148. I may interrupt myself for a moment to give you an instance of what I mean. The most wretched houses of the poor in London often pay ten or fifteen per cent. to the landlord; and I have known an instance of sanitary legislation being hindered, to the loss of many hundreds of lives, in order that the rents of a nobleman, derived from the necessities of the poor, might not be diminished. And it is a curious thing to me to see Mr. J. S. Mill foaming at the mouth, and really afflicted conscientiously, because he supposes one man to have been unjustly hanged, while by his own failure, (I believe, wilful failure)[A] in stating clearly to the public one of the first elementary truths of the science he professes, he is aiding and abetting the commission of the cruelest possible form of murder on many thousands of persons yearly, for the sake simply of putting money into the pockets of the landlords. I felt this evil so strongly that I bought, in the worst part of London, one freehold and one leasehold property, consisting of houses inhabited by the lowest poor; in order to try what change in their comfort and habits I could effect by taking only a just rent, but that firmly. The houses of the leasehold pay me five per cent.; the families that used to have one room in them have now two; and are more orderly and hopeful besides; and there is a surplus still on the rents they pay after I have taken my five per cent., with which, if all goes well, they will eventually be able to buy twelve years of the lease from me. The freehold pays three per cent., with similar results in the comfort of the tenant. This is merely an example of what might be done by firm State action in such matters.

[A] See Sec. 156.

149. Next, of wholly unjustifiable rents. These are for things which are not, and which it is criminal to consider as, personal or exchangeable property. Bodies of men, land, water, and air, are the principal of these things.

Parenthetically, may I ask you to observe, that though a fearless defender of some forms of slavery, I am no defender of the slave trade. It is by a blundering confusion of ideas between governing men, and trading in men, and by consequent interference with the restraint, instead of only with the sale, that most of the great errors in action have been caused among the emancipation men. I am prepared, if the need be clear to my own mind, and if the power is in my hands, to throw men into prison, or any other captivity—to bind them or to beat them—and force them, for such periods as I may judge necessary, to any kind of irksome labor: and on occasion of desperate resistance, to hang or shoot them. But I will not sell them.

150. Bodies of men, or women, then (and much more, as I said before, their souls), must not be bought or sold. Neither must land, nor water, nor air, these being the necessary sustenance of men's bodies and souls.

Yet all these may, on certain terms, be bound, or secured in possession, to particular persons under certain conditions. For instance, it may be proper, at a certain time, to give a man permission to possess land, as you give him permission to marry; and farther, if he wishes it and works for it, to secure to him the land needful for his life; as you secure his wife to him; and make both utterly his own, without in the least admitting his right to buy other people's wives, or fields, or to sell his own.

151. And the right action of a State respecting its land is, indeed, to secure it in various portions to those of its citizens who deserve to be trusted with it, according to their respective desires and proved capacities; and after having so secured it to each, to exercise only such vigilance over his treatment of it as the State must give also to his treatment of his wife and servants; for the most part leaving him free, but interfering in cases of gross mismanagement or abuse of power. And in the case of great old families, which always ought to be, and in some measure, however decadent, still truly are, the noblest monumental architecture of the kingdom, living temples of sacred tradition and hero's religion, so much land ought to be granted to them in perpetuity as may enable them to live thereon with all circumstances of state and outward nobleness; but their income must in no wise be derived from the rents of it, nor must they be occupied (even in the most distant or subordinately administered methods), in the exaction of rents. That is not noblemen's work. Their income must be fixed, and paid them by the State, as the King's is.

152. So far from their land being to them a source of income, it should be, on the whole, costly to them, great part of it being kept in conditions of natural grace, which return no rent but their loveliness; and the rest made, at whatever cost, exemplary in perfection of such agriculture as develops the happiest peasant life;[A] agriculture which, as I will show you hereafter, must reject the aid of all mechanism except that of instruments guided solely by the human hand, or by animal, or directly natural forces; and which, therefore, cannot compete for profitableness with agriculture carried on by aid of machinery.

