in the
completed system.
CHAPTER II.
STORE-KEEPING.
31. The first chapter having consisted of httle
more than definition of terms, I purpose, in
this, to expand and illustrate the given defi-
nitions.
The view which has here been taken of the
nature of wealth, namely, that it consists in
an intrinsic value developed by a vital power,
is directly opposed to two nearly universal
conceptions of wealth. In the assertion that
value is primarily intrinsic, it opposes the idea
that anything which is an object of desire to
numbers, and is limited in quantity, so as to
have rated worth in exchange, may be called,
or virtually become, wealth. And in the
assertion that value is, secondarily, dependent
upon power in the possessor, it opposes the
idea that the worth of things depends on the
2 8 MUNERA PULVERIS.
demand for them, instead of on the use of
them. Before going farther, wc will make
these two positions clearer.
32. I. First. All wealth is intrinsic, and
is not constituted by the judgment of men.
This is easily seen in the case of things affect-
ing the body ; we know, that no force of
fantasy will make stones nom-ishing, or poison
innocent ; but it is less apparent in things
affecting the mind. We are easily — perhaps
willingly — misled by the appearance of bene-
ficial results obtained by industries addressed
wholly to the gratification of fanciful desire;
and apt to suppose that whatever is widely
coveted, dearly bought, and pleasurable in
possession, must be included in our definition
of wealth. It is the more difficult to quit our-
selves of this error because many things which
are true wealth in moderate use, become false
wealth in immoderate ; and many things are
mixed of good and evil, — as mostly, books, and
works of art, — out of which one person will
get the good, and another the evil ; so that
it seems as if there were no fixed good or evil
in the things themselves, but only in the view
taken, and use made of them.
II. — STORE-KEEPING. 2 9
But that is not so. The evil and good are
fixed ; in essence, and in proportion. And in
things in which evil depends upon excess,
the point of excess, though indefinable, is fixed;
and the power of the thing is on the hither
side for good, and on the farther side for evil.
And in all cases this power is inherent, not
dependent on opinion or choice. Our thoughts
of things neither make, nor mar their eternal
force; nor — which is the most serious point
for future consideration — can they prevent
the effect of it (within certain hmits) upon
ourselves.
33. Therefore, the object of any special
analysis of wealth will be not so much to
enumerate what is serviceable, as to distin-
guish what is destructive; and to show that
it is inevitably destructive; that to receive
pleasure from an evil thing is not to escape
from, or alter the evil of it, but to be altered
by it ; that is, to suffer from it to the utmost,
having our own nature, in that degree, made
evil also. And it may be shown farther, that,
through whatever length of time or subtle-
ties of connexion the harm is accomplished,
(being also less or more according to the
30 MUNERA PULVERIS.
fineness and worth of the humanity on which
it is wrought,) still, nothing but harm ever
comes of a bad thing.
34. So that, in sum, the term wealth is
never to be attached to the accidental object of
a morbid desire, but only to the constant object
of a legitimate one* By the fury of ignor-
ance, and fitfulness of caprice, large interests
may be continually attached to things unser-
viceable or hurtful; if their nature could be
altered by our passions, the science of political
Economy would remain, what it has been
hitherto among us, the weighing of clouds,
and the portioning out of shadows. But of
ignorance there is no science; and of caprice
no law. Their disturbing forces interfere
with the operations of faithful Economy, but
have nothing in common with them : she, the
calm arbiter of national destiny, regards
only essential power for good in all that
she accumulates, and alike disdains the
* [Remember carefully this statement, that Wealth con-
sists only in the things which the nature of humanity has
rendered in all ages, and must render in all ages to come,
(that is what I meant by "constant,") the objects of legiti-
mate desire. And see Appendix II.]
II. STORE-KEEPING. 3 I
wanderings * of imagination, and the thirsts
of disease.
35. II. Secondly. The assertion that wealth
is not only intrinsic, but dependent, in order
to become effectual, on a given degree of vital
power in its possessor, is opposed to another
popular view of wealth ; — namely, that though
it may always be constituted by caprice, it is,
when so constituted, a substantial thing, of which
given quantities may be counted as existing
here, or there, and exchangeable at rated prices.
In this view there are three errors. The
first and chief is the overlooking the fact that
all exchangeableness of commodity, or effective
demand for it, depends on the sum of capacity
for its use existing, here or elsewhere. The
book we cannot read, or picture we take no
delight in, may indeed be called part of our
wealth, in so far as we have power of ex-
changing either for something we like better.
But our power of effecting such exchange, and
yet more, of effecting it to advantage, depends
absolutely on the number of accessible persons
who can understand the book, or enjoy the
[* The Wanderings, observe, not tlie Right goings, of
Imagination. She is very far from despising these.]
32 MUNERA PULVERIS.
painting, and who will dispute the possession
of them. Thus the actual worth of either,
even to us, depends no more on their essential
goodness than on tlie capacity existing some-
where for the perception of it; and it is vain
in any completed system of production to
think of obtaining one without the other. So
that, though the true political economist
knows that co-existence of capacity for use
with temporary possession cannot be always
secured, the final fact, on which he bases
all action and administration, is that, in the
whole nation, or group of nations, he has
to deal with, for every atom of intrinsic value
produced he must with exactest chemistry
produce its twin atom of acceptant digestion,
or understanding capacity ; or, in the degree
of his failure, he has no wealth. Nature's
challenge to us is, in earnest, as the Assyrian's
mock : " I will give thee two thousand horses,
if thou be able on thy part to set riders upon
them." Bavieca's paces are brave, if the Cid
backs him ; but woe to us, if we take the dust
of capacity, wearing the armour of it, for
capacity itself, for so all procession, however
goodly in the show of it, is to the tomb.
II. STORE-KEEPING. 3 3
36. The second error in this popular view of
wealth is, that in giving the name of wealth to
things which we cannot use, we in reality con-
fuse wealth with money. The land we have
no skill to cultivate, the book which is sealed
to us, or dress which is superfluous, may
indeed be exchangeable, but as such are
nothing more than a cumbrous form of bank-
note, of doubtful or slow convertibility. As
long as we retain possession of them, we
merely keep our bank-notes in the shape of
gravel or clay, or book-leaves, or of embroidered
tissue. Circumstances may, perhaps, render
such forms the safest, or a certain complacency
may attach to the exhibition of them ; into
both these advantages we shall inquire after-
wards ; I wish the reader only to observe here,
that exchangeable property which we cannot
use is, to us personally, merely one of the
forms of money, not of wealth.
37. The third error in the popular view is
the confusion of Guardianship with Possession ;
the real state of men of property being, too
commonly, that of curators, not possessors, of
wealth.
A man's power over his property is, at the
c
34 MUNERA PULVERIS.
widest range of it, fivefold ; it is power of Use,
for himself. Administration, to others, Ostenta-
tion, Destruction, or Bequest; and possession
is in use only, which for each man is sternly
limited ; so that such things, and so much of
them as he can use, are, indeed, well for him,
or Wealth ; and more of them, or any other
things, are ill for him, or Illth.* Plunged to
the lips in Orinoco, he shall drink to his thirst
measure ; more at his peril : with a thousand
oxen on his lands, he shall eat to his hunger
measure ; more, at his peril. He cannot live in
two houses at once ; a few bales of silk or wool
will suffice for the fabric of all the clothes he
can ever wear, and a few books will probably
hold all the furniture good for his brain.
Beyond these, in the best of us but narrow,
capacities, we have but the power of admin-
istering, or ^^/-administering, wealth : (that
is to say, distributing, lending, or increasing
it) ; — of exhibiting it (as in magnificence
of retinue or furniture), — of destroying, or,
finally, of bequeathing it. And with multi-
tudes of rich men, administration degenerates
into curatorship ; they merely hold their
* See Appendix III.
II. STORE-KEEPING. 3 5
property in charge, as Trustees, for the benefit
of some person or persons to whom it is to
be dehvered upon their death ; and the position,
explained in clear terms, would hardly seem
a covetable one. What would be the probable
feelings of a youth, on his entrance into life, to
whom the career hoped for him was proposed
in terms such as these : " You must work
unremittingly, and with your utmost intelli-
gence, during all your available years, you will
thus accumulate wealth to a large amount ; but
you must touch none of it, beyond what is
needful for your support. Whatever sums you
gain, beyond those required for your decent
and moderate maintenance, and whatever
beautiful things you may obtain possession of,
shall be properly taken care of by servants,
for whose maintenance you will be charged,
and whom you will have the trouble of super-
intending, and on your death-bed you shall
have the power of determining to whom the
accumulated property shall belong, or to what
purposes be applied " ?
38. The labour of life, under such condi-
tions, would probably be neither zealous nor
cheerful J yet the only difference between this
36 MUNEE, or half of
d less than both want. But if A work three
hours and B six, A has 3 a, and B has 3
^, a maintenance in the right proportion for
both for a day and a half; so that each might
take half a day's rest. But as B has worked
double time, the whole of this day's rest
belongs in equity to him. Therefore the just
exchange should be, A giving two a for one d,
has one a and one I? ; — maintenance for a day.
B giving one d for two a, has two a and two
d ; — maintenance for two days.
But B cannot rest on the second day, or A
would be left without the article which B pro-
duces. Nor is there any means of making the
exchange just, unless a third labourer is called
in. Then one workman. A, produces a, and
two, B and C, produce b : — A, working tliree
hours, has three a; — B, three hours, i-^- b ; —
* This "greater ease" ought to be allowed for by a
diminution in the times of the divided work ; but as the
proportion of times would remain the same, I do not intro-
duce this unnecessary complexity into the calculation.
II.— STORE-KEEPING. 6"]
C, three hours, \\ b. B and C each give half
of b for a, and all have their equal daily main-
tenance for equal daily work.
To carry the example a single step farther,
let three articles, a, b, and c be needed.
Let a need one hour's work, b two, and c
four; then the day's work must be seven hours,
and one man in a day's work can make 7 a, or
31 b, or if c.
Therefore one A works for a, producing 7 a;
two B's work for b, producing 7 b ; four C's
work for c, producing 7 c.
A has six a to spare, and gives two a for
one b, and four a for one c. Each B has 2h b
to spare, and gives \ b for one a, and two b
for one c.
Each C has | of ^ to spare, and gives | c
for one b, and 5 of ^ for one a.
And all have their day's maintenance.
Generally, therefore, it follows that if the
demand is constant,* the relative prices of
things are as their costs, or as the quantities
of labour involved in production,
64. Then, in order to express their prices in
terms of a currency, we have only to put the
* Compare Unto this Last, p. 115, et seq.
68 MUNERA PULVERIS.
currency into the form of orders for a certain
quantity of any given article (with us it is in
the form of orders for gold), and all quantities
of other articles are priced by the relation
they bear to the article which the currency
claims.
But the worth of the currency itself is not
in the slightest degree founded more on the
worth of the article which it either claims or
consists in (as gold) than on the worth of
every otiier article for which the gold is ex-
changeable. It is just as accurate to say, "so
many pounds are worth an acre of land," as
"an acre of land is worth so many pounds."
The worth of gold, of land, of houses, and of
food, and of all other things, depends at any
moment on the existing quantities and relative
demands for all and cacli ; and a change in the
worth of, or demand for, any one, involves an
instantaneously correspondent change in the
worth of, and demand for, all the rest; — a
change as inevitable and as accurately balanced
(though often in its process as untraceable) as
the change in volume of the outflowing river
from some vast lake, caused b}' cliange in the
volume of the inflowing streams, thougli no
II. STORE-KEEPING. 69
eye can trace, nor instrument detect, motion,
either on its surface, or in the depth.
65. Thus, then, the real working power or
worth of the currency is founded on the entire
sum of the relative estimates formed by the
population of its possessions ; a change in this
estimate in any direction (and therefore every
change in the national character), instantly
alters the value of money, in its second great
function of commanding labour. But we
must always carefully and sternly distinguish
between this worth of currency, dependent on
the conceived or appreciated value of what it
represents, and the worth of it, dependent on
the existence of what it represents. A currency
is true or false, in proportion to the security
with which it gives claim to the possession of
land, house, horse, or picture ; but a currency
is strong or weak^ worth much or worth little,
in proportion to the degree of estimate in
which the nation holds the house, horse, or
picture which is claimed. Thus the power of
[* That is to say, the love of money is founded first on the
intenseness of desire for given things ; a youth will rob the
till, now-a-days, for pantomime tickets and cigars ; the
"strength" of the currency being irresistible to him, in
consequence of his desire for those luxuries.]
70 MUNERA PULVERIS.
tlic English currency has been, till of late,
largely based on the national estimate of
horses and of wine: so that a man might
always give any price to furnish choicely
his stable, or his cellar; and receive public
approval therefore : but if he gave the same
sum to furnish his library, he was called mad,
or a biblio-maniac. And although he might
lose his fortune by his horses, and his health
or life by his cellar, and rarely lost either by
his books, he was yet never called a Hippo-
maniac nor an Oino-maniac ; but only Biblio-
maniac, because the current worth of money
was understood to be legitimately founded on
cattle and wine, but not on literature. The
prices lately given at sales for pictures and
MSS. indicate some tendency to change in the
national character in this respect, so that the
worth of the currency may even come in time
to rest, in an acknowledged manner, somewhat
on the state and keeping of the Bedford missal,
as well as on the health of Caractacus or
Blink Bonny; and old pictures be considered
property, no less than old port. They might
have been so before now, but that it is more
difficult to choose the one than the other.
II. STORE-KEEPING. ^ I
66. Now, observe, all these sources of
variation in the power of the currency
exist, wholly irrespective of the influences of
vice, indolence, and improvidence. We have
hitherto supposed, throughout the analysis,
every professing labourer to labour honestly,
heartily, and in harmony with his fellows.
We have now to bring farther into the calcu-
lation the effects of relative industry, honour,
and forethought; and thus to follow out the
bearings of our second inquiry : Who are the
holders of the Store and Currency, and in
what proportions ?
This, however, we must reserve for our next
paper — noticing here only that, however dis-
tinct the several branches of the subject are,
radically, they are so interwoven in their
issues that we cannot rightly treat any one,
till we have taken cognizance of all. Thus the
need of the currency in proportion to number
of population is materially influenced by the
probable number of the holders in proportion
to the non-holders; and this again, by the
number of holders of goods, or wealth, in pro-
portion to the non-holders of goods. For as,
by definition, the currency is a claim to goods
•J 2 MUNERA PULVERIS.
which are not possessed, its quantity indicates
the number of claimants in proportion to the
number of holders ; and the force and com-
plexity of claim. For if the claims be not
complex, currency as a means of exchange
may be very small in quantity. A sells some
corn to B, receiving a promise from B to pay
in cattle, which A then hands over to C, to get
some wine. C in due time claims the cattle
from B ; and B takes back his promise.
These exchanges have, or might have been,
all effected with a single coin or promise ; and
the proportion of the currency to the store
would in such circumstances indicate only the
circulating vitality of it — that is to say, the
quantity and convenient divisibility of that part
of the store which the habits of the nation keep
in circulation. If a cattle breeder is content
to live with his household chiefly on meat and
milk, and does not want rich furniture, or
jewels, or books — if a wine and corn grower
maintains himself and his men chiefly on
grapes and bread ; — if the wives and daughters
of families weave and spin the clothing of the
household, and the nation, as a whole, remains
content with the produce of its own soil and
II. — STORE-KEEPING. 73
the work of its own hands, it has httle
occasion for circulating media. It pledges and
promises little and seldom ; exchanges only
so far as exchange is necessary for life. The
store belongs to the people in whose hands it
is found, and money is little needed either as
an expression of right, or practical means of
division and exchange.
(ij. But in proportion as the habits of the
nation become complex and fantastic (and they
may be both, without therefore being civilized),
its circulating medium must increase in pro-
portion to its store. If every one wants a
little of everything, — if food must be of many
kinds, and dress of many fashions, — if multi-
tudes live by work which, ministering to fancy,
has its pay measured by fancy, so that large
prices will be given by one person for what
is valueless to another, — if there are great
inequalities of knowledge, causing great in-
equalities of estimate, — and, finally, and worst
of all, if the currency itself, from its largeness,
and the power which the possession of it im-
plies, becomes the sole object of desire with
large numbers of the nation, so that the
holding of it is disputed among them as the
74 MUNERA PULVERIS.
main object of life : — in each and all of these
cases, the currency necessarily enlarges in
proportion to the store; and as a means of
exchange and division, as a bond of right, and
as an object of passion, has a more and more
important and malignant power over the
nation's dealings, character, and life.
Against which power, when, as a bond of
Right, it becomes too conspicuous and too
burdensome, the popular voice is apt to be
raised in a violent and irrational manner,
leading to revolution instead of remedy.
Whereas all possibility of Economy depends
on the clear assertion and maintenance of this
bond of right, however burdensome. The first
necessity of all economical government is to
secure the unquestioned and unquestionable
working of the great law of Property — that a
man who works for a thing shall be allowed
to get it, keep it, and consume it, in peace;
and that he who does not eat his cake to-
day, shall be seen, without grudging, to have
his cake to-morrow. This, I say, is the first
point to be secured by social law; without
this, no political advance, nay, no political
existence, is in any sort possible. Whatever
II. STORE-KEEPING. J 5
evil, luxury, iniquity, may seem to result from
it, this is nevertheless the first of all Equities ;
and to the enforcement of this, by law and
police-truncheon, the nation must always
primarily set its mind — that the cupboard door
may have a firm lock to it, and no man's dinner
be carried off* by the mob, on its way home
from the baker's. Which, thus fearlessly
asserting, we shall endeavour in next paper
to consider how far it may be practicable for
the mob itself, also, in due breadth of dish,
to have dinners to carry home.
CHAPTER III.
COIN-KEEPING.
68. It will be seen by reference to the last
chapter that our present task is to examine the
relation of holders of store to holders of cur-
rency ; and of both to those who hold neither.
In order to do this, we must determine on
which side we are to place substances such as
gold, commonly known as bases of currency.
By aid of previous definitions the reader will
now be able to understand closer statements
than have yet been possible.
69. The currency of any country consists of
every document acknowledging debt, which is
t7'ansferable in the country*
This transferableness depends upon its
intelligibility and credit. Its intelligibility
[* Remember this definition : it is of great importance as
opposed to the imperfect ones usually given. When first
these essays were published, I remember one of their
76
III. COIN-KEEPING, J J
depends chiefly on the difficulty of forging
anything like it ; — its credit much on national
character, but ultimately always on the existence
of substantial means of meeting its demand*
As the degrees of transferableness are
variable, (some documents passing only in
certain places, and others passing, if at all,
for less than their inscribed value,) both the
mass, and, so to speak, fluidity, of the
currency, are variable. True or perfect
currency flows freely, like a pure stream ; it
becomes sluggish or stagnant in proportion to
the quantity of less transferable matter which
mixes with it, adding to its bulk, but dimin-
ishing its purity. [Articles of commercial
value, on which bills are drawn, increase
the currency indefinitely; and substances of
intrinsic value, if stamped or signed without
restriction so as to become acknowledgments
of debt, increase it indefinitely also.] Every
reviewers asking contemptuously, " Is half- a- crown a
document?" it never having before occurred to him that
a document might be stamped as well as written, and
stamped on silver as well as on parchment.]
[* I do not mean the demand of the holder of a five-pound
note for five pounds, but the demand of the holder of a
pound for a pound's worth of something good.]
78 MUNERA PULVERIS.
bit of gold found in Australia, so long as it
remains uncoined, is an article offered for sale
like any other ; but as soon as it is coined into
pounds, it diminishes the value of every pound
we have now in our pockets.
70. Legally authorized or national currency,
in its perfect condition, is a form of public
acknowledgment of debt, so regulated and
divided that any person presenting a com-
modity of tried worth in the public market,
shall, if he please, receive in exchange for it
a document giving him claim to the return of
its equivalent, (i) in any place, (2) at any
time, and (3) in any kind.
When currency is quite healthy and vital,
the persons entrusted with its management
are always able to give on demand either,
A. The assigning document for the as-
signed quantity of goods. Or,
B. The assigned quantity of goods for
the assigning document.
If they cannot give document for goods, the
national exchange is at fault.
If they cannot give goods for document, the
national credit is at fault.
The nature and power of the document are
III. — COIN-KEEPING. 79
therefore to be examined under the three
relations it bears to Place, Time, and Kind.
71. ( I.) It gives claim to the return of
equivalent wealth in any Place. Its use in
this function is to save carriage, so that
parting with a bushel of corn in London, we
may receive an order for a bushel of corn at
the Antipodes, or elsewhere. To be perfect
in this use, the substance of currency must
be to the maximum portable, credible, and
intelligible. Its non-acceptance or discredit
results always from some form of ignorance
or dishonour: so far as such interruptions
rise out of differences in denomination, there
is no ground for their continuance among
civilized nations. It may be convenient in
one country to use chiefly copper for coinage,
in another silver, and in another gold, —
reckoning accordingly in centimes, francs, or
zecchins : but that a franc should be different
in weight and value from a shilling, and a
zwanziger vary from both, is wanton loss of
commercial power.
72. (2.) It gives claim to the return of
equivalent wealth at any Time. In this second
use, currency is the exponent of accumulation :
8o MUNERA PULVFRIS.
it renders the laying-up of store at the com-
mand of individuals unhmitedly possible; —
whereas, but for its intervention, all gathering
M^ould be confined within certain limits by the
bulk of property, or by its decay, or the
difficulty of its guardianship. " I will pull
down my barns and build greater," cannot be
a daily saying; and all material investment
is enlargement of care. The national currency
transfers the guardianship of the store to
many ; and preserves to the original producer
the right of re-entering on its possession at
any future period.
73- (3-) It gives claim (practical, though
not legal) to the return of equivalent wealth
in any Kind. It is a transferable right, not
merely to this or that, but to anything; and
its power in this function is proportioned to
the range of choice. If you give a child an
apple or a toy, you give him a determinate
pleasure, but if you give him a penn}^, an
indeterminate one, proportioned to the range
of selection offered by the shops in the village.
The power of the world's currency is similarly
in proportion to the openness of the world's
fair, and, commonly, enhanced by the brilliancy
III. — COIN-KEEPING. 8 I
of external aspect, rather than solidity, of its
wares.
74. We have said that the currency consists
of orders for equivalent goods. If equivalent,
their quality must be guaranteed. The kinds
of goods chosen for specific claim must,
therefore, be capable of test, while, also, that
a store may be kept in hand to meet the
call of the currency, smallness of bulk, with
great relative value, is desirable; and inde-
structibility, over at least a certain period,
essential.
Such indestructibility, and facility of being
tested, are united in gold ; its intrinsic value
is great, and its imaginary value greater; so
that, partl}^ through indolence, partly through
necessity and want of organization, most
nations have agreed to take gold for the only
basis of their currencies ; — with this grave dis-
advantage, that its portability enabling the
metal to become an active part of the medium
of exchange, the stream of the currency itself
becomes opaque with gold — half currency and
half commodity, in unison of functions which
partly neutralize, partly enhance, each other's
force.
F
82 MUNERA PULVERIS.
75. They partly neutralize, since in so far
as the gold is commodity, it is bad currency,
because liable to sale ; and in so far as it is
currency, it is bad commodity, because its
exchange value interferes with its practical
use. Especially its employment in the higher
branches of the arts becomes unsafe on account
of its liability to be melted down for exchange.
Again. They partly enhance, since in so
far as the gold has acknowledged intrinsic
value, it is good currency, because everywhere
acceptable ; and in so far as it has legal ex-
changeable value, its worth as a commodity
is increased. We want no gold in the form
of dust or crystal; but we seek for it coined,
because in that form it will pay baker and
butcher. And this worth in exchange not
only absorbs a large quantity in that use,*
* [Read and think over, tlie following note very care-
fully.]
The waste of labour in obtaining the gold, though it
cannot be estimated by help of any existing data, may be
understood in its bearing on entire economy by supposing it
limited to transactions between two persons. If two farmers
in Australia have been exchanging corn and cattle with each
other for years, keeping their accounts of reciprocal debt in
any simple way, the sum of the possessions of either would
not be diminished, though the part of it which Avas lent or
III. COIN-KEEPING. 83
but greatly increases the effect on the imagina-
tion of the quantity used in the arts. Thus,
in brief, the force of the functions is increased,
but their precision blunted, by their unison.
']6. These inconveniences, however, attach
to gold as a basis of currency on account of
its portability and preciousness. But a far
greater inconvenience attaches to it as the only
legal basis of currency. Imagine gold to be
only attainable in masses weighing several
pounds each, and its value, like that of mala-
chite or marble, proportioned to its largeness
of bulk ; — it could not then get itself confused
with the currency in daily use, but it might
still remain as its basis ; and this second
inconvenience would still affect it, namely,
that its significance as an expression of debt
varies, as that of every other article would,
with the popular estimate of its desirableness,
borrowed were only reckoned by marks on a stone, or
notches on a tree ; and the one counted himself accordingly,
so many scratches, or so many notches, better than the
other. But it would soon be seriously diminished if, dis-
covering gold in their fields, each resolved only to accept
golden counters for a reckoning ; and accordingly, when-
ever he wanletl a sack of corn or a cow, was obliged to go
and wash sand for a week before he could get the means of
giving a receipt for them.
84 MUNERA rUIA'KRIS.
and with the quantity offered in the market.
My power of obtaining other goods for gold
depends always on the strength of public
passion for gold, and on tlic limitation of its
quantity, so that when either of two things
happens — that the world esteems gold less, or
finds it more easily — uiy right of claim is in
that degree effaced; and it has been even
gravely maintained that a discovery of a
mountain of gold would cancel the National
Debt ; in other words, that men may be paid
for what costs much in what costs nothing.
Now, it is true that there is little chance of
sudden convulsion in this respect; the world
will not so rapidly increase in wisdom as to
despise gold on a sudden ; and perhaps may
[for a little time] desire it more eagerly the
more easily it is obtained ; nevertheless, the
right of debt ought not to rest on a basis of
imagination ; nor should the frame of a national
currency vibrate with every miser's panic, and
every merchant's imprudence.
yy. There are two methods of avoiding this
insecurity, which would have been fallen upon
long ago, if, instead of calculating the con-
ditions of the supply of gold, men had only
III. COIN-KEEPING. 85
considered how the world might Hve and
manage its affairs without gold at all.* One
is, to base the currency on substances of truer
intrinsic value ; the other, to base it on several
substances instead of one. If I can only
claim gold, the discovery of a golden mountain
starves me; but if I can claim bread, the
discovery of a continent of corn-fields need
not trouble me. If, however, I wish to
exchange my bread for other things, a good
harvest will for the time limit my power in.
this respect; but if I can claim either bread,
iron, or silk at pleasure, the standard of value
has three feet instead of one, and will be pro-
portionately firm. Thus, ultimately, the steadi-
ness of currency depends upon the breadth
of its base ; but the difficult}^ of organization
increasing with tliis breadth, the discovery of
* II is difficult to estimate the curious futility of discus-
sions such as that which lately occupied a section of the
British Association, on the absorption of gold, while no one
can produce even the simplest of the data necessary for the
inquiry. To take the first occurring one, — What means have
we of ascertaining the weight of gold employed this year in
the toilettes of the women of Europe (not to speak of Asia) ;
and, supposing it known, what means of conjecturing the
weight by which, next year, their fancies, and the changes
of style among their jewellers, will diminish or increase it?
86 MUNERA PULVERIS.
the condition at once safest and most conve-
nient * can only be by long analysis, which
must for the present be deferred. Gold or
silver f may always be retained in limited
use, as a luxury of coinage and questionless
standard, of one weight and alloy among all
nations, varying only in the die. The purity
of coinage, when metallic, is closely indicative
of the honesty of the system of revenue, and
even of the general dignity of the State, j
78. Whatever the article or articles may be
which the national currency promises to pay,
a premium on that article indicates bankruptcy
of the government in that proportion, the
* See, in Pope's epislle to Lord Hathiirst, his sketch of
the difficulties and uses of a currency literally "pecuniary"
— (consisting of herds of cattle).
" His Grace will game — to White's a bull be led," etc.
+ Perhaps both ; perhaps silver only. It may be found
expedient ultimately to leave gold free for use in the arts.
As a means of reckoning, the standard might be, and in
some cases has already been, entirely ideal. — See Mill's
Polilical Eco)ioiny, book iii. chap. vil. at beginning.
X The purity of the drachma and zecchin were not without
significance of the state of intellect, art, and policy, both in
Athens and Venice ; — a fact first impressed upon me ten
years ago, when, in taking daguerreotypes at \'enice, I found
no purchascable gold pure enough to gild thciu with, except
that of the old Venetian zecchin.
in. COIN-KEEPING. 8/
division of its assets being restrained only
by the remaining confidence of the holders of
notes in the return of prosperity to the firm.
Currencies of forced acceptance, or of unlimited
issue, are merely various modes of disguising
taxation, and delaying its pressure, until it is
too late to interfere with the cause of pressure.
To do away with the possibility of such dis-
guise would have been among the first results
of a true economical science, had any such
existed ; but there have been too many motives
for the concealment, so long as it could by any
artifices be maintained, to permit hitherto even
the founding of such a science.
79. And indeed, it is only through evil
conduct, wilfully persisted in, that there is any
embarrassment, either in the theory or working
of currency. No exchequer is ever embar-
rassed, nor is any financial question difficult
of solution, when people keep their practice
honest, and their heads cool. But when
governments lose all office of pilotage, pro-
tection, or scrutiny; and live only in magni-
ficence of authorized larceny, and polished
mendicity ; or when the people, choosing
Speculation (the s usually redundant in the
88 MUNERA PULVERIS.
spelling) instead of Toil, visit no dishonesty
with chastisement, that each may with im-
punity take his dishonest turn ; — there are no
tricks of financial terminology that will save
them ; all signature and mintage do but magnify
the ruin they retard ; and even the riches that
remain, stagnant or current, change only from
the slime of Avernus to the sand of Phlegethon
— quick9^dxv^ at the embouchure ; — land fluently
recommended by recent auctioneers as " eligible
for building leases."
80. Finally, then, the power of true currency
is four-fold.
(i.) Credit power. Its worth m exchange,
dependent on public opinion of the stability
and honesty of the issuer.
(2.) Real worth. Supposing the gold, or
whatever else the currency expressly promises,
to be required from the issuer, for all his
notes; and that the call cannot be met in
full. Then the actual worth of the document
would be, and its actual worth at any moment
is, therefore to be defined as, what the division
of the assets of the issuer would produce for it.
(3.) The exchange power of its base. Grant-
ing that we can get five pounds in gold for our
Ill, — COIN-KEEPING. 89
note, it remains a question how much of other
things we can get for five pounds in gold.
The more of other things exist, and the less
gold, the greater this power.
(4.) The power over labour, exercised by
the given quantity of the base, or of the things
to be got for it. The question in this case is,
how much work, and (question of questions !)
zvhose work, is to be had for the food which
five pounds will buy. This depends on the
number of the population, on their gifts, and
on their dispositions, with which, down to their
slightest humours, and up to their strongest
impulses, the power of the currency varies.
81. Such being the main conditions of
national currency, we proceed to examine those
of the total currency, under the broad definition,
" transferable acknowledgment of debt ; " *
* Under which term, ol)serve, we include all documents
of debt which, being honest, might be transferable, though
they practically are not transferred ; while we exclude all
documents which are in reality worthless, though in fact
transferred temporarily, as bad money is. The document of
honest debt, not transferred, is merely to paper currency
as gold withdrawn from circulation is to that of bullion.
Much confusion has crept into the reasoning on this sub-
ject from the idea that the withdrawal from circulation
is a definable state, whereas it is a graduated state, and
90 MUNERA PULVERIS.
among the many forms of which there are in
effect only two, distinctly opposed ; namely,
the acknowledgments of debts which will be
paid, and of debts which will not. Documents,
whether in whole or part, of bad debt, being to
those of good debt as bad money to bullion, we
put for the present these forms of imposture
aside (as in analysing a metal we should wash
it clear of dross), and then range, in their exact
imlefinable. The sovereign in my pocket is withdrawn
from circulation as long as I choose to keep it there. It is
no otherwise withdrawn if I bury it, nor even if I choose
to make it, and others, into a gulden cup, and drink out of
them ; since a rise in the price of the wine, or of other things,
may at any time cause me to melt the cup and throw it
back into currency ; and the bullion operates on the prices
of the things in the market as directly, though not as
forcibly, while it is in the form of a cup as it does in the
form of a sovereign. No calculation can be founded on my
humour in either case. If I like to handle rouleaus, and
therefore keep a quantity of gold, to play with, in the form
of jointed basaltic columns, it is all one in its effect on the
market as if I kept it in the form of twisted filigree, or,
steadily "amicus lamncc," beat the narrow gold pieces into
broad ones, and dined off them. The probability is greater
that I bre.ik the rouleau than that I melt the plate ; but
the increased probability is not calculal)le. Thus, docu-
ments are only withdrawn from the currency when cancelled,
and bullion when it is so effectually lost as tliat the
proljaliilily of finding it is no greater than of finding new
gold in the mine.
III. — COIN-KEEPING. 9 I
quantities, the true currency of the country on
one side, and the store or property of the
country on the other. We place gold, and all
such substances, on the side of documents, as
far as they operate by signature ; — on the side
of store as far as they operate by value. Then
the currency represents the quantity of debt
in the country, and the store the quantity of its
possession. The ownership of all the property
is divided between the holders of currency and
holders of store, and whatever the claiming
value of the currency is at any moment, that
value is to be deducted from the riches of the
store-holders.
82. Farther, as true currency represents by
definition debts which will be paid, it repre-
sents either the debtor's wealth, or his ability
and willingness ; that is to say, either wealth
existing in his hands transferred to him by
the creditor, or wealth which, as he is at some
time surely to return it, he is either increasing,
or, if diminishing, has the will and strength
to reproduce. A sound currency therefore, as
by its increase it represents enlarging debt,
represents also enlarging means ; but in this
curious way, that a certain quantity of it marks
92 MUNERA PULVERIS,
the deficiency of the weakh of tlie country from
what it would have been if that currency had
not existed.* In this respect it is Hke the
detritus of a mountain; assume that it lies
at a fixed angle, and the more the detritus, the
larger must be the mountain ; but it would
have been larger still, had there been none.
83. Farther, though, as above stated, every
man possessing money has usually also some
property beyond what is necessary for his
immediate wants, and men possessing property
usually also hold currency beyond what is
necessary for their immediate exchanges, it
* For example, suppose an active peasant, having got his
ground into good order and built himself a comfortable house,
finding time still on his hands, sees one of his neighbours
little al)lc to work, and illdodged, and offers to build him
also a house, and to put his land in order, on condition of
receiving for a given period rent for the building and tithe
of the fruits. The offer is accepted, and a document given
promissory of rent and tithe. This note is money. It can
only be good money if the man who has incurred the debt so
far recovers his strength as to be able to take advantage of
the help he has received, and meet the demand of the note ;
if he lets his house fall to ruin, and his field to waste, his
promissory note will soon be valueless : but the existence of
the note at all is a consequence of his not having worked so
stoutly as the other. Let him gain as much as to be able to
pay back the entire debt ; the note is cancelled, and we have
two rich store-holders and no currency.
Ill, COIN-KEEPING. 93
mainly determines the class to which they
belong, whether in their eyes the money is an
adjunct of the property, or the property of the
mone3^ In the first case the holder's pleasure
is in his possessions, and in his money sub-
ordinatel}^, as the means of bettering or adding
to them. In the second, his pleasure is in his
money, and in his possessions only as repre-
senting it. (In the first case the money is as
an atmosphere surrounding the wealth, rising
from it and raining back upon it; but in the
second, it is as a deluge, with the wealth float-
ing, and for the most part perishing in it.*)
The shortest distinction between the men is
that the one wishes always to buy, and the
other to sell.
84. Such being the great relations of the
classes, their several characters are of the
highest importance to the nation ; for on the
character of the store-holders chiefly depend
the preservation, display, and serviceableness
of its wealth ; on that of the currency-holders,
[* You need not trouble yourself to make out the sentence
in parenthesis, unless you like, but do not think it is mere
metaphor. It states a fact which I could not have stated so
shortly, hut by metaphor.]
94 MUNERA PULVERIS.
its distribution ; on that of both, its repro-
duction.
We shall, therefore, ultimately find it to be
of incomparably greater importance to the
nation in whose hands the thing is put, than
how nuich of it is got ; and that the character
of the holders may be conjectured by tlic
quality of the store ; for such and such a man
always asks for such and such a thing; nor
only asks for it, but if it can be bettered,
betters it : so that possession and possessor
reciprocally act on each other, through the
entire sum of national possession. The base
nation, asking for base things, sinks daily to
deeper vileness of nature and weakness in
use ; while the noble nation, asking for noble
things, rises daily into diviner eminence in
both ; the tendency to degradation being surely
marked by " dra^la ; " that is to say, (ex-
panding the Greek thought,) by carelessness
as to the hands in which things are put,
consequent dispute for the acquisition of them,
disorderliness in accumulation of them, in-
accuracy in estimate of them, and bluntness
in conception as to the entire nature of pos-
session.
Ill, — COIN-KEEPING. 95
85. The currency-holders always increase
in number and influence in proportion to the
bluntness of nature and clumsiness of the
store-holders ; for the less use people can
make of things, the more they want of them,
and the sooner weary of them, and want
to change them for something else ; and all
frequency of change increases the quantity
and power of currency. The large currency-
holder himself is essentially a person who
never has been able to make up his mind as
to what he will have, and proceeds, therefore,
in vague collection and aggregation, with more
and more infuriate passion, urged by com-
placency in progress, vacancy in idea, and
pride of conquest.
While, however, there is this obscurity in
the nature of possession of currency, there is a
charm in the seclusion of it, which is to some
people very enticing. In the enjoyment of
real property, others must partly share. The
groom has some enjoyment of the stud, and
the gardener of the garden ; but the money is,
or seems, shut up ; it is wholly enviable. No
one else can have part in any complacencies
arising from it.
g6 MUNKRA PULVERIS.
The power of arithmetical comparison is
also a great thing to unimaginative people.
They know always they are so much better
than they were, in money; so much better
than others, in money; but wit cannot be so
compared, nor character. M}^ neighbour can-
not be convinced that I am wiser tlian he is,
but he can, that I am worth so much more ;
and the universality of the conviction is no
less flattering than its clearness. Only a few
can understand, — none measure — and few will
willingly adore, superiorities in other things;
but everybody can understand money, every-
body can count it, and most will worship it.
86. Now, these various temptations to
accumulation would be politically harmless
if what was vainly accumulated had any fair
chance of being wisely spent. For as accu-
mulation cannot go on for ever, but must
some day end in its reverse — if this reverse
were indeed a beneficial distribution and use,
as irrigation from reservoir, the fever of
gathering, though perilous to the gatherer,
might be serviceable to the community. But
it constantly happens (so constantly, that it
may be stated as a political law having few
III. — COIN-KEEPING. 9/
exceptions), that what is unreasonably gathered
is also unreasonably spent by the persons into
whose hands it finally falls. Very frequently
it is spent in war, or else in a stupefying luxury,
twice hurtful, both in being indulged by the
rich and witnessed by the poor. So that the
inal tcncr and mal dare are as correlative as
complementary colours; and the circulation of
wealth, which ought to be soft, steady, strong,
far-sweeping, and full of warmth, like the Gulf
stream, being narrowed into an eddy, and
concentrated on a point, changes into the
alternate suction and surrender of Charybdis.
Which is indeed, I doubt not, the true mean-
ing of that marvellous fable, " infinite," as
Bacon said of it, "in matter of meditation." *
87. It is a strange habit of wise humanity
to speak in enigmas only, so that the highest
truths and usefullest laws must be hunted
for through whole picture-galleries of dreams,
which to the vulgar seem dreams only. Thus
Homer, the Greek tragedians, Plato, Dante,
[* What follows, to the end of the chapter, was a note
only, in the first printing ; but for after service, it is of more
value than any other part of the book, so I have put it into
the main text.]
G
98 MUNERA PULVERIS.
Chaucer, Shakspeare, and Goethe, have hidden
all that is chiefly serviceable in their work,
and in all the various literature they absorbed
and re-embodied, under *t3^pes which have
rendered it quite useless to the multitude.
What is worse, the two primal declarers of
moral discovery, Homer and Plato, are partly
at issue; for Plato's logical power quenched
his imagination, and he became incapable of
understanding the purely imaginative element
either in poetry or painting : he therefore
somewhat overrates the pure discipline of
passionate art in song and music, and misses
that of meditative art. There is, however, a
deeper reason for his distrust of Homer. His
love of justice, and reverently religious nature,
made him dread, as death, every form of
fallacy ; but chiefly, fallacy respecting the
world to come (his own myths being only
symbolic exponents of a rational hope). We
shall perhaps now every day discover more
clearly how right Plato was in this, and feel
ourselves more and more wonderstruck that
men such as Homer and Dante (and, in an
inferior sphere, Milton), not to speak of the
great sculptors and painters of every age, have
III. COIN-KEEPING. 99
permitted themselves, though full of all noble-
ness and wisdom, to coin idle imaginations of
the mysteries of eternity, and guide the faiths
of the families of the earth by the courses of
their own vague and visionary arts : while the
indisputable truths of human life and duty,
respecting which they all have but one voice,
lie hidden behind these veils of phantasy,
unsought, and often unsuspected. I will
gather carefully, out of Dante and Homer,
what, in this kind, bears on our subject, in its
due place ; the first broad intention of their
symbols may be sketched at once.
88. The rewards of a worthy use of riches,
subordinate to other ends, are shown by Dante
in the fifth and sixth orbs of Paradise ; for the
punishment of their unworthy use, three places
are assigned ; one for the avaricious and
prodigal whose souls are lost {Hell, canto 7) ;
one for the avaricious and prodigal whose
souls are capable of purification (^Purgatory,
canto 19); and one for the usurers, of whom
nojte can be redeemed {Hell, canto 17). The
first group, the largest in all hell ("gente piu
che altrove troppa," compare Virgil's " quae
maxima turba"), meet in contrary currents.
lOO MUNERA PULVERIS.
as the waves of Chary bdis, casting weights at
each other from opposite sides. This weari-
ness of contention is the chief element of their
torture; so marked by tlie beautiful lines
beginning "Or puoi, figliuol," etc.: (but tlie
usurers, wlio made their money inactively, sit
on the sand, equally without rest, however.
" Di qua, di la, soccorrien," etc.) For it is not
avarice, but contetition for riches, leading to
this double misuse of them, which, in Dante's
light, is the unredeemable sin. The place of
its punishment is guarded by Plutus, " the
great enemy," and " la fiera crudele," a spirit
quite different from the Greek Plutus, who,
though old and blind, is not cruel, and is
curable, so as to become far-sighted. (ou
TV(f)\o^ dW o^v ^Xe-nwv. — Plato's epithets in
first book of the Laws.) Still more does this
Dantcsquc type differ from the resplendent
Plutus of Goethe in the second part of Faust,
who is the personified power of wealth for
good or evil — not the passion for wealth ; and
again from the Plutus of Spenser, who is the
passion of mere aggregation. Dante's Plutus
is specially and definitely the Spirit of Con-
tention and Competition, or Evil Commerce ;
III. — COIN-KEEPING. lOI
because, as I showed before, this kind of com-
merce " makes all men strangers ; " his speech
is therefore unintehigible, and no single soul
of all those ruined by him Jias recognizable
features.
On the other hand, the redeemable sins of
avarice and prodigality are, in Dante's sight,
those which are without deliberate or calcu-
lated operation. The lust, or lavishness, of
riches can be purged, so long as there has
been no servile consistency of dispute and
competition for them. The sin is spoken of as
that of degradation by the love of earth ; it
is purified by deeper humiliation — the souls
crawl on their bellies ; their chant is, " my
soul cleaveth unto the dust." But the spirits
thus condemned are all recognizable, and even
the worst examples of the thirst for gold,
which they are compelled to tell the histories
of during the night, are of men swept by the
passion of avarice into violent crime, but not
sold to its steady work.
89. The precept given to each of these
spirits for its deliverance is — Turn thine eyes
to the lucre (lure) which the Eternal King
rolls with the mighty wheels. Otherwise,
102 MUNERA PULVERIS,
the wheels of the " Greater Fortune," of which
the constellation is ascending when Dante's
dream begins. Compare George Herbert —
" Lift up thy head ;
Take stars for money ; stars, not to be told
By any art, yet to be purchased."
And Plato's notable sentence in the third book
of the Polity: — "Tell them they have divine
gold and silver in their souls for ever; that
they need no money stamped of men — neither
may they otherwise than impiously mingle
the gathering of the divine with the mortal
treasure, for througli that which the law of the
multitude has coined^ endless crimes have been
done and suffered ; but in theirs is neither
pollution nor sorrotv."
90. At the entrance of this place of punish-
ment an evil spirit is seen by Dante, quite
other than the "Gran Nemico." The great
enemy is obeyed knowingly and willingly; but
the spirit — feminine — and called a Siren — is
the '^ Deceitfulness of riches," airaTr} ttXovtov
of the Gospels, winning obedience by guile.
This is the Idol of riches, made doubly
phantasmal by Dante's seeing her in a dream.
She is lovely to look upon, and enchants by
III. COIN-KEEPING, I03
her sweet singing, but her womb is loathsome.
Now, Dante does not call her one of the Sirens
carelessly, any more than he speaks of
Charybdis carelessly; and though he had got
at the meaning of Homeric fable only through
Virgil's obscure tradition of it, the clue he has
given us is quite enough. Bacon's interpre-
tation, " the Sirens, or plcasui'es,^* which has
become universal since his time, is opposed
alike to Plato's meaning and Homer's. The
Sirens are not pleasures, but Desires : in the
Odyssey they are the phantoms of vain desire;
but in Plato's Vision of Destiny, phantoms of
divine desire; singing each a different note on
the circles of the distaff of Necessity, but
forming one harmony, to which the three great
Fates put words. Dante, however, adopted
the Homeric conception of them, which was
that they were demons of the Imagination,
not carnal ; (desire of the eyes ; not lust of
the flesh ;) therefore said to be daughters of
the Muses. Yet not of the Muses, heavenly
or historical, but of the Muse of pleasure; and
they are at first winged, because even vain
hope excites and helps when first formed ; but
afterwards, contending for the possession of
104 MUNERA PULVERIS.
the imagination with the Muses themselves,
they are deprived of their wrings.
91. And thus we are to distinguish the
Siren power from the power of Circe, who is
no daughter of tlie Muses, but of the strong
elements. Sun and Sea ; her power is that
of frank, and full vital pleasure, which, if
governed and watched, nourishes men ; but,
unwatched, and having no "moly," bitterness
or delay, mixed with it, turns men into beasts,
but does not slay them, — leaves them, on the
conti-ary, power of revival. She is herself
indeed an Enchantress ; — pure Animal life ;
transforming — or degrading — but always won-
derful (she puts the stores on board the ship
invisibly, and is gone again, like a ghost);
even the wild beasts rejoice and are softened
around her cave; the transforming poisons
she gives to men are mixed with no rich
feast, but with pure and right nourishment, —
Pramnian wine, cheese, and flour ; that is,
wine, milk, and corn, the three great sustainers
of life — it is their own fault if these make
swine of them; {see Appendix V.) and swine
are chosen merely as the type of consumption;
as Plato's vcov TroXt?, in the second book of
III. COIN-KEEPING. IO5
the Polity, and perhaps chosen by Homer with
a deeper knowledge of the likeness in variety
of nourishment, and internal form of body.
" Et quel est, s'il vous plait, cet audacieux
animal qui se permet d'etre bati au dedans
comme une jolie petite fille ?
"Helas! chere enfant, j'ai honte de le
nommer, et il ne faudra pas m'en vouloir.