[A] Compare 'Fors Clavigera,' Letter XXI., page 22.

And now for the occupation of this body of men, maintained at fixed perennial cost of the State.

153. You know I said I should want no soldiers of special skill or pugnacity, for all my boys would be soldiers. But I assuredly want captains of soldiers, of special skill and pugnacity. And also, I said I should strongly object to the appearance of any lawyers in my territory; meaning, however, by lawyers, people who live by arguing about law,—not people appointed to administer law; and people who live by eloquently misrepresenting facts—not people appointed to discover and plainly represent them.

Therefore, the youth of this landed aristocracy would be trained, in my schools, to these two great callings, not by which, but in which, they are to live.

They would be trained, all of them, in perfect science of war, and in perfect science of essential law. And from their body should be chosen the captains and the judges of England, its advocates, and generally its State officers, all such functions being held for fixed pay (as already our officers of the Church and army are paid), and no function connected with the administration of law ever paid by casual fee. And the head of such family should, in his own right, having passed due (and high) examination in the science of law, and not otherwise, be a judge, law-ward or Lord, having jurisdiction both in civil and criminal cases, such as our present judges have, after such case shall have been fully represented before, and received verdict from, a jury, composed exclusively of the middle or lower orders, and in which no member of the aristocracy should sit. But from the decision of these juries, or from the Lord's sentence, there should be a final appeal to a tribunal, the highest in the land, held solely in the King's name, and over which, in the capital, the King himself should preside, and therein give judgment on a fixed number of days in each year;—and, in other places and at other times, judges appointed by election (under certain conditions) out of any order of men in the State (the election being national, not provincial): and all causes brought before these judges should be decided, without appeal, by their own authority; not by juries. This, then, recasting it for you into brief view, would be the entire scheme of state authorities:—

154. (1) The King: exercising, as part both of his prerogative and his duty, the office of a supreme judge at stated times in the central court of appeal of his kingdom.

(2) Supreme judges appointed by national election; exercising sole authority in courts of final appeal.

(3) Ordinary judges, holding the office hereditarily under conditions; and with power to add to their number (and liable to have it increased if necessary by the King's appointment); the office of such judges being to administer the national laws under the decision of juries.

(4) State officers charged with the direction of public agency in matters of public utility.

(5) Bishops, charged with offices of supervision and aid, to family by family, and person by person.

(6) The officers of war, of various ranks.

(7) The officers of public instruction, of various ranks.

I have sketched out this scheme for you somewhat prematurely, for I would rather have conducted you to it step by step, and as I brought forward the reasons for the several parts of it; but it is, on other grounds, desirable that you should have it to refer to, as I go on.

155. Without depending anywise upon nomenclature, yet holding it important as a sign and record of the meanings of things, I may tell you further that I should call the elected supreme judges, "Princes"; the hereditary judges, "Lords"; and the officers of public guidance, "Dukes"; and that the social rank of these persons would be very closely correspondent to that implied by such titles under our present constitution; only much more real and useful. And in conclusion of this letter, I will but add, that if you, or other readers, think it idle of me to write or dream of such things; as if any of them were in our power, or within possibility of any near realization, and above all, vain to write of them to a workman at Sunderland: you are to remember what I told you at the beginning, that I go on with this part of my subject in some fulfilment of my long-conceived plan, too large to receive at present any deliberate execution from my failing strength; (being the body of the work to which 'Munera Pulveris' was intended merely as an introduction;) and that I address it to you because I know that the working men of England must, for some time, be the only body to which we can look for resistance to the deadly influence of moneyed power.

I intend, however, to write to you at this moment one more letter, partly explanatory of minor details necessarily omitted in this, and chiefly of the proper office of the soldier; and then I must delay the completion of even this poor task until after the days have turned, for I have quite other work to do in the brightness of the full-opened spring.

156. P.S.—As I have used somewhat strong language, both here and elsewhere, of the equivocations of the economists on the subject of rent, I had better refer you to one characteristic example. You will find in paragraph 5th and 6th of Book II., chap. 2, of Mr. Mill's 'Principles,' that the right to tenure of land is based, by his admission, only on the proprietor's being its improver.

Without pausing to dwell on the objection that land cannot be improved beyond a certain point, and that, at the reaching of that point, farther claim to tenure would cease, on Mr. Mill's principle—take even this admission, with its proper subsequent conclusion, that "in no sound theory of private property was it ever contemplated that the proprietor of land should be merely a sinecurist quartered on it." Now, had that conclusion been farther followed, it would have compelled the admission that all rent was unjustifiable which normally maintained any person in idleness; which is indeed the whole truth of the matter. But Mr. Mill instantly retreats from this perilous admission; and after three or four pages of discussion (quite accurate for its part) of the limits of power in management of the land itself (which apply just as strictly to the peasant proprietor as to the cottier's landlord), he begs the whole question at issue in one brief sentence, slipped cunningly into the middle of a long one which appears to be telling all the other way, and in which the fatal assertion (of the right to rent) nestles itself, as if it had been already proved,—thus—I italicize the unproved assertion in which the venom of the entire falsehood is concentrated.

"Even in the case of cultivated land, a man whom, though only one among millions, the law permits to hold thousands of acres as his single share, is not entitled to think that all is given to him to use and abuse, and deal with it as if it concerned nobody but himself. The rents or profits which he can obtain from it are his, and his only; but with regard to the land, in everything which he abstains from doing, he is morally bound, and should, whenever the case admits, be legally compelled to make his interest and pleasure consistent with the public good."

157. I say, this sentence in italics is slipped cunningly into the long sentence, as if it were of no great consequence; and above I have expressed my belief that Mr. Mill's equivocations on this subject are wilful. It is a grave accusation; but I cannot, by any stretch of charity, attribute these misrepresentations to absolute dulness and bluntness of brain, either in Mr. Mill or his follower, Mr. Fawcett. Mr. Mill is capable of immense involuntary error; but his involuntary errors are usually owing to his seeing only one or two of the many sides of a thing; not to obscure sight of the side he does see. Thus his 'Essay on Liberty' only takes cognizance of facts that make for liberty, and of none that make for restraint. But in its statement of all that can be said for liberty, it is so clear and keen, that I have myself quoted it before now as the best authority on that side. And, if arguing in favor of Rent, absolutely, and with clear explanation of what it was, he had then defended it with all his might, I should have attributed to him only the honest shortsightedness of partisanship; but when I find his defining sentences full of subtle entanglement and reserve—and that reserve held throughout his treatment of this particular subject,—I cannot, whether I utter the suspicion or not, keep the sense of wilfulness in the misrepresentation from remaining in my mind. And if there be indeed ground for this blame, and Mr. Mill, for fear of fostering political agitation,[A] has disguised what he knows to be the facts about rent, I would ask him as one of the leading members of the Jamaica Committee, which is the greater crime, boldly to sign warrant for the sudden death of one man, known to be an agitator, in the immediate outbreak of such agitation, or, by equivocation in a scientific work, to sign warrants for the deaths of thousands of men in slow misery, for fear of an agitation which has not begun; and if begun, would be carried on by debate, not by the sword?

[A] With at last the natural consequences of cowardice,—nitro-glycerine and fire-balls! Let the upper classes speak the truth about themselves boldly, and they will know how to defend themselves fearlessly. It is equivocation in principle, and dereliction from duty, which melt at last into tears in a mob's presence.—(Dec. 16th, 1867.)



LETTER XXIV.

THE OFFICE OF THE SOLDIER.

April 22, 1867.

158. I must once more deprecate your probable supposition that I bring forward this ideal plan of State government, either with any idea of its appearing, to our present public mind, practicable even at a remote period, or with any positive and obstinate adherence to the particular form suggested. There are no wiser words among the many wise ones of the most rational and keen-sighted of old English men of the world, than these:—

"For forms of government let fools contest; That which is best administered is best."