C'est . . . c'est le cochon. Ce n'est pas
precisement flatteur pour vous ; mais nous en
sommes tout la, et si cela vous contrarie par
trop, il faut aller vous plaindre au bon Dieu
qui a voulu que les choses fussent arrangees
ainsi : seulement le cochon, qui ne pense qu'a
manger, a I'estomac bien plus vaste que nous
et c'est toujours une consolation." — Histoire
d'zine Bouchee de Pain, Lettre ix.)
92. But the deadly Sirens are in all things
opposed to the Circean power. They promise
pleasure, but never give it. They nourish in
no wise ; but slay by slow death. And where-
as they corrupt the heart and the head,
instead of merely betraying the senses, there
is no recovery from their power ; they do not
tear nor scratch, like Sc3^11a, but the men who
have listened to them are poisoned, and waste
I06 MUNERA PULVERIS.
away. Note that the Sirens' field is covered,
not merely with tlic bones, but with the skins,
of those who have been consumed there.
They address themselves, in the part of the
song which Homer gives, not to the passions of
Ulysses, but to his vanity, and the only man who
ever came within hearing of them, and escaped
untcmpted, was Orpheus, who silenced the vain
imaginations by singing the praises of the gods.
93. It is, then, one of these Sirens whom
Dante takes as the phantasm or deceitfulness
of riches ; but note further, that she says it
was her song that deceived Ulj'sses. Look
back to Dante's account of Ulysses' death, and
we find it was not the love of money, but
pride of knowledge, that betrayed him ; whence
we get the clue to Dante's complete meaning :
that the souls whose love of wealth is pardon-
able have been first deceived into pursuit of
it by a dream of its higher uses, or by am-
bition. His Siren is therefore the Philotime
of Spenser, daughter of Mammon —
"Whom all that folk with such contention
Do flock about, my deare, my dauj^hter is —
Honour and dignitie from her alone
Derived are."
III. COIN-KEEPING. lO/
By comparing Spenser's entire account of
this Philotime with Dante's of the Wealth-
Siren, we shall get at the full meaning of both
poets; but that of Homer lies hidden much
more deeply. For his Sirens are indefinite ;
and they are desires of any evil thing; power
of wealth is not specially indicated by him,
until, escaping the harmonious danger of ima-
gination, Ulysses has to choose between two
practical ways of life, indicated by the two
rocks of Scylla and Charybdis. The monsters
that haunt them are quite distinct from the
rocks themselves, which, having many other
subordinate significations, are in the main
Labour and Idleness, or getting and spending;
each with its attendant monster, or betraying
demon. The rock of gaining has its summit
in the clouds, invisible, and not to be climbed ;
that of spending is low, but marked by the
cursed fig-tree, which has leaves, but no fruit.
We know the type elsewhere ; and there is a
curious lateral allusion to it by Dante when
Jacopo di Sant' Andrea, who had ruined him-
self by profusion and committed suicide,
scatters the leaves of the bush of Lotto degli
Agli, endeavouring to hide himself among
I08 MUNERA PULVERIS.
them. We shall hereafter examine the t3'pe
completely; here I will only give an approxi-
mate rendering of Homer's words, which have
been obscured more by translation than even
by tradition.
94. "They are overhanging rocks. The
great waves of blue water break round them ;
and the blessed Gods call them the Wanderers.
" By one of them no winged thing can pass
— not even the wild doves that bring ambrosia
to their father Jove — but the smooth rock
seizes its sacrifice of them." (Not even
ambrosia to be had without Labour. The
word is peculiar — as a part of anything is
offered for sacrifice ; especially used of heave-
offering.) " It reaches the wide heaven wnth
its top, and a dark-blue cloud rests on it,
and never passes ; neither does the clear sky
hold it, in summer nor in harvest. Nor can
any man climb it — not if he had twenty feet
and hands, for it is as smooth as though it
were hewn.
"And in the midst of it is a cave which is
turned the way of hell. And therein dwells
Scylla, whining for prey ; her cry, indeed, is
no louder than that of a newly-born whelp :
III. COIN-KEEPING. I09
but she herself is an awful thing — nor can any
creature see her face and be glad ; no, though
it were a god that rose against her. For she
had twelve feet, all fore-feet, and six necks,
and terrible heads on them; and each has
three rows of teeth, full of black death.
" But the opposite rock is lower than this,
though but a bow-shot distant ; and upon it
there is a great fig-tree, full of leaves ; and
under it the terrible Charybdis sucks down
the black water. Thrice in the day she sucks
it down, and thrice casts it up again ; be not
thou there when she sucks down, for Neptune
himself could not save thee."
[Thus far went my rambling note, in
Eraser's Magazine. The Editor sent me a
compliment on it — of which I was very proud;
what the Publisher thought of it, I am not
informed ; only I know that eventually he
stopped the papers. I think a great deal of it
myself, now, and have put it all in large print
accordingly, and should like to write more ;
but will, on the contrary, self-deny ingly, and
in gratitude to any reader who has got
through so much, end my chapter.]
CHAPTER IV.
COMMERCE.
95. As the currency conveys right of choice
out of many things in exchange for one,
so Commerce is the agency by which the
power of choice is obtained ; so that countries
producing only timber can obtain for their
timber silk and gold ; or, naturally producing
only jewels and frankincense, can obtain for
them cattle and corn. In this function, com-
merce is of more importance to a country in
proportion to the limitations of its products,
and the restlessness of its fancy ; — generally of
greater importance towards Northern latitudes.
96. Commerce is necessary, however, not
only to exchange local products, but local
skill. Labour requiring the agency of fire can
only be given abundantly in cold countries;
labour requiring suppleness of body and sensi-
tiveness of touch, onl}'^ in warm ones; labour
IV. — COMMERCE. I I I
involving accurate vivacity of thought only in
temperate ones ; while peculiar imaginative
actions are produced by extremes of heat and
cold, and of light and darkness. The pro-
duction of great art is limited to climates warm
enough to admit of repose in the open air, and
cool enough to render such repose delightful.
Minor variations in modes of skill distinguish
every locality. The labour which at any place
is easiest, is in that place cheapest ; and it
becomes often desirable that products raised
in one country should be wrought in another.
Hence have arisen discussions on " Inter-
national values " which will be one day remem-
bered as highly curious exercises of the human
mind. For it will be discovered, in due course
of tide and time, that international value is
regulated just as inter-provincial or inter-
parishional value is. Coals and hops are
exchanged between Northumberland and Kent
on absolutely the same principles as iron
and wine between Lancashire and Spain. The
greater breadth of an arm of the sea increases
the cost, but does not modify the principle
of exchange; and a bargain written in two
languages will have no other economical results
I I 2 MUNERA PULVERIS.
than a bargain written in one. The distances
of nations are measured, not by seas, but by
ignorances; and their divisions determined,
not by dialects, but by enmities.*
97. Of course, a system of international
values may always be constructed if we assume
a relation of moral law to physical geography ;
as, for instance, that it is right to cheat or
rob across a river, though not across a road;
or across a sea, though not across a river, etc.;
— again, a system of such values may be con-
structed by assuming similar relations of taxa-
tion to physical geography; as, for instance,
that an article should be taxed in crossing a
river, but not in crossing a road ; or in being
carried fifty miles, but not in being carried
five, etc. ; such positions are indeed not easily
maintained when once put in logical form ; but
one law of international value is maintainable
[''^ I liave repeated the substance of this and llie next
paragraph so often since, that I am ashamed and weary.
The thing is too true, and too simple, it seems, for anybody
ever to believe. Meantime, the theories of "international
values," as explained by Modern Political Economy, have
brought about last year's pillage of PVancc by Germany,
and the affectionate relations now existing in consequence
between the inhabitants of the right and left banks of the
Rhine.]
IV. COMMERCE. I I 3
in any form : namely, that the farther your
neighbour Hves from you, and the less he
understands you, the more yoii are bound to be
true in your dealings with him ; because your
power over him is greater in proportion to his
ignorance, and his remedy more difficult in
proportion to his distance.*
98. I have just said the breadth of sea
increases the cost of exchange. Now note
that exchange, or commerce, in itself, is always
costly ; the sum of the value of the goods
being diminished by the cost of their convey-
ance, and by the maintenance of the persons
employed in it ; so that it is only when there
is advantage to both producers (in getting
the one thing for the other) greater than the
loss in conveyance, that the exchange is expe-
dient. And it can only be justly conducted
when the porters kept b}^ the producers
(commonly called merchants) expect mere pay,
and not profit.*!* For in just commerce there
are but three parties — the two persons or
[* I wish some one would examine and publish accurately
the late dealings of the Governors of the Cape with the
Caffirs.]
[t By "pay," I mean wages for labour or skill; by
"profit," gain dependent on the state of the market.]
H
I I 4 MUNERA PULVERIS.
societies exchanging, and the agent or agents
of exchange; the vahie of the things to be
exchanged is known by both the exchangers,
and each receives equal value, neither gaining
nor losing (for whatever one gains the other
loses). The intermediate agent is paid a
known pcr-ccntagc by both, partly for labour
in conveyance, partly for care, knowledge, and
risk ; every attempt at concealment of the
amount of the pay indicates cither effort on
the part of the agent to obtain unjust profit,
or effort on the part of the exchangers to
refuse him just pay. But for the most part
it is the first, namely the efibrt on the part
of the merchant to obtain larger profit (so-
called) by buying cheap and selling dear.
Some part, indeed, of this larger gain is
deserved, and might be openly demanded,
because it is the reward of the merchant's
knowledge, and foresight of probable neces-
sity ; but the greater part of such gain is
unjust ; and unjust in this most fatal way, that
it depends, first, on keeping the exchangers
ignorant of the exchange value of the articles ;
and, secondly, on taking advantage of the
buyer's need and the seller's poverty. It is,
IV. COMMERCE. I I 5
therefore, one of the essential, and quite the
most fatal, forms of usury ; for usury means
merely taking an exorbitant * sum for the use
of anything; and it is no matter whether the
exorbitance is on loan or exchange, on rent
or on price — the essence of the usury being
that it is obtained by advantage of opportunity
or necessity, and not as due reward for labour.
All the great thinkers, therefore, have held it
to be unnatural and impious, in so far as it
feeds on the distress of others, or their folly.-f
Nevertheless, attempts to repress it by law
must for ever be ineffective; though Plato,
Bacon, and the First Napoleon — all three of
them men who knew somewhat more of
humanity than the " British merchant " usually
does — tried their hands at it, and have left
[* Since I wrote this, I have worked out the question of
interest of money, which always, until lately, had em-
barrassed and defeated me ; and I find that the payment of
interest of any amount whatever is real "usury," and en-
tirely unjustifiable. I was shown this chiefly by the pam-
phlets issued by Mr. W. C. Sillar, though I greatly regret
the impatience which causes Mr. Sillar to regard usury as
the radical crime in ijolitical economy. There are others
worse, that act with it.]
t Hence Dante's companionship of Cahors, Inf., canto
xi., supported by the view taken of the matter throughout
the Middle Ages, in common with the Greeks.
Il6 MUNERA PULVERIS.
some (probably) good moderative forms of
law, which wc will examine in their place.
But the only final check upon it must be
radical purifying of the national character,
for being, as Bacon calls it, " conccssum
propter duritiem cordis," it is to be done away
with by touching the heart only ; not, however,
without medicinal law — as in the case of the
other permission, "propter duritiem." But
in this more than in anything (though much
in all, and though in this he would not himself
allow of their application, for his own laws
against usury are sharp enough), Plato's words
in the fourth book of the Polity are true, that
neither drugs, nor charms, nor burnings, will
touch a deep-lying political sore, any more
than a deep bodily one ; but only right and
utter change of constitution : and that " they
do but lose their labour who think that by
any tricks of law they can get the better of
these mischiefs of commerce, and see not that
they hew at a Hydra."
99. And indeed this Hydra seems so unslay-
able, and sin sticks so fast between the joinings
of the stones of buying and selling, that " to
trade" in things, or literally "cross-give"
IV, — COMMERCE. I I /
them, has warped itself, by the instinct of
nations, into their worst word for fraud; for,
because in trade there cannot but be trust,
and it seems also that there cannot but also
be injury in answer to it, what is merely fraud
between enemies becomes treachery among
friends : and " trader," " traditor," and
" traitor " are but the same word. For which
simplicity of language there is more reason
than at first appears ; for as in true commerce
there is no " profit," so in true commerce there
is no " sale." The idea of sale is that of an
interchange between enemies respectively en-
deavouring to get the better one of another ;
but commerce is an exchange between friends ;
and there is no desire but that it should be
just, any more than there would be between
members of the same family.* The moment
there is a bargain over the pottage, the family
relation is dissolved : — typically, " the days
of mourning for my father are at hand."
[* I do not wonder when I re-read this, that people talk
about my "sentiment." But there is no sentiment what-
ever in the matter. Ii is a hard and bare commercial fact,
that if two people deal together who don't try to cheat each
other, they will, in a given time, make more money out of
each other than if they do. See § 104.]
I I 8 MUNERA PULVERIS.
Whereupon follows the resolve, " then will I
slay my brother."
lOO. This inhumanity of mercenary com-
merce is the more notable because it is a
fulfilment of the law that the corruption of
the best is the worst. For as, taking the
body natural for symbol of the body politic,
the governing and forming powers may be
likened to the brain, and the labouring to the
limbs, the mercantile, presiding over circula-
tion and communication of things in changed
utilities, is symbolized by the heart ; and, if
that hardens, all is lost. And this is the
ultimate lesson wliich the leader of English
intellect meant for us, (a lesson, indeed, not
all his own, but part of the old wisdom of
humanity,) in the tale of the Merchant of
Venice; in which the true and incorrupt
merchant, — kind and free, beyond every other
Shakspearian conception of men, — is opposed
to the corrupted merchant, or usurer ; the
lesson being deepened by the expression of
the strange hatred whicli the corrupted mer-
chant bears to the pure one, mixed with
intense scorn, —
"This is the fool that lent out money
IV. COMMERCE. I I 9
gratis; look to him, jailor," (as to lunatic no
less than criminal) the enmity, observe, hav-
ing its symbolism literally carried out by being
aimed straight at the heart, and finally foiled
by a literal appeal to the great moral law that
flesh and blood cannot be weighed, enforced
by " Portia " * (" Portion "), the type of divine
Fortune, found, not in gold, nor in silver, but
* Shakspeare would certainly never have chosen this name
had he been forced to retain the Roman spelling. Like
Perdita, "lost lady," or Cordelia, "heart-lady," Portia is
"fortune" lady. The two great relative groups of words,
Fortuna, fero, and fors — Portio, porto, and pars (with the
lateral branch op-portune, im-portune, opportunity, etc.), are
of deep and intricate significance ; their various senses of
bringing, abstracting, and sustaining being all centralized by
the wheel (which bears and moves at once), or still better,
the ball (spera) of fortune, — "Volve sua spera, e beata si
gode : " the motive power of this wheel distinguishing its
goddess from the fixed majesty of Necessitas with her iron
nails ; or dvdyKTfj, with her pillar of fire and iridescent
orbits, Jixed at the centre. Portus and porta, and gate in
its connexion with gain, form another interesting branch
group ; and Mors, the concentration of delaying, is always
to be remembered with Fors, the concentration of bringing
and bearing, passing on into Fortis and Fcjrtitude.
[This note is literally a mere memorandum for the future
work which I am now completing in Fors Clavigcra ; it was
printed partly in vanity, but also with real desire to get
people to share the interest I found in the careful study of
the leading words in noble languages. Compare the next
note.]
120 MUNERA PULVERIS.
ill lead, that is to say, in endurance and
patience, not in splendour ; and finally taught
by her lips also, declaring, instead of the law
and quality of "nierces," the greater law and
quality of mercy, which is not strained, but
drops as the rain, blessing him that gives
and him that takes. And observe that this
" mercy " is not the mean " Misericordia," but
the mighty " Gratia," answered by Gratitude,
(observe Shylock's learning on the, to him
detestable, word, gratis^ and compare the
relations of Grace to Equity given in the
second chapter of the second book of the
Memorabilia ;) that is to say, it is the gracious
or loving, instead of the strained, or competing
manner, of doing things, answered, not only
with "merces" or pay, but with " merci " or
thanks. And this is indeed the meaning of
the great benediction " Grace, mercy, and
peace," for there can be no peace without
grace, (not even by help of rifled cannon,)
nor even without triplicity of graciousness, for
the Greeks, who began but with one Grace,
had to open their scheme into three before
they had done.
10 1. Willi the usual tendency of long
IV. COMMERCE. 12 1
repeated thought, to take the surface for the
deep, we have conceived these goddesses as
if they only gave loveliness to gesture ; where-
as their true function is to give graciousness
to deed, the other loveliness arising naturally
out of that. In which function Charis becomes
Charitas ; * and has a name and praise even
greater than that of Faith or Truth, for these
may be maintained sullenly and proudly;
but Charis is in her countenance alway.s
gladdening (Aglaia), and in her servace instant
and humble; and the true wife of Vulcan,
or Labour. And it is not until her sincer-
ity of function is lost, and her mere beauty
* As Charis becomes Charitas, the word " Cher," or
" Dear," passes from Shylock's sense of it (to buy cheap and
sell dear) into Antonio's sense of it : emphasized with the
final t in tender "Cheri," and hushed to English calmness
in our noble "Cherish." The reader must not think that
any care can be misspent in tracing the connexion and power
of the words which we have to use in the sequel. (See
Appendix VI.) Much education sums itself in making men
economize their words, and understand them. Nor is it
possible to estimate the harm which has been done, in matters
of higher speculation and conduct, by loose verbiage, though
we may guess at it by observing the dislike which people
show to having anything about their religion said to them
in simple words, because then they understand it. Thus
congregations meet weekly to invoke the influence of a
122 MUNKRA PULVERIS.
contemplated instead of her patience, that she
is born again of the foam flake, and becomes
Aphrodite; and it is then only that she be-
comes capable of joining herself to war and
to the enmities of men, instead of to labour
and their services. Therefore the fable of
Mars and Venus is chosen by Homer, pic-
turing himself as Demodocus, to sing at the
games in the court of Alcinous. Phaeacia is
the Homeric island of Atlantis ; an image of
noble and wise government, concealed, (how
slightly !) merely by the change of a short
vowel for a long one in the name of its queen;
yet misunderstood by all later writers, (even
by Horace, in his " pinguis, Phaeaxque ").
Spirit of Life and Truth ; yet if any part of that character
were intelligibly expressed to them by the formulas of the
service, they would be offended. Suppose, for instance, in
the closing benediction, the clergyman were to give vital
significance to the vague word " Holy," and were to say,
"the fellowship of the Helpful and Honest Ghost be with
you, and remain with you always," what would be the
horror of many, first at the irreverence of so intelligible an
expression ; and secondly, at the discomfortable occurrence of
the suspicion that while throughout the commercial dealings
of the week they had denied the propriety of Help, and
possibility of Honesty, the Person whose company they had
been now asking to be blessed with could have no fellow-
ship with cruel ]ieo])lc or knaves.
IV. COMMERCE. I 2 3
That fable expresses the perpetual error of
men in thinking that grace and dignity can
only be reached by the soldier, and never by
the artizan ; so that commerce and the useful
arts have had the honour and beauty taken
away, and only the Fraud and Pain left to
them, with the lucre. Which is, indeed, one
great reason of the continual blundering about
the offices of government with respect to com-
merce. The higher classes are ashamed to
employ themselves in it ; and though ready
enough to fight for (or occasionally against)
the people, — to preach to them, — or judge
them, will not break bread for them ; the re-
fined upper servant who has willingly looked
after the burnishing of the armoury and
ordering of the library, not liking to set foot
in the larder.
102. Farther still. As Charis becomes
Charitas on the one side, she becomes —
better still — Chara, Joy, on the other ; or
rather this is her very mother's milk and the
beauty of her childhood ; for God brings no
enduring Love, nor any other good, out of
pain ; nor out of contention ; but out of joy
and harmony. And in this sense, human and
I 24 MUNERA rULVERlS.
divine, music and gladness, and the measures
of both, come into her name ; and Cher
becomes full-vowelled Cheer, and Cheerful;
and Chara opens into Choir and Choral.*
103. And lastly. As Grace passes into
Freedom of action, Charis becomes Eleutheria,
or Libcralit}^; a form of liberty quite curiously
and intensely different from the thing usually
understood by " Liberty " in modern language :
indeed, much more like what some people
would call slavery : for a Greek always under-
stood, primarily, by liberty, deliverance from
the law of his own passions (or from what the
Christian writers call bondage of corruption),
* "to, fxlv ovv &\\a ^tDa ovk ^x^"* o.'i(TO'r)crLV tQv iv rah
KLvrjcecri rd^euv ov8i dra^iuv, oh or] pvOfios 6vofxa Koi
dpfj-ovia' Tjfuv 8^ oOj eiTrofxev tovs Oeovs (Apollo, the
Muses, and Bacchus — the grave Bacchus, that is— ruling
the choir of age ; or Bacchus restraining ; ' soeva fe/ie^
cum Berecyntio cornu, tympana,' etc.) dveTriaTTj/jLoi'i fxh iyx^ipovvTL 8i
XpwOai. ^if)iJ.i.a. tarlv, ovtu3 koL a.h{k(pbs, Srav ns avru) ytirj
[* My way now, is to say things plainly, if I can, whether
they sound harsh or not; — this is the translation — "Is il
possible, then, that as a horse is only a mischief to any one
who aUempts to use him without knowing how, so also our
brulher, if we attempt to use him without knowing how,
may be a mischief to us ? "]
CHAPTER V.
GOVERNMENT.
1 06. It remains for us, as I stated in the
close of the last chapter, to examine first the
principles of government in general, and then
those of the government of the Poor by the
Rich.
The government of a state consists in its
customs, laws, and councils, and their enforce-
ments.
I. Customs.
As one person primarily differs from another
by fineness of nature, and, secondarily, by
fineness of training, so also, a polite nation
differs from a savage one, first, by the refine-
ment of its nature, and secondly by the
delicacy of its customs.
In the completeness of custom, which is
the nation's self-government, there are three
I
I 30 MUNERA PULVERIS.
Stages — first, fineness in method of doing or of
being ; — called the manner or moral of acts ;
secondly, firmness in holding such method
after adoption, so that it shall become a habit
in the character: i.e., a constant "having" or
"behaving;" and, lastly, ethical power in
performance and endurance, which is the skill
following on habit, and the ease reached by
frequency of right doing.
The sensibility of the nation is indicated
by the fineness of its customs ; its courage,
continence, and self-respect by its persistence
in them.
By sensibility I mean its natural perception
of beauty, fitness, and rightness ; or of what is
lovely, decent, and just : faculties dependent
much on race, and the primal signs of fine
breeding in man ; but cultivable also by edu-
cation, and necessarily perishing without it.
True education has, indeed, no other function
than the development of these faculties, and of
the relative will. It has been the great error
of modern intelligence to mistake science for
education. You do not educate a man by
telling him what he knew not, but by making
him what he was not.
V, — GOVERNMENT, I 3 I
And making him what he will remain
for ever : for no wash of weeds will bring
back the faded purple. And in that dyeing
there are two processes — first, the cleansing
and wringing-out, which is the baptism with
water ; and then the infusing of the blue and
scarlet colours, gentleness and justice, which
is the baptism with fire.
107.* The customs and manners of a sensi-
tive and highly-trained race are always Vital :
that is to say, they are orderly manifestations
of intense life, like the habitual action of
the fingers of a musician. The customs and
manners of a vile and rude race, on the con-
trary, are conditions of decay : they are not,
properly speaking, habits, but incrustations;
not restraints, or forms, of life ; but gangrenes,
noisome, and the beginnings of death.
And generally, so far as custom attaches
itself to indolence instead of action, and to
prejudice instead of perception, it takes this
deadly character, so that thus
Custom hangs upon us with a weight
Heavy as frost, and deep ahnost as Hfe.
[* Think over this paragraph carefully ; it should have
132 MUNERA PULVERIS.
But that weight, if it becomes impetus,
(h'ving instead of dead weight) is just what
gives value to custom, when it works ivith life,
instead of against it.
108. The high ethical training of a nation
implies perfect Grace, Pitifulness, and Peace;
it is irreconcilably inconsistent with filthy or
mechanical employments, — with the desire of
money, — and with mental states of anxiety,
jealousy, or indifference to pain. The present
insensibility of the upper classes of Europe to
the surrounding aspects of suffering, unclean-
ness, and crime, binds them not only into one
responsibility with the sin, but into one dis-
honour with the foulness, which rot at their
thresholds. The crimes daily recorded in the
police-courts of London and Paris (and much
more those which are «;^recorded) are a dis-
grace to the whole body politic ; * they are,
been much expanded to be quite intelligible ; but it contains
all that I want it to contain.]
* " The ordinary brute, who flourishes in the very centre
of ornate life, tells us of unknown depths on the verge of
which we totter, being bound to thank our stars every day
we live that there is rot a general outbreak, and a revolt
from the yoke of civilization." — Times leader, Dec. 25, 1862.
Admitting that our stars are to be thanked for our safety,
whom are we to thank for the danger ?
V. — GOVERNMENT. I 33
as in the body natural, stains of disease on
a face of delicate skin, making the delicacy
itself frightful. Similarly, the filth and poverty
permitted or ignored in the midst of us are as
dishonourable to the whole social body, as in
the body natural it is to wash the face, but
leave the hands and feet foul. Christ's way is
the only true one : begin at the feet ; the face
will take care of itself.
109. Yet, since necessarily, in the frame
of a nation, nothing but the head can be of
gold, and the feet, for the work they have to
do, must be part of iron, part of clay; — foul
or mechanical work is always reduced by a
noble race to the minimum in quantity; and,
even then, performed and endured, not with-
out sense of degradation, as a fine temper is
wounded by the sight of the lower offices of
the body. The highest conditions of human
society reached hitherto have cast such work
to slaves; but supposing slavery of a politically
defined kind to be done away with, mechani-
cal and foul employment must, in all highly
organised states, take the aspect either of
punishment or probation. All criminals should
at once be set to the most dangerous and
134 MUNERA PULVERIS.
painful forms of it, especially to work in
mines and at furnaces,* so as to relieve the
innocent population as far as possible : of
merely rough (not mechanical) manual labour,
especially agricultural, a large portion should
be done by the upper classes ; — bodily Jiealth,
and sufficient contrast and repose for the mental
functions, being unattainable without it; what
necessarily inferior labour remains to be done,
* Our politicians, even the best of them, regard only the
distress caused by the faihire of mechanical labour. The
degradation caused by its excess is a far more serious subject
of thought, and of future fear. I shall examine this part
of our subject at length hereafter. There can hardly be any
doubt, at present, cast on the truth of the above passages,
as all the great thinkers are unanimous on the matter.
Plato's words are terrific in their scorn and pity whenever he
touches on the mechanical arts. He calls the men employed
in them not even human, but partially and diminutively
human, " avOpuiricrKoi," and opposes such work to noble
occupations, not merely as prison is opposed to freedom,
but as a convict's dishonoured prison is to the temple (escape
from them being like that of a criminal to the sanctuary) ;
and the destruction caused by them being of soul no less
than body. — /vV/. vi. 9. Compare Laws, v. 1 1. Xenophon
dwells on the evil of occupations at the furnace, and especially
their "dcrxoXt'a, want of leisure." — £con. i. 4. (Modern
England, with all its pride of education, has lost that first
sense of the word "school ; " and till it recover that, it will
find no other rightly.) His word for the harm to the soul
is to "break" it, as we say of the heart. — Ecoii. i. 6. And
herein, also, is the root of the scorn, otherwise apparently
V. — GOVERNMENT. I 3 5
as especially in manufactures, should, and
always will, when the relations of society
are reverent and harmonious, fall to the lot
of those who, for the time, are fit for nothing
better. For as, whatever the perfectness of
the educational system, there must remain
infinite differences between the natures and
capacities of men ; and these differing natures
are generally rangeable under the two qualities
most strange and cruel, with which Homer, Dante, and
Shakspeare always speak of the populace ; for it is entirely
true that, in great states, the lower orders are low by nature
as well as by task, being precisely that part of the common-
wealth which has been thrust down for its coarseness or
unworthiness (by coarseness I mean especially insensibility
and irreverence — the "profane" of Horace); and when
this ceases to be so, and the corruption and profanity are in
the higher instead of the lower orders, there arises, first
helpless confusion ; then, if the lower classes deserve power,
ensues swift revolution, and they get it ; but if neither the
populace nor their rulers deserve it, there follows mere
darkness and dissolution, till, out of the putrid elements,
some new capacity of order rises, like grass on a grave ; if
not, there is no more hope, nor shadow of turning, for that
nation. Atropos has her way with it.
So that the law of national health is like that of a great
lake or sea, in perfect but slow circulation, letting the dregs
fall continually to the lowest place, and the clear water rise ;
yet so as that there shall be no neglect of the lower orders,
but perfect supervision and sympathy, so that if one member
suffer, all members shall suffer with it.
136 MUNERA PULVERIS.
of lordl}', (or tending towards rule, construc-
tion, and harmony), and servile (or tending
towards misrule, destruction, and discord) ;
and, since the lordly part is only in a state
of profitableness while ruling, and the servile
only in a state of redeemableness while serv-
ing, the whole health of the state depends
on the manifest separation of these two ele-
ments of its mind ; for, if the servile part be
not separated and rendered visible in service,
it mixes with, and corrupts, the entire body
of the state ; and if the lordly part be not
distinguished, and set to rule, it is crushed
and lost, being turned to no account, so that
the rarest qualities of the nation are all given
to it in vain. *
II. Laws.
1 10. These are the definitions and bonds of
custom, or of what the nation desires should
become custom.
Law is either archic,-f- (of direction), meristic,
(of division), or critic, (of judgment).
* '' 6\iy7]s, Kal &\\us yiyvofiiuTis." (Lillle, and that little
born in vain. ) The bitter sentence never was so true as at
this clay.
t [This following note is a mere cluster of memoranda,
V. GOVERNMENT. I 37
Archie law is that of appointment and pre-
cept : it defines what is and is not to be done.
Meristic law is that of balance and dis-
tribution : it defines what is and is not to be
possessed.
Critic law is that of discernment and award :
it defines what is and is not to be suffered.
III. A. Archic Law. If we choose to
unite the laws of precept and distribution
under the head of " statutes," all law is simply
either of statute or judgment; that is, first the
establishment of ordinance, and, secondly, the
but I keep it for reference.] Thetic, or Thesmic, would
perhaps be a better term than archic ; but liable to be
confused with some which we shall want relating to
Theoria. The administrators of the three great divisions
of law are severally Archons, Merists, and Dicasts. The
Archons are the true princes, or beginners of things ; or
leaders (as of an orchestra). The Merists are properly the
Domini, or Lords of houses and nations. The Dicasts,
properly, the judges, and that with Olympian justice, which
reaches to heaven and hell. The violation of archic law is
a/iapTia (error), Trov-qpia (failure), or irXijiJ.fji.eXeia (discord).
The violation of meristic law is dvon'ia (iniquity). The
violation of critic law is adida (injury). Iniquity is the
central generic term ; for all law \% fatal ; it is the division
to men of their fate ; as the fold of their pasture, it is vbp.o% ;
as the assigning of their portion, ixoipa.
138 MUNERA rULVERIS.
assignment of the reward, or penalty, due to
its observance or violation.
To some extent these two forms of law
must be associated, and, with every ordinance,
the penalty of disobedience to it be also deter-
mined. But since the degrees and guilt of
disobedience vary, the determination of due
reward and punishment must be modified by
discernment of special fact, which is peculiarly
the office of the judge, as distinguished from
that of the lawgiver and law-sustainer, or king;
not but that the two offices are always theore-
tically, and in early stages, or limited numbers,
of society, arc often practically, united in the
same person or persons.
112. Also, it is necessary to keep clearly
in view the distinction between these two
kinds of law, because the possible range of
law is wider in proportion to their separation.
There are many points of conduct respecting
which the nation may wisely express its will
by a written precept or resolve, yet not enforce
it by penalty:* and the expedient degree of
[* This is the only sentence which, in revising these
essays, I am now inclined to question ; but the point is one
of extreme difficulty. There micht be a law, for instance, of
V. — GOVERNMENT. I 39
penalty is always quite a separate considera-
tion from the expedience of the statute ; for
the statute may often be better enforced by
mercy than severity, and is also easier in
the bearing, and less likely to be abrogated.
Farther, laws of precept have reference espe-
cially to youth, and concern themselves with
training; but laws of judgment to manhood,
and concern themselves with remedy and
reward. There is a highly curious feeling in
the English mind against educational law :
we think no man's libert}^ should be interfered
with till he has done irrevocable wrong;
whereas it is then just too late for the only
gracious and kingly interference, which is to
hinder him from doing it. Make your educa-
tional laws strict, and your criminal ones may
be gentle; but, leave 3^outh its liberty, and
you will have to dig dungeons for age. And
it is good for a man that he "wear the yoke
in his youth:" for the reins may then be of
silken thread ; and with sweet chime of silver
curfew, that candles should be put out, unless for necessary
service, at such and such an hour, the idea of "necessary
service" being quite indefinable, and no penalty possible;
yet there would be a distinct consciousness of illegal conduct
in young ladies' minds who danced by candlelight till dawn.]
140 MUNERA PULVERIS.
bells at the bridle ; but, for the captivity of
age, you must forge the iron fetter, and cast
the passing bell.
113. Since no law can be, in a final or
true sense, established, but by right, (all un-
just laws involving the ultimate necessity of
their own abrogation), the law-giving can only
become a law-sustaining power in so far as
it is Royal, or " right doing ; " — in so far, that
is, as it rules, not mis-rules, and orders, not
dis-orders, the things submitted to it. Throned
on this rock of justice, the kingly power be-
comes established and establishing ; " 6elo^,"
or divine, and, therefore, it is literally true
that no ruler can err, so long as he is a ruler,
or dp^cov ovSeh d/j.apTdvet rore orav dp-)(0iv ?) ;
perverted by careless thought, which has cost
the world somewhat, into — " the king can do
no wrong."
1 14. B. Meristic Law,* or that of the
tenure of property, first determines what every
individual possesses by right, and secures it
to him ; and what he possesses by wrong,
[* Read this and the next paragraph with attention ; they
contain clear statements, which I cannot mend, of things
most necessary.]
V. GOVERNMENT. I4I
and deprives him of it. But it has a far
higher provisory function : it determines what
every man should possess, and puts it within
his reach on due conditions ; and what he
should not possess, and puts this out of his
reach, conclusively.
115. Every article of human wealth has
certain conditions attached to its merited
possession; when these are unobserved, pos-
session becomes rapine. And the object of
meristic law is not only to secure to every man
his rightful share (the share, that is, which he
has worked for, produced, or received by gift
from a rightful owner), but to enforce the
due conditions of possession, as far as law
may conveniently reach ; for instance, that
land shall not be wantonly allowed to run to
waste, that streams shall not be poisoned by
the persons through whose properties they
pass, nor air be rendered unwholesome be-
yond given limits. Laws of this kind exist
already in rudimentary degree, but need large
development : the just laws respecting the
possession of works of art have not hitherto
been so much as conceived, and the daily loss
of national wealth, and of its use, in this
142 MUNERA PULVERIS.
respect, is quite incalculable. And these laws
need revision quite as much respecting pro-
perty in national as in private hands. For
instance : the public are under a vague im-
pression that, because they have paid for the
contents of the British Museum, every one
has an equal right to see and to handle them.
But the public have similarly paid for the
contents of Woolwich arsenal ; yet do not
expect free access to it, or handling of its
contents. The British Museum is neither a
free circulating library, nor a free school : it
is a place for the safe preservation, and ex-
hibition on due occasion, of unique books,
unique objects of natural history, and unique
works of art; its books can no more be used
by everybody than its coins can be handled,
or its statues cast. There ought to be free
libraries in every quarter of London, with
large and complete reading-rooms attached ;
so also free educational museums should be
open in every quarter of London, all day
long, and till late at night, well liglited, well
catalogued, and rich in contents both of art
and natural history. But neither the British
Museum nor National Gallery is a school;
V. — GOVERNMENT. I 43
they are treasuries ; and both should be
severely restricted in access and in use.
Unless some order of this kind is made, and
that soon, for the MSS. department of the
Museum, (its superintendents have sorrowfully
told me this, and repeatedly,) the best MSS.
in the collection will be destroyed, irretrievably,
by the careless and continual handling to
which they are now subjected.
Finally, in certain conditions of a nation's
progress, laws limiting accumulation of any
kind of property may be found expedient.
Ii6. C. Critic Law determines questions of
injury, and assigns due rewards and punish-
ments to conduct.
Two curious economical questions arise
laterally with respect to this branch of law,
namely, the cost of crime, and the cost of
judgment. The cost of crime is endured by
nations ignorantly, that expense being nowhere
stated in their budgets ; the cost of judgment,
patiently, (provided only it can be had pure for
the money,) because the science, or perhaps
we ought rather to say the art, of law, is felt
to found a noble profession and discipline ; so
144 MUNERA PULVERIS.
that civilized nations are usually glad that a
number of persons should be supported by
exercise in oratory and analysis. But it has
not yet been calculated what the practical value
might have been, in other directions, of the
intelligence now occupied in deciding, through
courses of years, what might have been de-
cided as justly, had the date of judgment
been fixed, in as many hours. Imagine one
half of the funds which any great nation
devotes to dispute by law, applied to the deter-
mination of physical questions in medicine,
agriculture, and theoretic science ; and calcu-
late the probable results within the next ten
years !
I say nothing yet of the more deadly, more
lamentable loss, involved in the use of pur-
chased, instead of personal, justice — " eiraKTOi
irap aWcov — airopia otKeicov."
117. In order to true analysis of critic law,
we must understand the real meaning of the
word "injury."
We commonly understand by it, any kind of
harm done by one man to another; but we
do not define the idea of harm : sometimes
we limit it to the harm which the sufferer is
V. GOVERNMENT. I45
conscious of; whereas much the worst injuries
are those he is /^wconscious of; and, at other
times, we limit the idea to violence, or re-
straint; whereas much the worse forms of
injury are to be accomplished by indolence,
and the withdrawal of restraint.
118. " Injury" is then simply the refusal, or
violation of, any man's right or claim upon his
fellows : which claim, much talked of in modern
times, under the term "right," is mainly re-
solvable into two branches : a man's claim not
to be hindered from doing what he should ;
and his claim to be hindered from doing what
he should not ; these two forms of hindrance
being intensified by reward, help, and fortune,
or Fors, on one side, and by punishment, im-
pediment, and even final arrest, or Mors, on
the other.
119. Now, in order to a man's obtaining
these two rights, it is clearly needful that the
worth of him should be approximately known ;
as well as the ivajit of worth, which has, un-
happily, been usually the principal subject of
study for critic law, careful hitherto only to
mark degrees of de-merit, instead of merit ; —
assigning, indeed, to the Z^^ficiencies (not
K
I 46 MUNERA PULVERIS.
always, alas ! even to these) just estimate, fine,
or penalt}^; but to the if/ficiencies, on the
other side, which are by much the more in-
teresting, as well as the only profitable part of
its subject, assigning neither estimate nor aid.
120. Now, it is in this higher and perfect
function of critic law, ^;/abling instead of dis-
abling, that it becomes truly Kingly, instead of
Draconic : (what Providence gave the great,
wrathful legislator his name ?) : that is, it be-
comes the law of man and of life, instead of
the law of the worm and of death — both of
these laws being set in changeless poise one
against another, and the enforcement of both
being the eternal function of the lawgiver, and
true claim of every living soul : such claim
being indeed strong to be mercifully hindered,
and even, if need be, abolished, when longer
existence means only deeper destruction, but
stronger still to be mercifully helped, and
recreated, when longer existence and new
creation mean nobler life. So that reward
and punishment will be found to resolve them-
selves mainly* into liclp and hindrance; and
[* Mainly ; not altogether. Conclusive reward of high
virtue is loving and crowning, not helping ; and conclusive
V. GOVERNMENT. I 4/
these again will issue naturally from true recog-
nition of deserving, and the just reverence and
just wrath which follow instinctively on such
recognition.
121. I say, "follow," but, in reality, the}' are
part of the recognition. Reverence is as in-
stinctive as anger; — both of them instant on
true vision : it is sight and understanding that
we have to teach, and these arc reverence.
Make a man perceive worth, and in its reflection
he sees his own relative unworth, and worships
thereupon inevitably, not with stiff courtesy,
but rejoicingly, passionately, and, best of all,
restfidly : for the inner capacity of awe and
love is infinite in man ; and only in finding
these, can we find peace. And the common
insolences and petulances of the people, and
their talk of equality, are not irreverence in
them in the least, but mere blindness, stupe-
faction, and fog in the brains,* the first sign of
punishment of deep vice is hating and crushing, not merely
hindering.]
* Compare Chaucer's " villany " (clownishness).
Full foul and chorlishe seemed she,
And eke villanous for to be,
And little coulde of norture
To worship any creature.
148 MUNERA PULVERIS.
any cleansing away of which is, tliat they
gain some power of discerning, and some
patience in submitting to, their true counsellors
and governors. In the mode of such discern-
ment consists the real " constitution " of the
state, more than in the titles or offices of the
discerned person ; for it is no matter, save in
degree of mischief, to what office a man is
appointed, if he cannot fulfil it,
122. III. Government rsv Council.
This is the determination, by living autho-
rity, of the national conduct to be observed
under existing circumstances; and the modi-
fication or enlargement, abrogation or enforce-
ment, of the code of national law according to
present needs or purposes. This government
is necessarily always by council, for though
the authority of it may be vested in one
person, that person cannot form any opinion
on a matter of public interest but by (volun-
tarily or involuntarily) submitting himself to
the influence of other.?.
This government is always twofold — visible
and invisible.
The visible government is that which
V. GOVERNMENT. I 49
nominally carries on the national business ;
determines its foreign relations, raises taxes,
levies soldiers, orders war or peace, and
otherwise becomes the arbiter of the national
fortune. The invisible government is that
exercised by all energetic and intelligent men,
each in his sphere, regulating the inner will
and secret ways of the people, essentially
forming its character, and preparing its fate.
Visible governments are the toys of some
nations, the diseases of others, the harness' of
some, the burdens of more, the necessity of
all. Sometimes their career is quite distinct
from that of the people, and to write it,
as the national history, is as if one should
number the accidents which befall a man's
weapons and wardrobe, and call the list his
biography. Nevertheless, a truly noble and
wise nation necessarily has a noble and wise
visible government, for its wisdom issues in
that conclusively.
123. Visible governments are, in their
agencies, capable of three pure forms, and of
no more than three.
They are either monarchies, where the
authority is vested in one person ; oligarchies.
150 MUNERA PULVERIS.
when it is vested in a minority ; or demo-
cracies, when vested in a majority.
But these three forms arc not only, in
practice, variously limited and combined, but
capable of infinite difference in character and
use, receiving specific names according to their
variations ; which names, being nowise agreed
upon, nor consistently used, either in thought
or writing, no man can at present tell, in
speaking of any kind of government, whether
he is understood ; nor, in hearing, whether
he understands. Thus we usually call a just
government by one person a monarchy, and
an unjust and cruel one, a tyranny: this might
be reasonable if it had reference to the divinity
of true government ; but to limit the term
" oligarchy " to government by a few rich
people, and to call government by a few wise
or noble people " aristocracy," evidently is
absurd, unless it were proved that rich people
never could be wise, or noble people ricli ;
and farther absurd, because there are other
distinctions in character, as well as riches or
wisdom (greater purity of race, or strength of
purpose, for instance), which may give the
power of government to the few. So that if
V. GOVERNMENT. I 5 I
we had to give names to every group or kind
of minority, we should have verbiage enough.
But there is only one right name — " oligarchy."
124. So also the terms "republic" and
" democracy " * are confused, especially in
modern use ; and both of them are liable to
every sort of misconception. A republic means,
properly, a polity in which the state, with its
all, is at every man's service, and every man,
with his all, at the state's service — (people are
apt to lose sight of the last condition,) but its
government may nevertheless be oligarchic
(consular, or decemviral, for instance), or
monarchic (dictatorial). But a democracy
means a state in which the government rests
directly with the majority of the citizens.
And both these conditions have been judged
only by such accidents and aspects of them as
each of us has had experience of; and some-
times both have been confused with anarchy,
as it is the fashion at present to talk of the
"failure of republican institutions in America,"
[* I leave this paragraph, in every syllable, as it was
written, during the rage of the American war ; it was meant
to refer, however, chiefly to the Northerns : what modifi-
cations its hot and partial terms require I will give in
another place : let it stand here as it stood.]
152 MUNERA PULVERIS.
when there has never yet been in America any
such thing as an institution, but only defiance
of institution ; neither any such thing as a
rcs-publica^ but only a multitudinous res-
privata ; every man for himself. It is not
republicanism which fails now in America;
it is your model science of political economy,
brought to its perfect practice. There you
may see competition, and the "law of demand
and supply" (especially in paper), in beautiful
and unhindered operation. '''' Lust of wealth,
and trust in it ; vulgar faith in magnitude
and multitude, instead of nobleness ; besides
that faith natural to backwoods-men — "lucum
ligna,"-f" — perpetual self-contemplation issu-
ing in passionate vanity; total ignorance of
the finer and higher arts, and of all that they
teach and bestow ; and the discontent of ener-
getic minds unoccupied, frantic with hope of
* Supply and demand ! Alas ! for what noble work was
there ever any audible "demand" in that poor sense (Past
and Present)? Nay, the demand is not loud, even for
ignoble work. See "Average Earnings of Betty Taylor,"
in Jivtes of 4th February of this year [1863]: "Worked
from Monday morning at 8 A.M. to Friday night at 5.30 P.M.
for i^ 5i<''-" — Laisscz faire. [This kind of slavery finds no
Abolitionists that I hear of]
[t " That the sacred grove is nothing but logs."]
V. GOVERNMENT. I 5 3
uncomprehended change, and progress the^;
know not whither ; * — these are the things that
have " failed " in America ; and yet not alto-
gether failed — it is not collapse, but collision ;
the greatest railroad accident on record, with fire
caught from the furnace, and Catiline's quench-
ing "non aqua, sed ruina."f But I see not,
in any of our talk of them, justice enough done
to their erratic strength of purpose, nor any
estimate taken of the strength of endurance of
domestic sorrow, in what their women and
children suppose a righteous cause. And out
* Ames, by report of Waldo Emerson, says "that a
monarchy is a merchantman, which sails well, but will
sometimes strike on a rock, and go to the bottom ; whilst
a republic is a raft, which would never sink, but then your
feet are always in the water." Yes, that is comfortable ;
and though your raft cannot sink (being too worthless for
that), it may go tJ j^ieces, I suppose, when the four winds
(your only pilots) steer competitively from its four corners,
and carry it, los diroipivbs Bopei]s (popeijcTLv aKavda?, and then
more than your feet will be in the water.
[t "Not with water, but with ruin." The worst ruin
being that which the Americans chiefly boast of. They
sent all their best and honestest youths. Harvard University
men and the like, to that accursed war ; got them nearly all
shot; wrote pretty biographies (to the ages of 17, 18, 19)
and epitaphs for them ; and so, having washed all the salt
out of the nation in blood, left themselves to putrefaction,
and the morality of New YorJc]
154 MUNERA PULVERIS.
of that endurance and suffering, its own fruit
will be born with time ; [?iot abolition of
slavery, however. See § 130] and Carlyle's
prophecy of them (June, 1850), as it has now
come true in the first clause, will, in the last : —
"America, too, will find that caucuses,
division-lists, stump-oratory, and speeches to
Buncombe will not carry men to the immortal
gods ; that the Washington Congress, and con-
stitutional battle of Kilkenny cats is there, as
here, naught for such objects ; quite incom-
petent for such ; and, in fine, that said sublime
constitutional arrangement will require to be
(with terrible throes, and travail such as few
expect yet) remodelled, abridged, extended,
suppressed, torn asunder, put together again;
— not without heroic labour and effort, quite
other than that of the stump-orator and the
revival preacher, one day."