For, indeed, no form of government is of any use among bad men; and any form will work in the hands of the good; but the essence of all government among good men is this, that it is mainly occupied in the production and recognition of human worth, and in the detection and extinction of human unworthiness; and every Government which produces and recognizes worth, will also inevitably use the worth it has found to govern with; and therefore fall into some approximation to such a system as I have described. And, as I told you, I do not contend for names, nor particular powers—though I state those which seem to me most advisable; on the contrary, I know that the precise extent of authorities must be different in every nation at different times, and ought to be so, according to their circumstances and character; and all that I assert with confidence is the necessity, within afterwards definable limits, of some such authorities as these; that is to say,

159. I. An observant one:—by which all men shall be looked after and taken note of.

II. A helpful one, from which those who need help may get it.

III. A prudential one, which shall not let people dig in wrong places for coal, nor make railroads where they are not wanted; and which shall also, with true providence, insist on their digging in right places for coal, in a safe manner, and making railroads where they are wanted.

IV. A martial one, which will punish knaves and make idle persons work.

V. An instructive one, which shall tell everybody what it is their duty to know, and be ready pleasantly to answer questions if anybody asks them.

VI. A deliberate and decisive one, which shall judge by law, and amend or make law;

VII. An exemplary one, which shall show what is loveliest in the art of life.

You may divide or name those several offices as you will, or they may be divided in practice as expediency may recommend; the plan I have stated merely puts them all into the simplest forms and relations.

160. You see I have just defined the martial power as that "which punishes knaves and makes idle persons work." For that is indeed the ultimate and perennial soldiership; that is the essential warrior's office to the end of time. "There is no discharge in that war." To the compelling of sloth, and the scourging of sin, the strong hand will have to address itself as long as this wretched little dusty and volcanic world breeds nettles, and spits fire. The soldier's office at present is indeed supposed to be the defense of his country against other countries; but that is an office which—Utopian as you may think the saying—will soon now be extinct. I say so fearlessly, though I say it with wide war threatened, at this moment, in the East and West. For observe what the standing of nations on their defense really means. It means that, but for such armed attitude, each of them would go and rob the other; that is to say, that the majority of active persons in every nation are at present—thieves. I am very sorry that this should still be so; but it will not be so long. National exhibitions, indeed, will not bring peace; but national education will, and that is soon coming. I can judge of this by my own mind, for I am myself naturally as covetous a person as lives in this world, and am as eagerly-minded to go and steal some things the French have got, as any housebreaker could be, having clue to attractive spoons. If I could by military incursion carry off Paul Veronese's "Marriage in Cana," and the "Venus Victrix," and the "Hours of St. Louis," it would give me the profoundest satisfaction to accomplish the foray successfully; nevertheless, being a comparatively educated person, I should most assuredly not give myself that satisfaction, though there were not an ounce of gunpowder, nor a bayonet, in all France. I have not the least mind to rob anybody, however much I may covet what they have got; and I know that the French and British public may and will, with many other publics, be at last brought to be of this mind also; and to see farther that a nation's real strength and happiness do not depend on properties and territories, nor on machinery for their defense; but on their getting such territory as they have, well filled with none but respectable persons. Which is a way of infinitely enlarging one's territory, feasible to every potentate; and dependent no wise on getting Trent turned, or Rhine-edge reached.

161. Not but that, in the present state of things, it may often be soldiers' duty to seize territory, and hold it strongly; but only from banditti, or savage and idle persons.

Thus, both Calabria and Greece ought to have been irresistibly occupied long ago. Instead of quarreling with Austria about Venice, the Italians ought to have made a truce with her for ten years, on condition only of her destroying no monuments, and not taxing Italians more than Germans; and then thrown the whole force of their army on Calabria, shot down every bandit in it in a week, and forced the peasantry of it into honest work on every hill-side, with stout and immediate help from the soldiers in embanking streams, building walls, and the like; and Italian finance would have been a much pleasanter matter for the King to take account of by this time; and a fleet might have been floating under Garganus strong enough to sweep every hostile sail out of the Adriatic, instead of a disgraced and useless remnant of one, about to be put up to auction.