125.* Understand, then, once for all, that no
form of government, provided it be a govern-
ment at all, is, as such, to be either condemned
or praised, or contested for in anywise, but by
fools. But all forms of government are good
just so far as they attain this one vital
[* This paragraph contains the gist of all that precede.]
V. GOVERNMENT. I 5 5
necessity of policy — that the wise and kind,
few or many, shall govern the imwise and un-
kind ; and they are evil so far as they miss of
this, or reverse it. Nor does the form, in any
case, signify one whit, but its firmness, and
adaptation to the need ; for if there be many
foolish persons in a state, and few wise, then
it is good tliat the few govern ; and if there be
many wise, and few foolish, then it is good
that the many govern ; and if many be wise,
yet one wiser, then it is good that one should
govern ; and so on. Thus, we may have " the
ant's republic, and the realm of bees," both
good in their kind ; one for groping, and the
other for building ; and nobler still, for flying ,
— the Ducal monarchy* of those
Intelligent of seasons, that set forth
The aery caravan, high ovei .aas.
126. Nor need we want examples, among
the inferior creatures, of dissoluteness, as well
[* Whenever you are puzzled by any apparently mistaken
use of words in these essays, take your dictionary, re-
membering I had to fix terms, as well as principles. A
Duke is a " dux" or " leader ; " the flying wedge of cranes
is under a "ducal monarch" — a very different personage
from a queen-bee. The Venetians, with a beautiful instinct,
gave the name to their King of the Sea.]
156 MUNERA PULVKRIS.
as resoluteness, in government. I once saw
democracy finely illustrated by the beetles of
North Switzerland, who by universal suffrage,
and elytric acclamation, one May twilight,
carried it, that they would fly over the Lake of
Zug ; and flew short, to the great disfigurement
of the Lake of Zug, — KavOdpov Xtfii'jv — over
some leagues square, and to the close of the
cockchafer democracy for that year. Then,
for tyranny, the old fable of the frogs and the
stork finely touches one form of it; but truth
will image it more closely than fable, for
tyranny is not complete when it is only over
the idle, but when it is over the laborious and
the blind. This description of pelicans and
climbing perch, which I find quoted in one
of our popular natural histories, out of Sir
Emerson Tennant's Ceylon, comes as near as
may be to the true image of the thing : —
" Heavy rains came on, and as we stood on
the high ground, we observed a pelican on the
margin of the shallow pool gorging himself;
our people went towards him, and raised a cry
of ' Fish, fish ! ' Wc hurried down, and found
numbers of fish struggling upward through the
grass, in the rills formed by the trickling of the
V, GOVERNMENT. I 5/
rain. There was scarcely water to cover them,
but nevertheless they made rapid progress up
the bank, on which our followers collected
about two baskets of them. They were
forcing their way up the knoll, and had they
not been interrupted, first by the pelican, and
afterwards by ourselves, they would in a few
minutes have gained the highest point, and
descended on the other side into a pool which
formed another portion of the tank. In going
this distance, however, they must have used
muscular exertion enough to have taken them
half a mile on level ground ; for at these places
all the cattle and wild animals of the neighbour-
hood had latterly come to drink, so that the
surface was everywhere indented with foot-
marks, in addition to the cracks in the sur-
rounding baked mud, into which the fish
tumbled in their progress. In those holes,
which were deep, and the sides perpendicular,
they remained to die, and were carried off by
kites and crows." *
[* This is a perfect picture of the French under the
tyrannies of their Pelican Kings, before the Revohition. But
they must find other than Pelican Kings — or rather, Pelican
Kings of the Divine brood, that feed their children, and with
their best blood.]
158 MUNERA PULVERIS.
127. But whether governments be bad or
good, one general disadvantage seems to attach
to thcni in modern times — that they are all
costly* This, liowever, is not essentially the
fault of the governments. If nations choose
to play at war, they will always find their
governments willing to lead tlic game, and
soon coming under that term of Aristophanes,
"KairrXoi aaiTLhwv^" "shield-sellers." And
when (tt?)/*' eVt Tn^jxcni-f) the shields take the
form of iron ships, with apparatus " for
defence against liquid fire," — as I see by latest
accounts they are now arranging the decks in
English dockyards — they become costly biers
enough for the grey convoy of chief-mourner
waves, wreathed with funereal foam, to bear
back the dead upon ; tlie massy shoulders of
those corpse-bearers being intended for quite
other work, and to bear the living, and food
for tlie living, if we would let them.
1 28. Nor have we the least right to complain
[* Read carefully, from this point ; because here begins
the statement of things requiring to be done, which I am
now re-trying to make definite in Fors Clavigcra.'\
[t "Evil on the top of Evil." Delphic oracle, meaning
iron on the anvil.]
V. GOVERNMENT. I 59
of our governments being expensive, so long
as we set the government to do precisely the
zvork which brings no return. If our present
doctrines of political economy be just, let us
trust them to the utmost ; take that war
business out of the government's hands, and
test therein the principles of supply and
demand. Let our future sieges of Sebastopol
be done by contract — no capture, no pay — (I
admit that things might sometimes go better
so) ; and let us sell the commands of our pro-
spective battles, with our vicarages, to the
lowest bidder ; so may we have cheap victories,
and divinity. On the other hand, if we have
so much suspicion of our science that we dare
not trust it on military or spiritual business,
would it not be but reasonable to try whether
some authoritative handling may not prosper
in matters utilitarian ? If we were to set our
governments to do useful things instead of
mischievous, possibly even the apparatus itself
might in time come to be less costly. The
machine, applied to the building of the house,
might perhaps pay, when it seems not to pay,
applied to pulling it down. If we made in
our dockyards ships to carry timber and coals.
I 60 MUNERA PULVERIS.
instead of cannon, and with provision for the
brightening of domestic soHd culinary fire,
instead of for the scattering of liquid hostile
fire, it miglit have some effect on the taxes.
Or suppose that we tried the experiment on
land instead of water carriage; already the
government, not unapproved, carries letters
and parcels for us ; larger packages may in
time follow; — even general merchandise — why
not, at last, ourselves ? Had the money spent
in local mistakes and vain private litigation, on
the railroads of England, been laid out, instead,
under proper government restraint, on really
useful railroad work, and had no absurd ex-
pense been incurred in ornamenting stations, we
might already have had, — what ultimately it
will be found we must have, — quadruple rails,
two for passengers, and two for traffic, on
every great line ; and we might have been
carried in swift safety, and watched and
warded by well-paid pointsmen, for half the
present fares. [For, of course, a railroad
company is merely an association of turnpike-
keepers, who make the tolls as higii as they
can, not to mend the roads witli, but to pocket.
The public will in time discover this, and do
V. — GOVERNMENT. l6l
away with turnpikes on railroads, as on all
other public-ways.]
129. Suppose it should thus turn out, finally,
that a true government set to true work, in-
stead of being a costly engine, was a paying-
one ? that your government, rightly organized,
instead of itself subsisting by an income-tax,
would produce its subjects some subsistence
in the shape of an income dividend ? — police,
and judges duly paid besides, only with less
work than the state at present provides for
them.
A true government set to true work ! — Not
easily to be imagined, still less obtained ; but
not beyond human hope or ingenuity. Only
you will have to alter your election systems
somewhat, first. Not by universal suffrage,
nor by votes purchaseable with beer, is such
government to be had. That is to say, not by
universal equal suffrage. Every man upwards
of twenty, who had been convicted of no legal
crime, should have his say in this matter ; but
afterwards a louder voice, as he grows older,
and approves himself wiser. If he has one
vote at twenty, he should have two at thirty,
four at forty, ten at fifty. For every single
L
1 62 MUNERA PULVERIS.
vote which he has with an income of a
hundred a 3'ear, he should have ten with an
income of a thousand, (provided you first see
to it that wealth is, as nature intended it to be,
the reward of sagacity and industry — not of
good luck in a scramble or a lottery). For
every single vote which he had as subordinate
in any business, he should have two when he
became a master ; and every office and autho-
rity nationally bestowed, implying trustworthi-
ness and intellect, should have its known
proportional number of votes attached to it.
But into the detail and working of a true
system in these matters we cannot now enter ;
we are concerned as yet with definitions onl}',
and statements of first principles, which will
be established now sufficiently for our pur-
poses when we have examined the nature
of that form of government last on the list
in § 105, — the purely "Magistral," exciting at
present its full share of public notice, under
its ambiguous title of " slavery."
130. I have not, however, been able to
ascertain in definite terms, from the declaim-
ers against slavery, what they understand by
it. If they mean only the imprisonment or
V. GOVERNMENT. I 63
compulsion of one person by another, such
imprisonment or compulsion being in many
cases highly expedient, slavery, so defined,
would be no evil in itself, but only in its
abuse ; that is, when men are slaves, who
should not be, or masters, who should not be,
or even the fittest characters for either state,
placed in it under conditions which should not
be. It is not, for instance, a necessary con-
dition of slavery, nor a desirable one, that
parents should be separated from children, or
husbands from wives ; but the institution of
war, against which people declaim with less
violence, effects such separations, — not un-
frequently in a very permanent manner. To
press a sailor, seize a white youth by con-
scription for a soldier, or carry off a black one
for a labourer, may all be right acts or all
wrong ones, according to needs and circum-
stances. It is wrong to scourge a man
unnecessarily. So it is to shoot him. Both
must be done on occasion ; and it is better and
kinder to flog a man to his work, than to leave
him idle till he robs, and flog him afterwards.
The essential thing for all creatures is to be
made to do right; how they are made to do it
164 MUNERA PULVERIS.
— by pleasant promises, or hard necessities,
pathetic oratory, or the whip — is comparatively
immaterial.* To be deceived is perhaps as
incompatible with human dignity as to be
whipped ; and I suspect the last method to be
not the worst, for the help of many individuals.
The Jewish nation throve under it, in the hand
of a monarch reputed not unwise; it is only
the change of whip for scorpion which is
inexpedient ; and that change is as likely to
come to pass on the side of license as of law.
For the true scorpion whips are those of the
nation's pleasant vices, which are to it as St.
John's locusts — crown on the head, ravin in
the mouth, and sting in the tail. If it will not
bear the rule of Athena and Apollo, who
shepherd without smiting (ou 77X777/7 ve/jiovTe<;) ,
Atlicna at last calls no more in the corners
of the streets ; and then follows the rule of
Tisiphone, who smites without shepherding.
131. If, however, by slavery, instead of
absolute compulsion, is meant tJie purchase, by
money ^ of the right of compulsion, such purchase
[* Permit me to enforce and reinforce this statement, with
all earnestness. It is the sum of what needs most to be
understood, in the matter of education.]
V. — GOVERNMENT I 65
is necessarily made whenever a portion of any
territory is transferred, for money, from one
monarch to another : which has happened
frequently enough in history, without its being
supposed that the inhabitants of the districts
so transferred became therefore slaves. In
this, as in the .former case, the dispute seems
about the fashion of the thing, rather than the
fact of it. There are two rocks in mid-sea, on
each of which, neglected equally by instructive
and commercial powers, a handful of inhabit-
ants live as they may. Two merchants bid
for the two properties, but not in the same
terms. One bids for the people, buys them^
and sets them to work, under pain of scourge ;
the other bids for the rock, buys it, and throws
the inhabitants into the sea. The former is
the American, the latter the English method,
of slavery ; much is to be said for, and some-
thing against, both, which I hope to say in due
time and place.*
132. If, however, slavery mean not merely
the purchase of the right of compulsion, but
tJie purcJiase of the body and soul of the creature
[* A pregnant paragraph, meant against English and
Scotch landlords who drive their people off the land.]
1 66 MUNERA PULVERIS.
itself for inojiey, it is not, I think, among the
black races that purchases of this kind are
most extensively made, or that separate souls
of a fine make fetch the highest price. This
branch of the inquiry we shall have occasion
also to follow out at some length, for in the
worst instances of the selling of souls, we are
apt to get, when we ask if the sale is valid,
only Pyrrhon's answer* — " None can know."
133. The fact is that slavery is not a politi-
cal institution at all, but an inherent, natural,
atid eternal inheritance of a large portion of
the human race — to whom, the more you give
of their own free will, the more slaves they
will make themselves. In common parlance,
we idly confuse captivity with slavery, and are
always thinking of the difference between pine-
trunks (Ariel in the pine), and cowslip-bells
(" in the cowslip-bell I lie "), or between
carrying wood and drinking (Caliban's slavery
and freedom), instead of noting the far more
serious differences between Ariel and Caliban
themselves, and the means by which, practi-
cally, that difference may be brought about or
diminished.
[* In Lucian's dialogue, " The sale of lives."]
V. GOVERNMENT. I 6/
134.* Plato's slave, in the Polity^ who, well
dressed and washed, aspires to the hand of
his master's daughter, corresponds curiously
to Caliban attacking Prospero's cell ; and there
is an undercurrent of meaning throughout, in
the Tempest as well as in the Merchant of
Venice; referring in this case to govern-
ment, as in that to commerce. Miranda t
[* I raise this analysis of the Tempest into my text ; but
it is nothing but a hurried note, which I may never have
time to expand. I have retouched it here and there a little,
however.]
t Of vShakspeare's names I will afterwards speak at more
length: they are curiously — often barbarously — much by
Providence, — but assuredly not without Shakspeare's cunning
purpose — mixed out of the various traditions he confusedly
adopted, and languages which he imperfectly knew. Three
of the clearest in meaning have been already noticed,
Desdemona, " Suo-ocii/xoj'ta," "miserable fortune," is also
plain enough. Othello is, I believe, " the careful ; " all
the calamity of the tragedy arising from the single flaw and
error in his magnificently collected strength. Ophelia,
"serviceableness," the true lost wife of Hamlet, is marked
as having a Greek name by that of her brother, Laertes ;
and its signification is once exquisitely alluded to in tliat
brother's last word of her, where her gentle preciousness
is opposed to the uselessness of the churlish clergy— "A
ministering angel shall my sister be, when thou liest
howling." Hamlet is, I believe, connected in some way with
"homely," the entire event of the tragedy turning on be-
trayal of home duty. Hermione (ep/xa), " pillar-like " {y\ elSos
?Xe xpi'<''^5 'A(^/)o5iV7;s). Titania (ji.rr\vrj), " the queen ; "
I 68 MUNERA PULVEKIS.
(" the wonderful," so addressed first by
Ferdinand, " Oh, you wonder ! ") corresponds
to Homer's Arete : Ariel and Caliban are
respectively the spirits of faithful and imagina-
tive labour, opposed to rebellious, hurtful, and
slavish labour. Prospero (" for hope "), a
true governor, is opposed to Sycorax, the
mother of slavery, her name " Swine-raven "
indicating at once brutality and deathfulness;
hence the line —
"As wicked dew as e'er my mother brushed with
raven^s feather" — etc.
For all these dreams of Shakspeare, as those
of true and strong men must be, are " (jiavrda-
fiara Beta, koI crKial twv ovtcov " — divine
phantasms, and shadows of things that are.
We hardly tell our children, willingly, a fable
with no purport in it ; yet we think God sends
his best messengers only to sing fairy tales to
Benedict and Beatrice, "blessed and blessing;" Valentine
and Proteus, enduring (or strong), (valens), and changeful,
lago and lachimo have evidently the same root — probably
liie Spanish lago, Jacob, " the supplanter." Leonatus, and
other such names, are interpreted, or played with, in the
plays themselves. For the inlerprelation of Sycorax, and
reference to her raven's feather, I am indebted to Mr. John
R. Wise.
V. — GOVERNMENT. I 69
US, fond and empty. The Tempest is just like
a grotesque in a rich missal, "clasped where
paynims pray." Ariel is the spirit of generous
and free-hearted service, in early stages of
human society oppressed by ignorance and
wild tyranny : venting groans as fast as mill-
wheels strike ; in shipwreck of states, dread-
ful ; so that " all but mariners plunge in the
brine, and quit the vessel, then all afire with
;//^," yet having in itself the will and sweet-
ness of truest peace, whence that is especially
called ** Ariel's " song, " Come unto these
yellow sands, and there, take hands, courtesied
when you have, and kissed, the wild waves
whist : " (mind, it is " cortesia," not " curt-
sey,") and read "quiet" for "whist," if you
want the full sense. Then you may indeed
foot it featly, and sweet spirits bear the bur-
den for you — with watch in the night, and call
in early morning. The vis viva in elemental
transformation follows — "Full fathom five
thy father lies, of his bones are coral made."
Then, giving rest after labour, it " fetches dew
from the still vext Bermoothes, and, with a
charm joined to their suffered labour, leaves
men asleep." Snatching away the feast of
lyO MUNERA PULVERIS.
the cruel, it seems to them as a harpy ;
followed by the utterly vile, who cannot see
it in any shape, but to whom it is the picture
of nobody, it still gives shrill harmony to their
false and mocking catch, " Thought is free ; "
but leads them into briars and foul places,
and at last hollas the hounds upon them.
Minister of fate against the great criminal,
it joins itself with the " incensed seas and
shores " — the sword that layeth at it cannot
hold, and may " with bemocked-at stabs as
soon kill the still-closing waters, as diminish
one dowle that is in its plume." As the guide
and aid of true love, it is always called by
Prospero " fine " (the French " fine," not the
English), or " delicate " — another long note
would be needed to explain all the meaning
in this word. Lastly, its work done, and
war, it resolves itself into the elements. The
intense significance of the last song, " Where
the bee sucks," I will examine in its due place.
The types of slavery in Caliban are more
palpable, and need not be dwelt on now:
though I will notice them also, severally, in
their proper places; — the heart of his slavery
is in his worship : " That's a brave god, and
V. — GOVERNMENT. I 7 I
bears celestial — liquor." But, in illustration
of the sense in which the Latin " benignus "
and " malignus " are to be coupled with
Eleutheria and Douleia, note that Caliban's
torment is always the physical reflection of
his own nature — " cramps " and " side stitches
that shall pen thy breath up ; thou shalt be
pinched, as thick as honeycombs : " the whole
nature of slavery being one cramp and
cretinous contraction. Fancy this of Ariel!
You may fetter him, but you set no mark on
him; you may put him to hard work and far
journey, but you cannot give him a cramp.
135. I should dwell, even in these prefatory
papers, at more length on this subject of
slavery, had not all I would say been said
already, in vain, (not, as I hope, ultimately in
vain,) by Carlyle, in the first of the Latter-
day Pamphlets, which I commend to the
reader's gravest reading; together with that
as much neglected, and still more immediately
needed, on model prisons, and with the great
chapter on " Permanence " (fifth of the last
section of " Past and Present "), which sums
what is known, and foreshadows, or rather
forelights, all that is to be learned of National
172 MUNERA PULVERIS.
Discipline. I have only here farther to examine
the nature of one world-wide and everlasting
form of slavery, wholesome in use, as deadly
in abuse ; — the service of the rich by the
poor.
CHAPTER VI.
MASTERSHIP
136. As in all previous discussions of our
subject, we must study the relation of the
commanding rich to the obeying poor in its
simplest elements, in order to reach its first
principles.
The simplest state of it, then, is this : * a
wise and provident person works much, con-
sumes little, and lays by a store ; an improvi-
dent person works little, consumes all his
produce, and lays by no store. Accident
interrupts the daily work, or renders it less
productive ; the idle person must then starve
or be supported by the provident one, who,
having him thus at his mercy, may either
* In the present general examination I concede so much
to ordinary economists as to ignore all innocent poverty.
I adapt my reasoning, for once, to the modern English
practical mind, by assuming poverty to be always criminal ;
the conceivable exceptions we will examine afterwards.
174 MUNERA PULVERIS.
refuse to maintain him altogether, or, which
will evidently be more to his own interest,
say to him, " I will maintain you, indeed,
but you shall now work hard, instead of in-
dolently, and instead of being allowed to lay
by what you save, as you might have done,
had you remained independent, / will take
all the surplus. You would not lay it up
for yourself; it is wholly your own fault that
has thrown you into my power, and I will
force you to work, or starve; yet you shall
have no profit of your work, only your daily
bread for it ; [and competition shall determine
how much of that *]." This mode of treatment
has now become so universal that it is sup-
posed to be the only natural — nay, the only
possible one ; and the market wages are
calmly defined by economists as " the sum
which will maintain the labourer."
137. The power of the provident person to
do this is only checked by the correlative
power of some neighbour of similarly frugal
[* I have no terms of English, and can find none in Greek
nor Latin, nor in any other strong language known to me,
contemptuous enough to attack the bestial idiotism of the
modern theory that wages are to be measured by com-
petition.]
VI. — MASTERSHIP. I 75
habits, who says to the labourer — " I will give
you a little more than this other provident
person : come and work for me."
The power of the provident over the im-
provident depends thus, primarily, on their
relative numbers; secondarily, on the modes
of agreement of the adverse parties with each
other. The accidental level of wages is a
variable function of the number of provident
and idle persons in the world, of the enmity
between them as classes, and of the agree-
ment between those of the same class. //
depends^ from beginning to end, oji moral con-
ditions.
138. Supposing the rich to be entirely selfish,
it is always for their interest that the poor should
be as numerous as they can employ, and restrain.
For, granting that the entire population is no
larger than the ground can easily maintain —
that the classes are stringently divided — and
that there is sense or strength of hand enough
with the rich to secure obedience; then, if
nine-tenths of a nation are poor, the remaining
tenth have the service of nine persons each ; *
* I say nothing yet of the quality of the servants, which,
nevertheless, is the gist of the business. Will you have Paul
\y6 MUNERA PULVERIS.
but, if eight-tenths are poor, only of four each ;
if seven-tenths are poor, of two and a third
each ; if six-tenths are poor, of one and a
half each ; and if five-tenths are poor, of only
one each. But, practically, if the ricli strive
always to obtain more power over the poor,
instead of to raise them — and if, on the other
hand, the poor become continually more vicious
and numerous, through neglect and oppression,
— though the range of the power of the rich
increases, its tenure becomes less secure;
until, at last, the measure of iniquity being
full, revolution, civil war, or the subjection of
the state to a healthier or stronger one, closes
the moral corruption, and industrial disease.*
139. It is rarely, however, that things come
to this extremity. Kind persons among the
rich, and wise among the poor, modify the
connexion of the classes ; the efforts made to
Veronese to paint your ceiling, or the plumber from over the
way? Both will work for the same money; Paul, if any-
thing, a little the cheaper of the two, if you keep him in
good humour ; only you have to discern him first, which will
need eyes.
[* I have not altered a syllable in these three paragraphs,
137, 138, 139, on revision; but have much italicised: the
principles stated being as vital, as they are little known.]
VI. MASTERSHIP. I 77
raise and relieve on the one side, and the
success of honest toil on the other, bind and
blend the orders of society into the confused
tissue of half-felt obligation, sullenly-rendered
obedience, and variously-directed, or mis-
directed, toil, which form the warp of daily life.
But this great law rules all the wild design :
that success (while society is guided by laws
of competition) signijies always so much victojy
over your neighbour as to obtain the direction
of his work, and to take the profits of it. This
is the real source of all great riches. No man
can become largely rich by his personal toil.*
The work of his own hands, wisely directed,
will indeed always maintain himself and his
family, and make fitting provision for his age.
But it is only by the discovery of some metJiod of
taxing the labour of others that he can become
opulent. Every increase of his capital enables
him to extend this taxation more widely ; that
is, to invest larger funds in the maintenance of
labourers, — to direct, accordingly, vaster and
* By his art he may ; but only when its produce, or the
sight or hearing of it, becomes a subject of dispute, so as to
enable the artist to tax the labour of multitudes highly, in
exchange for his own.
M
178 MUNERA PULVERIS.
yet vaster masses of labour, and to appropriate
its profits.
140. There is much confusion of idea on the
subject of this appropriation. It is, of course,
the interest of the employer to disguise it from
the persons employed ; and, for his own
comfort and complacency, he often desires no
less to disguise it from himself. And it is
matter of much doubt with me, how far the
foul and foolish arguments used habitually on
this subject are indeed the honest expression
of foul and foolish convictions ; — or rather (as
I am sometimes forced to conclude from the
irritation with which they are advanced) are
resolutely dishonest, wilful, and malicious
sophisms, arranged so as to mask, to the last
moment, the real laws of economy, and future
duties of men. By taking a simple example,
and working it thoroughly out, the subject may
be rescued from all but such determined mis-
representation.
141. Let us imagine a society of peasants,
living on a river-shore, exposed to destructive
inundation at somewhat extended intervals ;
and that each peasant possesses of this good,
but imperilled, ground, more than he needs to
VI. — MASTERSHIP. \ "J g
cultivate for immediate subsistence. We will
assume farther (and with too great probability
of justice), that the greater part of them indo-
lently keep in tillage just as much land as sup-
plies them with daily food;— that they leave
their children idle, and take no precautions
against the rise of the stream. But one of
them, (we will say but one, for the sake of
greater clearness) cultivates carefully all the
ground of his estate ; makes his children work
hard and healthily; uses his spare time and
theirs in building a rampart against the river ;
and, at the end of some years, has in his store-
houses large reserves of food and clothing, — in
his stables a well-tended breed of cattle, and
around his fields a wedge of wall against flood.
The torrent rises at last — sweeps away the
harvests, and half the cottages of the careless
peasants, and leaves them destitute. They
naturally come for help to tlie provident one,
whose fields are unwasted, and whose grana-
ries are full. He has the right to refuse it to
them: no one disputes this right.* But he will
[* Observe this ; the legal right to keep what you have
worked for, and use it as you please, is the corner-stone of
ail economy: compare the end of Chap. II.]
l80 MUNERA PULVERIS.
probably 7iot refuse it ; it is not his interest to
do so, even were he entirely selfish and cruel.
The only question with him will be on what
terms his aid is to be granted.
142. Clearly, not on terms of mere charity.
To maintain his neighbours in idleness would
be not only his ruin, but theirs. He will
require work from them, in exchange for their
maintenance; and, whether in kindness or
cruelty, all the work they can give. Not now
the three or four hours they were wont to
spend on their own land, but the eight or ten
hours they ought to have spent.* But how
will he apply this labour ? The men are now
his slaves ; — nothing less, and nothing more.
On pain of starvation, he can force them to
work in the manner, and to the end, he chooses.
And it is by his wisdom in this clioice that
the worthiness of his mastership is proved, or
its unworthiness. Evidently, he must first set
them to bank out the water in some temporary
way, and to get their ground cleansed and
resown ; else, in any case, their continued
maintenance will be impossible. That done,
[* I should now put the time of necessary labour rather
under than over the third of the day. ]
VI. MASTERSHIP. I 8 I
and while he has still to feed them, suppose he
makes them raise a secure rampart for their
own ground against all future flood, and rebuild
their houses in safer places, with the best
material they can find ; being allowed time out
of their working hours to fetch such material
from a distance. And for the food and cloth-
ing advanced, he takes security in land that as
much shall be returned at a convenient period.
143. We may conceive this security to be
redeemed, and the debt paid at the end of a
few years. The prudent peasant has sus-
tained no loss ; /;'/// /s no richer than he zvas,
mtd has had all his trouble for nothing. But
he has enriched his neighbours materially ;
bettered their houses, secured their land, and
rendered them, in worldly matters, equal to
himself. In all rational and final sense, he has
been throughout their true Lord and King.
144. We will next trace his probable line
of conduct, presuming his object to be exclu-
sively the increase of his own fortune. After
roughly recovering and cleansing the ground,
he allows the ruined peasantry only to build
huts upon it, such as he thinks protective
enough from the weather to keep them in
I 82 MUNERA PULVERIS.
working health. The rest of their time he
occupies, first in pulhng down, and rebuilding
on a magnificent scale, his own house, and in
adding large dependencies to it. This done,
in exchange for his continued supply of corn,
he buys as much of his neighbours' land as
he thinks he can superintend the management
of; and makes the former owners securely
embank and protect the ceded portion. By
this arrangement, he leaves to a certain
number of the peasantry only as much ground
as will just maintain them in their existing
numbers ; as the population increases, he takes
the extra hands, who cannot be maintained on
the narrowed estates, for his own servants ;
employs some to cultivate the ground he has
bought, giving them of its produce merely
enough for subsistence ; with the surplus,
which, under his energetic and careful superin-
tendence, will be large, he maintains a train
of servants for state, and a body of workmen,
whom he educates in ornamental arts. He
now can splendidly decorate his liouse, lay out
its grounds magnificently, and richly supply
his table, and tiiat of his liousehold and
retinue. And thus, without any abuse of right,
VI. MASTERSHIP. I 8 3
we should find established all the phenomena
of poverty and riches, which (it is supposed
necessarily) accompany modern civilization.
In one part of the district, we should have
unhealthy land, miserable dwellings, and half-
starved poor ; in another, a well-ordered
estate, well-fed servants, and refined conditions
of highly-educated and luxurious life.
145. I have put the two cases in simplicity,
and to some extremity. But though in more
complex and qualified operation, all the
relations of society are but the expansion of
these two typical sequences of conduct and
result. I do not say, observe, that the first
procedure is entirely recommendable ; or even
entirely right ; still less, that the second is
wholly wrong. Servants, and artists, and
splendour of habitation and retinue, have all
their use, propriety, and office. But I am
determined that the reader shall understand
clearly what they cost ; and see that the con-
dition of having them is the subjection to us
of a certain number of imprudent or unfortu-
nate persons (or, it may be, more fortunate
than their masters), over whose destinies we
exercise a boundless control. " Riches " mean
I 84 MUNERA PULVERIS.
eternally and essentially this; and God send
at last a time when those words of our best-
reputed economist shall be true, and wc shall
indeed "all know what it is to be rich ; " * tliat
it is to be slave-master over farthest earth, and
over all ways and thoughts of men. Every
operative you employ is your true servant :
distant or near, subject to your immediate
orders, or ministering to your widely-communi-
cated caprice, — for the pay he stipulates, or
the price he tempts, — all are alike under this
great dominion of the gold. The milliner who
makes the dress is as much a servant (more
so, in that she uses more intelligence in the
service) as the maid who puts it on ; the
carpenter who smooths the door, as the foot-
man who opens it ; the tradesmen who supply
the table, as the labourers and sailors who
supply the tradesmen. Why speak of these
lower services ? Painters and singers (whether
of note or rhyme), jesters and story-tellers,
moralists, historians, priests, — so far as these,
in any degree, paint, or sing, or tell their tale,
or charm their charm, or " perform " their rite,
for pay, — in so far, they are all slaves; abject
[* See Preface to Unto this Last.l
VI. MASTERSHIP. I 8 5
utterly, if the service be for pay only ; abject
less and less in proportion to the degrees of
love and of wisdom which enter into their
duty, or caii enter into it, according as their
function is to do the bidding and the work of
a manly people ; — or to amuse, tempt, and
deceive, a childish one.
146. There is always, in such amusement
and temptation, to a certain extent, a govern-
ment of the rich by the poor, as of the poor
by the rich ; but the latter is the prevailing
and necessary one, and it consists, when it is
honourable, in the collection of the profits of
labour from those who would have misused
them, and the administration of those profits
for the service either of the same persons in
future, or of others ; and when it is dishonour-
able, as is more frequently the case in modern
times, it consists in the collection of the profits
of labour from those who would have rightly
used them, and their appropriation to the
service of the collector himself.
147. The examination of these various
modes of collection and use of riches will form
the third branch of our future inquiries ; but
the key to the whole subject lies in the clear
I 86 MUNERA PULVKRIS.
understanding of the difference between selfish
and unselfish expenditure. It is not easy, by
any course of reasoning, to enforce this on the
generally unwilling hearer ; yet the definition
of unselfish expenditure is brief and simple.
It is expenditure which, if you arc a capitalist,
does not pay yon, but pays somebody else ; and
if you are a consumer, does not please yon,
but pleases somebody else. Take one special
instance, in further illustration of the general
type given above. 1 did not invent that type,
but spoke of a real river, and of real peasantry,
the languid and sickly race which inhabits, or
haunts — for they are often more like spectres
than living men — the thorny desolation of the
banks of the Arve in Savoy. Some years ago,
a society, formed at Geneva, offered to embank
the river for the ground which would have
been recovered by the operation ; but the offer
was refused by the (then Sardinian) govern-
ment. The capitalists saw that this expendi-
ture would have " paid " if the ground saved
from the river was to be theirs. But if, when
the offer that had this aspect of profit was
refused, they had nevertheless persisted in the
plan, and merely taking security for the return
VI. MASTERSHIP. I 8/
of their outlay, lent the funds for the work,
and thus saved a whole race of human souls
from perishing in a pestiferous fen (as, I
presume, some among them would, at personal
risk, have dragged any one drowning creature
out of the current of the stream, and not
expected payment therefor), such expenditure
would have precisely corresponded to the use
of his power made, in the first instance, by our
supposed richer peasant — it would have been the
king's, of grace, instead of the usurer's, for gain.
148. "Impossible, absurd, Utopian!" exclaim
nine-tenths of the few readers whom these
words may find.
No, good reader, this is not Utopian :
but I will tell you what would have seemed,
if we had not seen it, Utopian on the side of
evil instead of good ; that ever men should
have come to value their money so much more
than their lives, that if you call upon them to
become soldiers, and take chance of a bullet
through their heart, and of wife and children
being left desolate, for their pride's sake, they
will do it gaily, without thinking twice ; but
if you ask them, for their country's sake, to
spend a hundred pounds without security of
l88 MUNERA PULVERIS.
getting back a hundred-and-fivc,* they will
laugh in your face.
149. Not but that also this game of life-
giving and taking is, in the end, somewhat
more costly than other forms of play might
be. Rifle practice is, indeed, a not unhealthy
pastime, and a feather on the top of the head is
a pleasing appendage; but while learning the
stops and fingering of the sweet instrument,
* I have not hitherto touched on the subject of interest
of money ; it is too complex, and must be reserved for its
proper place in the body of the work. The definition of
interest (apart from compensation for risk) is, " the exponent
of the comfort of accomplished labour, separated from its
power ; " the power being what is lent : and the French
economists who have maintained the entire illegality of
interest are wrong ; yet by no means so curiously or wildly
wrong as the English and French ones opposed to them,
whose opinions have been collected by Dr. Whewell at page
41 of his Lectures ; it never seeming to occur to the mind of
the compiler, any more than to the writers whom he quotes, that
it is quite possible, and even (according to Jewish proverb)
prudent, for men to hoard as ants and mice do, for use, not
usury ; and lay by something for winter nights, in the
expectation of rather sharing than lending the scrapings.
My Savoyard squirrels would pass a pleasant time of it under
the snow-laden jjine-branches, if they always declined to
economize because no one would pay them interest on nuts.
[I leave this note as it stood : but, as I have above stated,
should now side wholly with the French economists spoken
of, in asserting the absolute illegality of interest.]
VI. — MASTERSHIP. I 89
does no one ever calculate the cost of an over-
ture ? What melody does Tityrus meditate
on his tenderly spiral pipe ? The leaden seed
of it, broad-cast, true conical " Dents de Lion "
seed — needing less allowance for the wind
than is usual with that kind of herb — what
crop are you likely to have of it ? Suppose,
instead of this volunteer marching and counter-
marching, you were to do a little volunteer
ploughing and counter-ploughing? It is more
difficult to do it straight : the dust of the
earth, so disturbed, is more grateful than for
merely rhythmic footsteps. Golden cups, also,
given for good ploughing, would be more
suitable in colour : {ruby glass, for the wine
which "giveth his colour" on the ground,
might be fitter for the rifle prize in ladies'
hands). Or, conceive a little volunteer exer-
cise with the spade, other than such as is
needed for moat and breastwork, or even for
the burial of the fruit of the laden avena-seed,
subject to the shrill Lemures' criticism —
Wer hat das Haus so schlecht gebeaut ?
If you were to embank Lincolnshire more
stoutly against the sea ? or strip the peat of
190 MUNERA PULVERIS.
Solvvay, or plant Pllnlimmon moors with larch
— then, in due season, some amateur reaping
and threshing ?
" Nay, we reap and thresh by steam, in
these advanced days."
I know it, my wise and economical friends.
The stout arms God gave you to win your
bread by, you would fain shoot your neigh-
bours, and God's sweet singers with ; * then
* Compare Chaucer's feeling respecting birds (from Canace's
falcon, to the nightingale, singing, '• Doniine, labia — " to the
Lord of Love) with the usual modern British sentiments on
this subject. Or even Cowley's : —
" What prince's choir of music can excel
That which within this shade does dwell,
To which we nothing pay, or give,
They, like all other poets, live
Without reward, or thanks for their obliging pains !
'Tis well if they become not prey."
Yes ; it is better than well ; particularly since the seed
sown by the wayside has been protected by the peculiar
appropriation of part of the church-rates in our country
parishes. See the remonstrance from a " Country Parson,"
in The Times of June 4th (or 5th ; the letter is dated June
3rd), 1862: — "I have heard at a vestry meeting a good
deal of higgling over a few shillings' outlay in cleaning the
church ; but I have never heard any dissatisfaction expressed
on account of that jiart of the rale which is invested in 50
or 100 dozens of birds' heads."
[If we could trace the innermost of all causes of modern
VI. MASTERSHIP. I 9 I
you invoke the fiends to your farm-service;
and —
When young and old come forth to play
On a sulphurous holiday,
Tell how the darkling goblin sweat
(His feast of cinders duly set),
And, belching night, where breathed the morn.
His shadowy flail hath threshed the corn
That ten day-labourers could not end.
150. Going back to the matter in hand
we will press the example closer. On a green
knoll above that plain of the Arve, between
Cluse and Bonneville, there was, in the year
i860, a cottage, inhabited by a well-doing
family — man and wife, three children, and
the grandmother. I call it a cottage, but in
truth, it was a large chimney on the ground,
wide at the bottom, so that the family might
live round the fire ; lighted by one small
broken window, and entered by an unclosing
door. The family, I say, was " well-doing ; "
at least, it was hopeful and cheerful ; the
wife healthy, the children, for Savoyards,
war, I believe it would be found, not in the avarice nor
ambition of nations, but in the mere idleness of the upper
classes. They have nothing to do but to teach the peasantry
to kill each other.]
192 MUNERA PULVERIS.
pretty and active, but tlic husband threatened
with decHne, from exposure under the cHffs
of the Mont Vergi by day, and to draughts
between every plank of his chimney in the
frosty nights.
" Why could he not plaster the chinks ? "
asks tlie practical reader. For the same
reason that your child cannot wash its face
and hands till you have washed them many
a day for it, and will not wash them when it
can, till you force it.
151. I passed this cottage often in my
walks, had its window and door mended ;
sometimes mended also a little the meal of sour
bread and broth, and generally got kind greet-
ing and smile from the face of young or old ;
which greeting, this year, narrowed itself into
the half- recognising stare of the elder child,
and the old woman's tears ; for the father
and mother were both dead, — one of sickness,
the other of sorrow. It happened that I passed
not alone, but with a companion, a practised
English joiner, who, while these people were
dying of cold, had been employed from six
in the morning to six in the evening, for two
months, in fitting, without nails, the panels
VI. MASTERSHIP,
193
of a single door in a large house in London.
Three days of his work taken, at the right
time, from fastening the oak panels with
useless precision, and applied to fasten the
larch timbers with decent strength, would
have saved these Savoyards' lives. He would
have been maintained equally ; (I suppose
him equally paid for his work by the owner
of the greater house, only the work not con-
sumed selfishly on his own walls;) and the
two peasants, and eventually, probably their
children, saved.
152, There are, therefore, — let me finally
enforce, and leave with the reader, this broad
conclusion, — three things to be considered in
employing any poor person. It is not enough
to give him emplo3anent. You must employ
him first to produce useful things ; secondly, of
the several (suppose equally useful) things he
can equally well produce, you must set him to
make that which will cause him to lead the
healthiest life ; lastly, of the things produced, it
remains a question of wisdom and conscience
how much you are to take yourself, and how
much to leave to others. A large quantity,
remember, unless you destroy it, must always
N
T94 MUNERA PULVERIS.
be so left at one time or another; the only
questions you liave to decide are, not ivhat you
will give, but when, and hoiu, and to w/io»i, you
will give. The natural law of human life is, of
course, that in youth a man shall labour and
lay by store for his old age, and when age
comes, shall use what he has laid by, gradually
slackening his toil, and allowing himself more
frank use of his store ; taking care always to
leave himself as much as will surely suffice for
him beyond any possible length of life. What
he has gained, or by tranquil and unanxious
toil continues to gain, more than is enough for
his own need, he ought so to administer, while
he yet lives, as to see the good of it again
beginning, in other hands; for thus he has
himself the greatest sum of pleasure from it,
and faithfully uses his sagacity in its control.
Whereas most men, it appears, dislike the
sight of their fortunes going out into service
again, and say to themselves, — " I can indeed
nowise prevent this money from falling at last
into the hands of others, nor hinder the good
of it from becoming theirs, not mine ; but at
least let a merciful death save me from being a
witness of their satisfaction ; and may God so
VI. — MASTERSHIP. I 9 5
far be gracious to me as to let no good come of
any of this money of mine before my eyes."
153. Supposing this feeling unconquerable,
the safest way of rationally indulging it would
be for the capitalist at once to spend all his
fortune on himself, which might actually, in
many cases, be quite the rightest as well as the
pleasantest thing to do, if he had just tastes
and worthy passions. But, whether for him-
self only, or through the hands, and for the
sake of others also, the law of wise life is, that
the maker of the money should also be the
spender of it, and spend it, approximately, all,
before he dies ; so that his true ambition as an
economist should be, to die, not as rich, but as
poor, as possible,* calculating the ebb tide of
possession in true and calm proportion to the
ebb tide of life. Which law, checking the wing
[* See the Life of Fenelon. "The labouring peasantry
were at all times the objects of his tenderest care ; his palace
at Cambray, with all his books and writings, being consumed
by fire, he bore the misfortune with unruffled calmness, and
said it was better his palace should be burnt than the cottage
of a poor peasant." (These thoroughly good men always
go too far, and lose their power over the mass.) He died
exemplifying the mean he had always observed between
prodigality and avarice, leaving neither debts nor money.]
196 MUNERA PULVERIS.
of accumulative desire in the mid-volley,* and
leading to peace of possession and fulness of
fruition in old age, is also wholesome in that
by the freedom of gift, together with present
help and counsel, it at once endears and
dignifies age in the sight of youth, which then
no longer strips the bodies of the dead, but
receives the grace of the living. Its chief use
would (or will be, for men are indeed capable
of attaining to this much use of their reason),
that some temperance and measure will be
put to the acquisitiveness of commerce.f For
as things stand, a man holds it his duty to be
temperate in his food, and of his body, but
* Kal irevLav ijyovfiivovs elvai /xt] t6 tt]v oiialav iXarrm
iroieiv dWa rb ttji' a.ir\7}CTTiav Tr\eiu. " And thinking
(wisely) that poverty consists not in making one's possessions
less, but one's avarice more." — Lazvs, v. 8. Read the
context, and compare. " He who spends for all that is
noble, and gains by nothing but what is just, will hardly be
notaljly wealthy, or distressfully poor." — Laws, v. 42.
t The fury of modern trade arises chiefly out of the
possibility of making sudden fortunes by largeness of trans-
action, and accident of discovery or contrivance. I have no
doubt that the final interest of every nation is to check the
action of these commercial lotteries ; and that all great acci-
dental gains or losses should be national, — not individual.
But speculation absolute, unconnected with commercial
effort, is an unmitigated evil in a state, and the root of
countless evils beside.
VI. — MASTERSHIP. . I 97
for no duty to be temperate in his riches, and
of his mind. He sees that he ought not to
waste his youth and his flesh for luxury ; but
he will waste his age, and his soul, for
money, and think he does no wrong, nor
know the delirmin tremens of the intellect
for disease. But the law of life is, that a
man should fix the sum he desires to make
annually, as the food he desires to eat daily ;
and stay when he has reached the limit, re-
fusing increase of business, and leaving it to
others, so obtaining due freedom of time for
better thoughts.* How the gluttony of busi-
ness is punished, a bill of health for the princi-
pals of the richest city houses, issued annually,
would show in a sufficiently impressive manner.
1 54. I know, of course, that these statements
will be received by the modern merchant as
an active border rider of the sixteenth century
would have heard of its being proper for men
of the Marches to get their living by the spade,
instead of the spur. But my business is only
to state veracities and necessities; I neither
look for the acceptance of the one, nor hope
[* I desire in the strongest terms to reinforce all that is
contained in this paragraph.]
198 MUNERA PULVERIS.
for the nearness of the other. Near or distant,
the day ivill assuredly come when the mer-
chants of a state shall be its true ministers of
exchange, its porters, in the double sense of
carriers and gate-keepers, bringing all lands
into frank and faithful communication, and
knowing for their master of guild, Hermes the
herald, instead of Mercury the gain-guarder.
155. And now, finally, for immediate rule
to all who will accept it.
The distress of any population means that
they need food, house-room, clothes, and fuel.
You can never, therefore, be wrong in employ-
ing any labourer to produce food, house-room,
clothes, or fuel ; but you are ahvays wrong if
you employ him to produce nothing, (for then
some other labourer must be worked double
time to feed him) ; and you are generally
wrong, at present, if you employ him (unless
he can do nothing else) to produce works of
art or luxuries ; because modern art is mostly
on a false basis, and modern luxury is
criminally great.*
* It is especially necessary that the reader should keep
his mind fixed on the methods of consumption and de-
struction, as the true sources of national poverty. Men are
VI. — MASTERSHIP. I 99
1 56. The way to produce more food is
mainly to bring in fresh ground, and increase
faciHties of carriage ; — to break rock, exchange
earth, drain the moist, and water the dry,
to mend roads, and build harbours of refuge.
Taxation thus spent will annihilate taxation,
but spent in war, it annihilates revenue.
apt to call every exchange "expenditure," but it is only
consumption which is expenditure. A large number of the
purchases made by the richer classes are mere forms of
interchange of unused property, wholly without effect on
national prosperity. It matters nothing to the state whether,
if a china pipkin be rated as worth a hundred pounds, A has
the pipkin and B the pounds, or A the pounds and B the
pipkin. But if the pipkin is pretty, and A or B breaks it,
there is national loss, not otherwise. So again, when the
loss has really taken place, no shifting of the shoulders that
bear it will do away with the reality of it. There is an
intensely ludicrous notion in the public mind respecting the
abolishment of debt by denying it. When a debt is denied,
the lender loses instead of the borrower, that is all ; the
loss is precisely, accurately, everlastingly the same. The
Americans borrow money to spend in blowing up their own
houses. They deny their debt, by one third already [1863],
gold being at fifty premium ; and they will probably deny
it wholly. That merely means that the holders of the notes
are to be the losers instead of the issuers. The quantity of
loss is precisely equal, and irrevocable ; it is the quantity of
human industry spent in effecting the explosion, plus the
quantity of goods exploded. Honour only decides who shall
pay the sum lost, not whether it is to be paid or not.
Paid it must be, and to the uttermost farthing.
200 MUNERA PULVERIS.
157. Tlic way to produce house-room is
to apply your force first to the humblest
dwellings. When your bricklayers are out
of employ, do not build splendid new streets,
but better the old ones ; send your paviours
and slaters to the poorest villages, and see
that your poor are healthily lodged, before you
try your hand on stately architecture. You
will find its stateliness rise better under the
trowel afterwards ; and we do not yet build
so well that we need hasten to display our
skill to future ages. Had the labour which
has decorated the Houses of Parliament filled,
instead, rents in walls and roofs throughout
the county of Middlesex; and our deputies
met to talk within massive walls that would
have needed no stucco for five hundred
years, — the decoration might have been better
afterwards, and the talk now. And touching
even our highly conscientious church build-
ing, it may be well to remember that in the
best days of church plans, their masons
called themselves "logeurs du bon Dieu;"
and that since, according to the most trusted
reports, God spends a good deal of His time
in cottages as well as in churches, He might
VI. — MASTERSHIP. 20I
perhaps like to be a little better lodged there
also.
158. The way to get more clothes is — not,
necessarily, to get more cotton. There were
words written twenty years ago * which
would have saved many of us some shivering,
had they been minded in time. Shall we read
them again ?
" The Continental people, it would seem,
are importing our machinery, beginning to
spin cotton, and manufacture for themselves ;
to cut us out of this market, and then out
of that ! Sad news, indeed ; but irremediable.
By no means the saddest news — the saddest
news, is that we should find our national
existence, as I sometimes hear it said, depend
on selling manufactured cotton at a farthing
an ell cheaper than any other people. A most
narrow stand for a great nation to base itself
on ! A stand which, with all the Corn-Law
abrogations conceivable, I do not think will
be capable of enduring.
[* {Past and Present, Chap. IX. of Third Section.) To
think that for these twenty— now twenty-six — years, this one
voice of Carlyle's has been the only faithful and useful
utterance in all England, and has sounded through all these
years in vain ! See Fors Clavigera, Letter X.]
202 MUNERA PULVERIS.
" My friends, suppose we quitted that
stand ; suppose we came honestly down from
it and said — ' This is our minimum of cotton
prices ; we care not, for the present, to make
cotton any cheaper. Do you, if it seem so
blessed to you, make cotton cheaper. Fill
your lungs with cotton fur, your heart with
copperas fumes, with rage and mutiny ; be-
come ye the general gnomes of Europe, slaves
of the lamp ! ' I admire a nation which fancies
it will die if it do not undersell all other
nations to the end of the world. Brothers, we
will cease to undersell them; we will be con-
tent to equal-sell them ; to be happy selling
equally with them ! I do not see the use of
underselling them : cotton-cloth is already
twopence a yard, or lower ; and yet bare
backs were never more numerous among us.
Let inventive men cease to spend their exist-
ence incessantly contriving how cotton can
be made cheaper ; and try to invent a little
how cotton at its present cheapness could be
somewhat justlier divided among us.
" Let inventive men consider — whether the
secret of this universe does after all consist in
making money. Witli a licll which means —
VI. — MASTERSHIP. 203
* failing to make money,' I do not think there
is any heaven possible that would suit one
well. In brief, all this Mammon gospel of
supply-and-demand, competition, laisses /aire,
and devil take the hindmost " (foremost, is it
not, rather, Mr. Carlyle ?), " begins to be one
of the shabbiest gospels ever preached."
1 59. The way to produce more fuel * is first
to make your coal mines safer, by sinking
more shafts; then set all your convicts to
work in them, and if, as is to be hoped, you
succeed in diminishing the supply of that sort
of labourer, consider what means there may be,
first, of growing forest where its growth will
improve climate; secondly, of splintering the
forests which now make continents of fruitful
land pathless and poisonous, into faggots
for fire ; — so gaining at once dominion ice-
wards and sunwards. Your steam power has
been given (you will find eventually) for work
such as that : and not for excursion trains, to
give the labourer a moment's breath, at the
peril of his breath for ever, from amidst the
[* We don't want to produce more fuel just now, but much
less ; and to use what we get for cooking and warming our-
selves, instead of for running from place to place.]
204 MUNERA PULVERIS.
cities which it has crushed into masses of
corruption. When you icnow how to build
cities, and how to rule them, you will be able
to breathe in their streets, and the "excur-
sion " will be the afternoon's walk or game
in the fields round them.
1 60. " But nothing of this work will pay ? "
No ; no more than it pays to dust your
rooms, or wash your doorsteps. It will pay;
not at first in currency, but in that which is
the end and the source of currency, — in life ;
(and in currency richly afterwards). It will
pay in that which is more than Hfe, — in light,
whose true price has not yet been reckoned in
any currency, and yet into the image of which,
all wealth, one way or other, must be cast.
For your riches must either be as the light-
ning, which,
Begot but in a cloud,
Though shining bright, and speaking loud,
Whilst it begins, concludes its violent race ;
And, where it gilds, it wounds the place ; —
or else, as the lightning of the sacred sign,
which shines from one part of the heaven to
the other. There is no other choice; you
must either take dust for deity, spectre for
VI. — MASTERSHIP. 20 5
possession, fettered dream for life, and for
epitaph, this reversed verse of the great
Hebrew hymn of economy (Psalm cxii.) : —
" He hath gathered together, he hath stripped
the poor, his iniquity remaineth for ever : " — or
else, having the sun of justice to shine on you,
and the sincere substance of good in your
possession, and the pure law and liberty of
life within you, leave men to write this better
legend over your grave : —
" He hath dispersed abroad. He hath
given to the poor. His righteousness re-
maineth for ever."
APPENDICES.
[I HAVE brought together in these last pages
a few notes, which were not properly to be
incorporated with the text, and which, at the
bottom of pages, checked the reader's attention
to the main argument. They contain, how-
ever, several statements to which I wish to
be able to refer, or have already referred, in
other of my books, so that I think right to
preserve them.]
APPENDIX I.— (p. 7.)
The greatest of all economists are those most
opposed to the doctrine of "laissez faire," namely,
the fortifying virtues, which the wisest men of all
time have arranged under the general heads of
Prudence, or Discretion (the spirit which discerns
and adopts rightly) ; Justice (the spirit which rules
208 APPENDICES.
and divides rightly) ; Fortitude (the spirit which
persists and endures rightly) ; and Temperance
(the spirit which stops and refuses rightly). These
cardinal and sentinel virtues are not only the
means of protecting and prolonging life itself, but
they are the chief guards, or sources, of the mate-
rial means of life, and the governing powers and
princes of economy. Thus, precisely according to
the number of just men in a nation, is their power
of avoiding either intestine or foreign war. All
disputes may be peaceably settled, if a sufficient
number of persons have been trained to submit to
the principles of justice, while the necessity for war
is in direct ratio to the number of unjust persons
who are incapable of determining a quarrel but by
violence. Whether the injustice take the form of
the desire of dominion, or of refusal to submit to
it, or of lust of territory, or lust of money, or of
mere irregular passion and wanton will, the result
is economically the same ; — loss of the quantity of
power and life consumed in repressing the in-
justice added to the material and moral destruc-
tion caused by the fact of war. The early civil
wars of England, and the existing * war in America,
are curious examples — these under monarchical,
this under republican, institutions — of the results
[* Written in 1862. I little thought that when I next
corrected my type, the "existing" war best illustrative of
the sentence, would be between Frenchmen in the Elysian
Fields of Paris.]
APPENDICES. 209
on large masses of nations of the want of educa-
tion in principles of justice. But the mere dread
of distrust resulting from the want of the inner
virtues of Faith and Charity prove often no less
costly than war itself. The fear which France and
England have of each other costs each nation
about fifteen millions sterling annually, besides
various paralyses of commerce ; that sum being
spent in the manufacture of means of destruction
instead of means of production. There is no more
reason in the nature of things that France and
England should be hostile to each other than that
England and Scotland should be, or Lancashire
and Yorkshire; and the reciprocal terrors of the
opposite sides of the English Channel are neither
more necessary, more economical, nor more
virtuous, than the old riding and reiving on the
opposite flanks of the Cheviots, or than England's
own weaving for herself of crowns of thorn, from
the stems of her Red and White Roses.
APPENDIX II.— (p. 30.)
Few passages of the book which at least some part
of the nations at present most advanced in civi-
lisation accept as an expression of final truth,
have been more distorted than those bearing on
Idolatry. For the idolatry there denounced is
o
2 I O APPENDICES.
neither sculpture, nor veneration of sculpture. It
is simply the substitution of an " Eidolon," phan-
tasm, or imagination of Good, for that which is real
and enduring; from the Highest Living Good,
which gives life, to the lowest material good which
ministers to it. The Creator, and the things
created, which He is said to have "seen good"
in creating, are in this their eternal goodness ap-
pointed always to be " worshipped," — i.e., to have
goodness and worth ascribed to them from the
heart ; and the sweep and range of idolatry extend
to the rejection of any or all of these, " calling evil
good, and good evil, — putting bitter for sweet, and
sweet for bitter." * For in that rejection and sub-
stitution we betray the first of all Loyalties, to the
fixed Law of life, and with resolute opposite loyalty
serve our own imagination of good, which is the
law, not of the House, but of the Grave (otherwise
called the law of " mark missing," which we trans-
late "law of Sin ") ; these "two masters," between
whose services we have to choose, being other-
wise distinguished as God and Mammon, which
Mammon, though we narrowly take it as the power
of money only, is in truth the great evil Spirit of
false and fond desire, or " Covetousness, which
is Idolatry." So that Iconoclasm — /'wrto-^-breaking
— is easy ; but an Idol cannot be broken — it must
* Compare the close of tlie Fourth Lecture in Araiia
Ptntelici.
APPENDICES. 2 I I
be forsaken ; and this is not so easy, either to do,
or persuade to doing. For men may readily be
convinced of the weakness of an image ; but not
of the emptiness of an imagination.
APPENDIX III.— (p. 34.)
I HAVE not attempted to support, by the authority
of other writers, any of the statements made in
these papers ; indeed, if such authorities were
rightly collected, there would be no occasion for
my writing at all. Even in the scattered passages
referring to this subject in three books of Carlyle's
— Sartor Resartus, Past and Present, and the
Latter Day Pamphlets, — all has been said that
needs to be said, and far better than I shall ever
say it again. But the habit of the public mind
at present is to require everything to be uttered
diffusely, loudly, and a hundred times over, before
it will listen ; and it has revolted against these
papers of mine as if they contained things daring
and new, when there is not one assertion in them
of which the truth has not been for ages known to
the wisest, and proclaimed by the most eloquent of
men. It would be [I had written ivill be; but
have now reached a time of life for which there
is but one mood — the conditional,] a far greater
pleasure to me hereafter, to collect their words
2 I 2 APPENDICES.
than to add to mine : Horace's clear rendering of
the substance of the passages in the text may be
found room for at once,
Si quis emat cilharas, emptas comporlet in iinum
Nee studio citharae, nee Musae deditus ulli ;
Si scaljDra et formas non sutor, nautica vela
Aversus mercaturis, dclirus et amens
Undique dicatur merito. Qui discrepat istis
Qui nummos aurumque recondit, nescius uti
Compositis ; metuensque velut eontingere sacrum ?
[Which may be roughly thus translated : —
" Were anybody to buy fiddles, and collect a
number, being in no wise given to fiddling, nor
fond of music : or if, being no cobbler, he collected
awls and lasts, or, having no mind for sea-adven-
ture, bought sails, every one would call him a
madman, and deservedly. But what difference is
there between such a man and one who lays by
coins and gold, and docs not know how to use,
when he has got them ? "]
With which it is perhaps desirable also to give
Xenophon's statement, it being clearer than any
English one can be, owing to the power of the
general Gftek term for wealth, '' useable things."
[I have cut out the Greek because I can't be
troubled to correct the accents, and am always
nervous about them ; here it is in English, as well
as I can do it : —
"This being so, it follows that things are only
APPENDICES. 213
property to the man who knows how to use them ;
as flutes, for instance, are property to the man who
can pipe upon them respectably ; but to one who
knows not how to pipe, they are no property,
unless he can get rid of them advantageously. . . .
For if they are not sold, the flutes are no property
(being serviceable for nothing) ; but, sold, they be-
come property. To which Socrates made answer,
— 'and only then if he knows how to sell them,
for if he sell them to another man who cannot
play on them, still they are no property.'"]
APPENDIX IV.— (p. 38.)
The reader is to include here in the idea of
"Government," any branch of the Executive, or
even any body of private persons, entrusted with
the practical management of public interests un-
connected directly with their own personal ones.
In theoretical discussions of legislative interference
with political economy, it is usually, and of course
unnecessarily, assumed that Government must be
always of that form and force in which we have
been accustomed to see it; — that its abuses can
never be less, nor its wisdom greater, nor its
powers more numerous. But, practically, the custom
in most civilized countries is, for every man to de-
precate the interference of Government as long as
2 14 APPENDICES.
things tell for his personal advantage, and to call
for it when they cease to do so. The recjuest of the
Manchester Economists to be supplied with cotton
by Government (the system of supply and demand
having, for the time, fallen sorrowfully short of the
expectations of scientific persons from it), is an
interesting case in point. It were to be wished
that less wide and bitter suffering, suffering, too,
of the innocent, had been needed to force the
nation, or some part of it, to ask itself why a
body of men, already confessedly capable of
managing matters both military and divine, should
not be permitted, or even requested, at need, to
provide in some wise for sustenance as well as for
defence; and secure, if it might be, — (and it
might, I think, even the rather be),— purity of
bodily, as well as of spiritual, aliment? Why,
having made many roads for the passage of armies,
may they not make a few for the conveyance of
food ; and after organising, with applause, various
schemes of theological instruction for the Public,
organise, moreover, some methods of bodily
nourishment for them ? Or is the soul so much
less trustworthy in its instincts than the stomach,
that legislation is necessary for the one, but in-
applicable to the other ?
APPENDICES. 2 I 5
APPENDIX v.— (p. 104.)
I DEBATED with mysclf whether to make the note
on Homer longer by examining the typical meaning
of the shipwreck of Ulysses, and his escape from
Charybdis by help of her figtree ; but as I should
have had to go on to the lovely myth of Leu-
cothea's veil, and did not care to spoil this by a
hurried account of it, I left it for future examina-
tion j and, three days after the paper was published,
observed that the reviewers, with their customary
helpfulness, were endeavouring to throw the whole
subject back into confusion by dwelling on the
single (as they imagined) oversight. I omitted
also a note on the sense of the word Xvypbv, with
respect to the pharmacy of Circe, and herb-fields
of Helen (compare its use in Odyssey, xvii., 473,
etc.), which would farther have illustrated the
nature of the Circean power. But, not to be led
too far into the subtleties of these myths, observe
respecting them all, that even in very simple
parables, it is not always easy to attach indisputable
meaning to every part of them. I recollect some
years ago, throwing an assembly of learned persons
who had met to delight themselves with interpreta-
tions of the parable of the prodigal son, (interpre-
tations which had up to that moment gone very
smoothly), into mute indignation, by inadvertently
asking who the //^prodigal son was, and what was
2l6 APPENDICES.
to be learned by his example. The leading divine
of the company, Mr. Molyneux, at last explained
to mc tliat the unprodigal son was a lay figure, put
in for dramatic effect, to make the story prettier,
and that no note was to be taken of him. \V'^ithout,
however, admitting that Homer put in the last
escape of Ulysses merely to make his story prettier,
this is nevertheless true of all Greek myths, that
they have many opposite lights and shades ; they
are as changeful as opal, and like opal, usually
have one colour by reflected, and another by
transmitted light. But they are true jewels for
all that, and full of noble enchantment for those
who can use them ; for those who cannot, I am
content to repeat the words I wrote four years ago,
in the appendix to the Two Paths —
" The entire purpose of a great thinker may be
difficult to fathom, and we may be over and over
again more or less mistaken in guessing at his
meaning; but the real, profound, nay, quite
bottomless and unredeemable mistake, is the fool's
thought, that he had no meaning."
APPENDIX VL— (p. 12 1.)
The derivation of words is like that of rivers ;
there is one real source, usually small, unlikely,
and difficult to find, far up among the hills ; then,
APPENDICES. 217
as the word flows on and comes into service, it
takes in the force of other words from other
sources, and becomes quite another word — often
much more than one word, after the junction— a
word as it were of many waters, sometimes both
sweet and bitter. Thus the whole force of our
EngUsh " charity " depends on the guttural in
" charis " getting confused with the c of the Latin
" carus ; " thenceforward throughout the middle
ages, the two ideas ran on together, and both
got confused with St. Paul's ayccT'/;, which ex-
presses a different idea in all sorts of ways ; our
" charity " having not only brought in the entirely
foreign sense of almsgiving, but lost the essential
sense of contentment, and lost much more in
getting too far away from the " charis " of the final
gospel benedictions. For truly it is fine Christi-
anity we have come to, which, professing to expect
the perpetual grace or charity of its Founder,
has not itself grace or charity enough to hinder
it from overreaching its friends in sixpenny
bargains ; and which, supplicating evening and
morning the forgiveness of its own debts, goes
forth at noon to take its fellow-servants by the
throat, saying, — not merely " Pay me that thou
owest," but " Pay me that thou owest me not^
It is true that we sometimes wear Ophelia's rue
with a difference, and call it " Herb o' grace o'
Sundays," taking consolation out of the offertory
with — " Look, what he layeth out, it shall be paid
2 I 8 APPENDICES.
him again." Comfortable words indeed, and good
to set against the old royalty of Largesse —
Whose moste joie was, I wis,
When that she gave, and said, " Have this."
[I am glad to end, for this time, with these
lovely words of Chaucer. We have heard only
too much lately of " Indiscriminate charity," with
implied reproval, not of the Indiscrimination
merely, but of the Charity also. We have partly
succeeded in enforcing on the minds of the poor
the idea that it is disgraceful to receive ; and are
likely, without much difficulty, to succeed in per-
suading not a few of the rich that it is disgraceful
to give. But the political economy of a great
state makes both giving and receiving graceful j
and the political economy of true religion inter-
prets the saying that " it is more blessed to give
than to receive," not as the promise of reward in
another life for mortified selfishness in this, but
as pledge of bestowal upon us of that sweet
and better nature, which does not mortify itself
in giving.]
Brantwood, Coniston,
5/A October, 1871.
INDEX
INDEX
(The references are not to pages but to the sections which are common
to all editions of the book. The sections in the preface are, how-
ever added for the first time in this edition. Where the words
" ori'^. ess." vse. added in brackets after a reference, they indicate
that the passage referred to is peculiar to the original form of the work,
as it appeared in Fr user's Magazine under the title of " Essays in
Political Economy.")
Actions, right, seen in beauty of countenance, 6.
Aglaia, Charis, wife of Vulcan, loi.
Agricultiu'e, as dominion over land and sea (fi.xed and flowing
fields), i6 {orig. ess.).
,, volunteer, proposed, 149.
Ambition and love of money, Dante on, 93.
Ambrosia, not to be had without labour, 94.
America, Carlyle on, 124.
condition of, "the greatest railroad accident on
record," 124.
dollar-worship in, App. I. (orig. ess.).
,, e.xplosions in, 47, 56.
has no republic or institutions, 124.
loan in (1863), 155 ft.
,, slavery in, 131.
,, war in, 124 w. A. I. [orlg. ess.).
Ames, on monarchy and republics, quoted by Emerson, 124 ?!.
Apathy, modern, its baseness, 108.
Aphrodite, birth of, loi.
Apollo's rule, 01) TrXriyfj vlfxwv, 130.
Architecture, all house's to be well, before any finely, built, 157.
Archons and archie law, 1 10-17.
Aristocracy, government by, 123.
Aristophanes, /cd7n;Xot aairiSiav, 127.
Art, great, only possible in climates where life is in open air, 96.
may be a means to great wealth, 139 ?i.
modern, false basis of, 155.
works of, accumulated by a prosperous nation, 54.
,, econoiuical value of, 20.
included in list of things valuable, 15.
,, prices given for, 65.
02 MUNERA PULVERIS.
Art, works of, possession of, laws as to, 115.
Arve (Savoy), inundation of the, 147.
I, ,, miserable dwellinp^s in the plain of, 150 seq.
Athena's rule, ov irXriyrj vijxwv, 130.
Athens, purity of coinage, 77 n.
Avarice, Dante on, 88.
Austrians in Venice and the works of Tintoret (i85i),/;r/. 3, 9.
Author (i.) Personal: (2.) Teaching; (3.) Books of, quoted or
referred to : —
(i.) accuses himself of vanity, 100 w.
as a boy, at his father's table, hearing of national debt,
pref. 18.
cottage on plain of Arve, repaired by, 151.
Greek accents and, App. III.
servants of, would serve him for nothing, pref 12.
taking daguerreotypes at Venice, 77 n.
in Venice, 1851, //r/. 3.
checked in his work, 1863, pref. 20.
writes " Munera Pulveris" in Switzerland, 1862-3, wmtcr,
pref 22.
Brant wood, Oct. 5, 1871, App. VI.
on relief of Paris committee (1S71), pref. 10.
Denmark Hill, Nov. 25, 1^71, pref. 23.
(2.) Teaching, on prodigal and unpro'digal son, App. VI.
plans of, unfulfilled, 57 n.
political economy of, defined, /r*/. 13.
„ ,, ' does not put sentiment for
science, pref 13 ; 99
and 71.
,, ,, plan to write an exhaustive
treatise on, pref 20.
,, ,, recognition of true wealth
(Tintorets),/rc/ 3-4.
Utopian! 148.
,, „ weary of reiteratmg its
truths, 96 n.
Style of, affected concentration (" Munera
Pulveris '), pref 22.
,, uses metaphor for brevity, 83 n.
,, translates literally, 105 w.
,, use of words, 125 n.
teaching of, true, and his hope of its fulfil-
ment, 154.
(3 ) Books of, quoted or referred to —
Aratra Pentelici, Lect. IV., Idolatry, App. IT.
Fors Clavigera, aim of, pref 21.
,, notes on etymology in, 100 7/.
Letter X., 158 n.
Lectures on Art, on Tintoret, pref. 4.
INDEX. 223
Modern Painters, Vol. V. p. 21^5, faith and -wdOo},
App. VI.
Munera Pulveris, method of its argument, 43.
,, ,, original scope oi, //ty^. 20.
,, ,, criticism of, absurd, 69?^. App. III. V.
,, ,, dedicated to Carlyle, /;'(y". 22.
,, ,, Fraser s Magazine a.nil, pre/. 20 \ 94.
,, ,, style of, its faults, /;r/. 22.
,, ,, teaching of, the first English treatise
on true political economy, pnf. i.
,, ,, how written and when, /;-ocly and soul not really opposed, 6.
liooks, their economical value, 19. Sees. BibHoma7iia.
Buildings, their value in (i) permanent strengtli, (2) association
and beauty, 17.
Building land, modern view of suitable, 79.
British Association, on atjsorption of gold, 77 ti.
liritish Museum, a treasury, not a school, 115, 122.
,, ,, what it is and is not, 115, 122.
Caffirs, England and the, 97 ?i.
Canacd's falcon, 149 71.
Cancan, the modern &\\-\c&, pref. 4.
(■a])ital limits laboiu", untrue, 50.
Capitalists and foreign loans, /r*^ 19.
,, as mere money-chests, 38.
,, to do unselfish work, 147.
Caprice has no law, 34.
Caiactacus, 65.
Carlyle, author's main helper in work, pref. 22.
,, dedication of " Munera Pulveris " to, pi'ef. 22.
,, eulogy of his teaching, and its rejection, prcf. 23.
,, political economy of, /riy. 20.
,, quoted, on America, 124.
" Latter-day Pamphlets," 135, App. III.
,, " Past and Preseut," on permanence, 135, App. III.
,, ,, ,, onclothingandcotton, 158, App. III.
,, " Sartor Resartiis," App. III.
Carpentry. Sec s. Joiticr.
Ceijhnlopod, the (animal), 38 (orii^. ess.).
Charis, etymology of, loi v.
INDEX. 225
Charity, etymology of, and words connected with, App. VI.
,, indiscriminate, App. VI.
Charybdis, true meaning of the myth (Bacon on), 86, 93.
Chaucer, enigmatic, 87.
,, on birds, 149 n.
,, on largesse, App. VI.
,. villany of, 121 11.
Cheapness, no such thing as, without error or wrong, 62 ;/.
,, no excuse for bad things, 17 ;/.
,, of glutted market, a disease, 62 n.
Cheating our neighbours is possible, but is not life or natui e, 10.
Cherish, etymology of the word, 102.
Choir, etymology of the word, 102.
Christ washing disciples' feet, its meaning, loS.
Christianity, modern, and greed of money (" Pay me that thou
owest — not"), App. VI.
Churcla building, modern craze for, 157.
,, ,, old masons " logeurs du bon Dieu," 157.
Cid, the, his horse, 35.
Cicero's political economy, 2.
,, quoted, 60 fi.
,, ,, Catiline, " non aqua sed ruina," 124.
Circe, fable of, its meaning, 103.
,, not a Siren, her power and function, 91 seq. App. V.
Cities to have fields round them, 159.
Claudian's pearl, 159 {orig. ess.).
Clothing the poor, 155 seq.
Coinage, purity of, in noble states, 78 n. See s. Athens, Currency.
Commerce as the agency of exchange, 95, 98.
,, fury of modern, 153 ?i.
,, most important to northern countries, 95.
, , no profit in true, 99.
,, not degrading, loi.
,, the inhumanity of mercenary, 100.
,, the law of international, 97.
Competition to measure wages, a bestial theory, 136 n.
Consols. See s. Fimds.
Cornhill h[agazine and " Unto this 'LksX," pre/. 20.
Corruptio optimi, e.g., in commerce, 100.
Cost defined as the amount of labour necessary to obtain a
thing, 60.
,, intrinsic and effectual, 61.
,, is price, when demand is constant, 63,
,, the noblest things cost the least, 60.
Cotton, cheap, and rags common, Carlyle on, 158.
,, government asked to supply Manchester with, App. IV.
Countenance, beauty of, and Tightness of action, 6.
Cowley on birds, 149 n.
Croesus, 27.
2 26 MUNERA PULVERIS.
Credit means creed, 8i [on\^. ess. ft.).
, , -power of currency, 80.
Creed, use and meaning of the word, 8r (. ess. «.).
Crime, cost of, and of judgment, 116.
modern, a national disgrace, 108.
Criminals to do lowest forms of mechanical work, 109.
,, to work in mines, 159.
Critic law, its functions, 116.
Currency, bases of, better tlinn gold, 77 seq.
,, to be small, indestructible, valuable, 74 seq.
',', „ to be pure, 77.
,, credit-power of, on what dependent, 69.
,, defined, chief definition, 69 w. seq.
_j ,, "expression of price in any given article," 64.
[, ,, "the claim to equivalent of anything, any-
where, at any time," 70 seq.
,, transferable acknowledgment of debt, 81.
forced, is taxation in di.sguise, 78.
,, gold withdrawn from, its effect, 81 rt.
,, holders of the, 66.
,, increase of the, its effect on industry and wealth, 24.
,, often a form of taxation, 24.
,, ,, laws of, 21 seq.
,, medium of exchange, 66.
,, national habits as affecting, 67.
,, national store and, 8r seq.
,, national, and value of, 64 seq.
,, power of, fourfold (credit, real worth, exchange,
labour), 80 seq.
,, increased by constant exchange, 85.
purity of, 77 «.
,, soundness of = enlarging debt and means, 82.
,, transferableness of, 69.
true and false, distinct from strong and weak, 65.
,, value of, how affected, 58.
,, and its rise and fall, 41 seq.
and effectual value, 39.
vitality and feebleness of, how tested, 70.
wealth, and accumulation of, made possible by, 72.
Custom, establishment of a, 106.
noble and base, action and indolence, 107.
" hangs upon us like a weight," 107.
Dante, enigmas of, 87.
on avarice and prodigality, 88.
,, ,, fortune's ball in, 100 w.
,, the pow-r of money, 58.
,, use and abuse of riches, 88 seq.
,, usury, 88.
INDEX.
227
Dante, scorn of the populace, on what based, 109 n.
,, similes of, their truth, 58.
Quoted : —
Inf. vii., SS.
Inf. xi. Cahors (usury), gS n.
„ Plutus "gran nemico," 90, A. I. (i^ng-. ess.)
,, Sirens, go.
,, Siren of Riches, 90.
,, the death of Ulysses, 93.
Inf xvii., 88.
Paradi-e, 88.
Purg. xix., 88.
Dear, etymology of, loi n.
Death, desire to die rich, 153.
Debt and credit, duty and creed, 81 [orig ess. ;/.).
Deficiencies and efficiencies, 119.
Delphic oracle, irrux ewl Trrj/nari, 127 ?i.
Demand, economy not based on supply and, 53.
in political economy, defined as affecting price, 63.
supply and, Carlyle on, 158.
,, Manche:.ter cotton and, App. IV.
W'.at we ought to, an ethical question, 84.
Democracy and republic, distinct, 124.
,, illustrated by flight of beetles, 126.
Desire, the objects of right, alone are wealth, 34.
DldicisseJidc'/iU'r artes, 124. n. [orig. ess.).
Dieu et vwn droit, 113 n. (prig. ess.).
Dishonesty and speculation in finance, 79.
Divine Right, the true, 105.
Doge, meaning of, 125 n.
Draco, his name apt, 120.
Dreams of great poets and writers, 134.
Dress, lu.xury of, does it enrich a nation? j*;y/ 15 seq.
>, ,, instance of parents ruined Ijy their daughter's,
prcf. 16.
Duke, its meaning (ducal monarchy), 125 n.
Duty, use and meaning of the word, 81 {orig. ess. 71.).
Economy. See s. Political Eco?iomy.
Education, aim of true, 106.
II I, to teach men to do right, 130.
,, defined, not science or knowledge, buttraming of
character, 106.
II II peace, pity, and grace implied by, 108.
,, economy of words part of, loi n.
,, laws of, English feeling against, 112.
may develop inheiited qualities, 6.
Effort, labour is not mere, but suffering in effort, 59.
Emerson, quoted, on monarchy and republics, 124 n.
2 28 MUNERA PULVERIS.
Employment, laws of, 152.
,, practical rules for, 155.
England, early civil wars of, App. I. . ,
fear of France in, its annual cost, App. 1.
,' feeling in, against educational law, 112.
'', slavery in modern, 131. , .u ,
wealth and poverty of, do they balance each other 7 57.
Enigmas of great poets and writers, 87.
EcjuaHty, the cry for, not irreverence, but folly, 121.
Eciuivalcncc of money and money value, 40.
l'",iymol"gy, interest of, 100 11.
ICv'il never produces good, 33. . ,' ,• •.„,! „q
Exchange in commerce, costly, and therefore to be hmited, 98.
,, power of money, 80.
Excursion trains, 159.
Expenditure and exchange, distmct, 155 n.
„ selfish and unselfish, 147.
Fmth etymology and use of the word, 81 (orig. ess.). App.
V. VI. (ort\r. CSS.]. , ,.T / • \
works, and modern dispute on, App. \ I. (ong. ess.)
Fawcett's " Political Economy," national questions not touched
m,p-e/. 15.
on national debt and consols,
/>re/. 18.
,, on rent, pre/. 17.
Feat and defeat in labour, 59.
Fenelon, Life of, 153 n.
Fin--tr(-e, the barren, in Homer and Dante, 93.
r'inance, simple enough, to cool heads and honest hearts, 79.
Fine, and " fine" English and French, 134.
Fireworks, national store of, its value, 47.
Fish, clinil)ing perch, 126.
Food, economy of, 18.
Fors V. mors, 118.
,, words connected with, 100 «.
Fortune, acquiring of, a form of taxing the poor, 139.
making of sudden, 153 «.
,, the wheel of, 100 n.
France, fear of England, App. I.
German war with, 96 «. App. I. ".
luxury of, its example to England, pre/. 16.
Franchise, proposals for, to be universal, not equal, 129.
FrasersA/aXachie and " Munera Pulveris,"/r^/. 20, 94.
Fraud, loss of time spent in, 104.
Freedom, restraint and true, 103. , tit ; \
Free-trade, protection and encouragement, App. IV. {ong. ess.).
Funds, national, advantages of. pre/. 19 ; 38- ?ee s. National
store.
INDEX. 229
Geneva watches, and wealth, 49.
Goethe speaks in enigmas, 87.
Quoted : —
Faust, Tart II., Plutus in, 88.
Lemures, ' Wer hat das Haus so schleclit gebeaut?" 149.
Gold as a medium of currency, 74 seq.
effect of withdrawing it from the currency, 81 11.
labour wasted in obtaining, 75 n.
use of, only in arts (ornament), not for money, j-] n.
value of, coined and uncoined, 69.
,, its depreciation, 76.
Good and evil are fixed and absolute, 32.
Government, always costly, 127.
,, by council, visible and invisible, 122.
,, consists in custom, laws, and councils, 106.
,, firmness more than form of, 125.
,, forms of, monarchy, democracy, oligarchy, 123.
,, "for forms of government . . ." its truth shown,
125.
,, history of a, not always that of the nation, 122.
,, interference of, when objected to, when called for,
App. IV.
, , names of different, confused and misused nowadays,
123 seq.
,, national store of wealth to be kept by, 41.
,, policy of all (whatever its form), " the wise to rule
the unwise," 125.
,, raihvays, &c. , to be under, 128.
Graces, the, their function, &c. , loi seq.
Gratis and gratia, 100.
Great men go too far in goodness, and so lose influence,
153 "•
Greek myths, full of meaning, App. V.
,, tragedians, enigmatic utterances of, 87.
Habit, meaning of the word, 106.
Happiness, a cause and effect of life, 5.
Heredity of moral and physical qualities, 6.
Herbert, George, quoted : —
" Lift up thy head," &c., 89.
"Correct thy passion," &c., 103.
Hincksey diggings, foreshadowed, 109, 149.
Histoire d'une BouchtJe de Pain, quoted, 91.
History, a nation's, not always that of its government, 122.
Holy Ghost, means " helpful and honest," loi n.
Homer, enigmatic, 87.
,, Plato's distrust of, 87.
,, scorn of tlie populace in, on what based, 109 n.
230 MUNERA PULVERIS.
Homer, quotpd or referred to : —
Arete, 134.
Circe and the swine, 91.
Hepha;stus and Venus, its meaning, 101.
Phaeacia, meaning of, loi.
Scylla and Charybdis, meaning of, 93-4.
Ulysses' shipwreck, App. V.
Sirens, 90, 92.
lis 6'oT OTTuptl'bs, &c., 124 71.
Honesty, the l^est policy, truth of, 104.
Horace, quoted : —
pinguis Phaeaxque, loi.
odi profanum, 109 «.
vaga arena— numero carentis, \ / • n
aniino rotundum percupisseV / 34 v s- •)
Si quis emat citharas, &c., App. III.
Horse-mania, English, why no word for, as for biblio-mania, 65.
Idolatry, of things and of the phantasm of good, App. H.
Ignorance, no science of, 34.
Ill-th and health, 37.
Indignation, true punishment and just, 120-1.
Influence of men, invisible, 122.
Iniquity, its general meaning, no n.
Injury, defined, the worst, unconscious and due to indolence,
117-8.
Instinct of reverence and wrath, i2t.
Instruments, their value in what, 17.
International fears — one nation of another, App. I.
,, values, and their one law, 96 n. 97.
Inundation, as illustrating political economy and wages, 141.
,, of the Arve (Savoy), scheme to check, 147.
JfJiNER, English, at work on London house, useless precision,
151-
Judge, his offices of reward and punishment, in.
Justice, personal and purchased, 116.
,, principles of, and education, App. I.
Kings as lawgivers, in.
,, can do no wrong (in what sense true), 113.
,, "divine right" of, 113 [orii^. ess. n.).
,, "rex eris si recte facies," 105.
Labour, capital limits, untrue, 50.
,, defined as the contest of man with an opposite, 59.
,, is not effort, but suffering in effort, 59.
,, ,, "that quantity ofour toil which we die in," 59.
INDEX. 231
Labour, division of, its principles illustrated, 63. ^ ,. . ,
economy of, not sale, to be considered by I oluical
Economy, 59.
kinds of, in different climates, 96.
law of, in youth and age, 152.
manual (especially agricultural) to be done by upper
classes, 109.
money's power over, 80.
not to be bought or sold, 59.
the origin of value, /r^. 5.
Laissez faire and aller, baseness of modern, 108.
,, ,, doctrine, App. I.
,, ,, Carlyle on, 158.
Land, best, that most beautiful in men, animals, and flowers, 16.
its enjoyment cannot, like money, be monopolized, 85.
ownership of, /;' ,, Dante, Shakspeare, and Homer on, ib. 71.
i> I. Sec s. jSavavcria.
Medicine, ihj economy of, 18.
Mens Sana in corpo:e sano, the true doctrine, 6.
Merchants, agents of exchange, not to look for large profits, 98.
Mercy and merces, 100.
Meristic law fixes what all should and do possess, 114.
Merit, a better study than demerit, 119.
Mill, J. S. , " Political Economy," quoted : —
def. of wealth, /nr/C 1.
on currency, Book iii. cap. 7, 77 n.
Milton, inferior to Homer and Dante, 87.
Quoted : —
"Thrones, Dominations, &c.," 105.
Mines, criminals to work in the, 159.
,, to be made safe, 159.
Misery of the poor, a national disgrace, 108.
Molyneux (Rev. — ), on parable of the prodigal son, App. V.
Monarchy and tyranny, 133.
,, compared to a ship, republic to a raft, 124 71.
Money, accumulation of, is not political economy, 4.
., ,, its temptations, 85-6.
,, credit-power of, 58 and 71.
,, defined, a documentary legal claim to wealth, 21.
,, ill-gotten, ill spent, 86.
its enjoyment, secure and solitary, 85.
,, its study, II.
,, love of, founded on a desire for things, 65 «.
INDEX. 233
Money, modern greed of, 153.
,, love of, inconsistent with high moral training, 108,
,, -making, men to stop when they have enough, 153.
,, possessor of mucli, generally has no fixed tastes, 85.
,, property and, which the end, which the means? 83.
,, to be spent by those who make it, 153.
,, value of, how affected, 58.
,, ,, altered by change in national character, and
why, 65.
,, ,, changes in, 22 seq.
,, ought not to be intrinsically valuable with civilized
people, 25.
,, is not wealth, 21, 36. See s. Currency.
Museums, free to be established, 115.
Napoleon I. on usury, 98.
Nations, divisible into lordly and servile classes, 109.
,, government and, correlatively noble, 122.
,, happiness of, not dependent on its numbers, 3.
National character, how indicated (its customs), 106.
,, ,, individual influences on, 122.
,, credit, to pay ready money like individuals, 38 n.
,, debt and national s\.o\-e, pref. seq. 18 seqq.
,, ,, does it enrich a nation, /r^y; 15, 18.
,, ,, would the discovery of a mountain of gold
efface it ? 76.
,, economy, on what dependent, 54.
,, expenditure and taxation, right objects of, 156.
,, health, compared to a great lake or sea, 109 ri.
,, loss, explained, 155 Ji.
,, store and wealth, 40, 44.
,, ,, its nature and holders, 46 seq.
,, ,, and population, 54.
,, training, high, what it implies, 108.
National gallery, a treasm-y, not a school, of art, 115.
Nightingale's song " Domine Labia," 149 n.
Oligarchy, 123.
Orinoco, 37.
Pall Mall Gazette, Oct. 27, 1871 (Jules Simon on Paris),
xviii. 16.
Paris, siege of, referred to, ix. 6.
,, ,, relief of, 1871 committee, xii. 10.
Parliament, Houses of, waste of labour, 157.
Pay, amount of, asked for by the best men, is small, 60 n.
{orig. CSS. ).
,, and profit distinct, 98 ri.
,, work that will not pay in money, but in life, 160.
-'34
MUNERA PULVERIS.
Peace, grace essential to, loo.
Pelicans and climbing perch, 126.
Philotini(5. See s. Spenser.
Phlegethon, sands of, 79.
Plato's enigmas, 87.
distrust of Homer, 87.
imagination quenched by his reason, 87.
political economy of, 2.
Sirens in, 90.
usury in, 98.
(luoted, " Laws," Book i, on Plutus, 88.
,, 2, on choirs.
dancing, &.C.,
Republic,"
102 w.
5, on money,
153 »•
the slave who wants to marry his
master's daughter, 134.
Book 2, vQiv Trb\LS, 91.
,, 3, on money, 89.
,, 4, on political evils and their
remedies, 98.
,, ,, ,, ,, 6 seq., on mechanical labour,
109 n.
Plinlimmon, plant with larch, 149.
Plutus, god of riches, blind, in Plato, Dante, Spenser, and
Goethe, and in Dante, dumb, 88, A. I. (orig. ess.).
Poets, the great, speak in enigmas, 87.
,, ,, their visionary language about great truths
deprecated, 87.
Political Economy, modern, described, 2.
,, faith in, tested, 128.
, , does not deal with national dress,
rent, debt, &c. , pre/. 15.
,, looks only at the exchange value of
wealth, pref. 7.
,, has never dealt with intrinsic value,
pref. 8.
,, fallacy that labour is a saleable
commodity, 59.
,, in America, 124.
true, defined, /;r/; i, 13.
,, does not give sentiment for science,
pref. 13.
,, ethical postulates o^,pref. 13, 81, 84.
,, founded on industry, frugality, and
discretion, //-(?/. 13.
,, knowledge of fine arts necessary to,
pref I.
,, its end, to multiply noble life, not
money, 4, 7.
INDEX. 235
Political Economy, true, not concerned with varying worth of
bullion, 25.
,, ,, ,, to examine OTorrf/results of the laws of
wealth, pref. 21.
,, ,, ,, to maintain a relation between supply
and demand, //-(.y. 11.
., Sees. Author {Books, " Mutie?-aPulveris"),
Bacon, Books, Capital, Capitalists, Cheap-
ness, Commerce, Competition , Cost, Credit,
Currency, Demand, Dishonesty, Dress,
Employment, Exchange, Expettditui-e,
Fawcett, Finance, Free-trade, Funds,
Gold, Labour, Land, Loa?is, Luxury,
Mechanical Work, Merchants, Mill (/.
S.), Money, National Character, Posses-
sion, Poverty, Price, Production, Profit,
Property, Rich, Riches, Supply, tjse,
Usury, Value, Wages, War, Wealth,
Worth.
Political evils, the remedy for, in change of character, not of
laws, 98.
Poor, the, directed by the rich, 29.
,, ,, governed by the rich, 146.
,, ,, number of, in relation to the rich, 138.
Pope, quoted : —
" For forms of government," &c., 125.
Epistle to Lord Bathurst, on currency, 77 n.
Population, extent of, in relation to national store, 54.
wealth, 55.
Portion, words connected with, loi 71.
Possession, defined, the legal right to keep what you have
worked for, 141 and n.
,, gfuardianship and, distinct, 37.
,, useless without use, 37.
Poverty, always criminal, English doctrine, 136 71.
,, merely relative, 26.
,, wTetched and blessed, 56 n.
Price, defined, 62 7i.
,, is cost, if demand be constant, 63.
,, on what dependent (human will), 62.
,, one just value and, for everything, 62 w.
Production, ease of, only valuable so far as it enables the main-
tenance of more population, 62 n.
Profit, none, in true commerce, 99.
Property, fivefold, power over, 37.
,, money and, which the end, and which the means?
83-
,, security of. the first end of law, 67.
Punishment, true, in lundrance, 120 n.
236
MUNERA PULVERIS.
Pyramid of gold may be worthless, 4.
Pyrrhon's answer, 132.
Race, faculties dependent on, 106.
Railways, companies are turnpike keepers, 128.
,, excursion trains, government control of, 157,
,, quadruple lines needed, 128.
,, trains, 157.
,, station architecture, 120.
Recreate, force of the word, 9.
Religion, plain speaking on, objected to, loi n.
Rent, does a landtax enrich a nation? pn-f. 15, rj.
Republic compared to a rait (Emerson), 124.
,, distinct from democracy, 124.
,, res publica and privata, 124.
Reverence, instinctive, just, and true reward, 120-1.
Revolution, how caused, 109 71.
Reward, true, is at once a help and a crown, 120 n.
Rich direct the poor, 29.
,, govern the poor, 146.
,, relation to poor, 136 seq.
Riches, does the mode of their distribution affect their nature, 27.
of one man involve the subjection of others, 145.
relativity of, 26.
,, selection, direction, and provision, 29.
their study, ir.
to be collected and administered by economists, 27, 29.
Right, a man's, defined, 118.
,, and wrong are life and death to man, 9.
Royal means right doing, 113.
St. John's locusts, 130.
Sale is not commerce, 99.
Savings, tlie use of a man's, 152. See s. Death.
School, true meaning of, 109 n.
Scorpion whips, our pleasant vices, 130.
Scylla and Cliarybdis, meaning of, 93.
Sensibility defined, 106.
Servants, all who work for pay are, 145.
Shakspeare, his dreams, divine shadows of true facts, 134.
,, speaks in enigmas, 87.
,, the leader of English intellect, 100.
,, his scorn of the populace, on what based, 109 n.
,, his nomenclature, 100 n. 134 n.
I. M ,, (jreek names, \oo n. 134 «.
Referred to : —
Cymbeline, lachimo. meaning of name, 134 «.
,, Leonatus, 134 «.
,, moral of, 134 «.
INDEX. 237
Shakspeare, quoted, continued : —
Hamlet, meaning of thename (home), 134 n.
„ Ophelia = serviceableness, 134 «.
„ quoted, "A ministeiing angel," &c. 134 n.
J, ,, " Herb o' grace o' Sundays," App. VI.
King Lear, Cordelia = heart-lady, 100 u.
quoted :
V. 3. " our pleasant vices . . . scourge us.'
Merchant of Venice, its lesson, 100.
„ ,, meaning of, 134.
,, ,, Portia = portion, 100 and n.
„ ,, Antonio, nobility of, 100.
,, ,, Shylock, 100.
Much Ado about Nothing, Beatrice, meaning of, 134 ti.
,, ,, Benedict, meaning of, 134 «.
Othello, catastrophe of, how caused, 134 n.
,, meaning of name, 134 n,
,, Desdemona, meaning of, 134 «.
,, lago, meaning of, 134 «.
Tempest, analysis of, 134 seq.
,, Ariel = generous faithful service, 133-4.
., Caliban, 133-4-
,, and slavery' and freedom, 133-4
,5 Miranda " the wonderful,'' 134.
,, Prospero = hope, 134.
,, Sycorax = swine-raven, 134 and «.
quoted :
dew brushed with raven's feather, 134.
incensed seas and shores, 134.
put a girdle round the earth, 134.
fetches dew . . . asleep, 134.
thought is free, 134.
full fathom, &c. , 134.
come unto these yellow sands, 134.
"courtesied," 134.
all but mariners, 134.
with bemocked-at, &c., 134.
where the bee sucks, 134.
side stitches, &c., 134.
that's a br.ave god, &c., 134.
Two Gentlemen of Verona, Proteus, name, 134 n.
,, ,, Valentine, name, 134 «.
Winter's Tale, Hermione, name, 134 n.
,, ,, Perdita = lost lady, 134 «.
Ships, English, with defences v. liquid fire, 127.
Sirens or pleasm'es, Bacon's view of, 90.
,, ,, are really desires, 90.
,, and Circe, distinct, 92.
,, their destructive power, 92.
Sillar, W. C, on usury, 98 and «.
Simon, M. Jules, on Paris, xviii. 16.
Slavery, American and English methods of, 131.
modern, examples of, 124 n.
238 MUNERA PULVERIS.
Slavery, not a political institution, 133.
,, light and wrong, considered, 130 seq.
,, true nature of, in its cramping, 134.
Socialism, modern, pref. 21.
Soldiers, men are ready to die, but not to spend money for
their country, 148.
Soul and body, not really opposed, 6.
Speculation = peculation, 79,
evils of, 153 n.
Spenser quoted, 93.
,, his Philotimd, 93.
,, Pauus, 88.
Splendour of living, what it involves to others, 145.
Sport, shooting of birds, 149.
State, maintenance of a, dclined, 3.
Steam-agriculture, 149.
,, -power, its true use, 159.
Store, national, in relation to the currency, 81 seq.
Stork and frogs, fable of, and tyranny, 126.
Streams, not to be defiled, 115.
Success, under competition, its meaning, 139.
Supply and demand, fallacy of (siege of Paris), /r^?/! 9 seq.
II ,, results of (Paris print-shops), viii. 4.
,, ,, doctrine, 124.
Taxation, currencies may hz disguised, 78.
Tennant, Sir Emerson, " Ceylon " quoted, 126.
Times, June 4, 1862, on killing of birds, 149 n.
,, Dec. 25, 1862, on modern civilization and revolu-
tion, 108 n.
,, Feb. 4, 1863, on average earnings of the poor, 124 n.
Tintorct, author's estimate of, i&^i-ji, p)-e/. 4.
,, pictures of, and Paris lithographs, /;-