And similarly, we ought to have occupied Greece instantly, when they asked us, whether Russia liked it or not; given them an English king, made good roads for them, and stout laws; and kept them, and their hills and seas, with righteous shepherding of Arcadian fields, and righteous ruling of Salaminian wave, until they could have given themselves a Greek king of men again; and obeyed him, like men.

April 24.

162. It is strange that just before I finish work for this time, there comes the first real and notable sign of the victory of the principles I have been fighting for, these seven years. It is only a newspaper paragraph, but it means much. Look at the second column of the 11th page of yesterday's 'Pall Mall Gazette,' The paper has taken a wonderful fit of misprinting lately (unless my friend John Simon has been knighted on his way to Weimar, which would be much too right and good a thing to be a likely one); but its straws of talk mark which way the wind blows perhaps more early than those of any other journal—and look at the question it puts in that page, "Whether political economy be the sordid and materialistic science some account it, or almost the noblest on which thought can be employed?" Might not you as well have determined that question a little while ago, friend Public? and known what political economy was, before you talked so much about it?

But, hark, again—"Ostentation, parental pride and a host of moral" (immoral?) "qualities must be recognized as among the springs of industry; political economy should not ignore these, but, to discuss them, it must abandon its pretensions to the precision of a pure science."

163. Well done the 'Pall Mall'! Had it written "Prudence and parental affection," instead of "Ostentation and parental pride," "must be recognized among the springs of industry," it would have been still better; and it would then have achieved the expression of a part of the truth, which I put into clear terms in the first sentence of 'Unto this Last,' in the year 1862—which it has thus taken five years to get half way into the public's head.

"Among the delusions which at different periods have possessed themselves of the minds of large masses of the human race, perhaps the most curious—certainly the least creditable—is the modern soi-disant science of political economy, based on the idea that an advantageous code of social action may be determined, irrespectively of the influence of social affection."

Look also at the definition of skill, p. 87.

"Under the term 'skill' I mean to include the united force of experience, intellect, and passion, in their operation on manual labor, and under the term 'passion' to include the entire range of the moral feelings."

164. I say half way into the public's head, because you see, a few lines further on, the 'Pall Mall' hopes for a pause "half way between the rigidity of Ricardo and the sentimentality of Ruskin."

With one hand on their pocket, and the other on their heart! Be it so for the present; we shall see how long this statuesque attitude can be maintained; meantime, it chances strangely—as several other things have chanced while I was writing these notes to you—that they should have put in that sneer (two lines before) at my note on the meaning of the Homeric and Platonic Sirens, at the very moment when I was doubting whether I would or would not tell you the significance of the last song of Ariel in 'The Tempest.'

I had half determined not, but now I shall. And this was what brought me to think of it:—

165. Yesterday afternoon I called on Mr. H. C. Sorby, to see some of the results of an inquiry he has been following all last year, into the nature of the coloring matter of leaves and flowers.

You most probably have heard (at all events, may with little trouble hear) of the marvelous power which chemical analysis has received in recent discoveries respecting the laws of light.

My friend showed me the rainbow of the rose, and the rainbow of the violet, and the rainbow of the hyacinth, and the rainbow of forest leaves being born, and the rainbow of forest leaves dying.

And, last, he showed me the rainbow of blood. It was but the three-hundredth part of a grain, dissolved in a drop of water; and it cast its measured bars, for ever recognizable now to human sight, on the chord of the seven colors. And no drop of that red rain can now be shed, so small as that the stain of it cannot be known, and the voice of it heard out of the ground.

166. But the seeing these flower colors, and the iris of blood together with them, just while I was trying to gather into brief space the right laws of war, brought vividly back to me my dreaming fancy of long ago, that even the trees of the earth were "capable of a kind of sorrow, as they opened their innocent leaves in vain for men; and along the dells of England her beeches cast their dappled shades only where the outlaw drew his bow, and the king rode his careless chase; amidst the fair defiles of the Apennines, the twisted olive-trunks hid the ambushes of treachery, and on their meadows, day by day, the lilies, which were white at the dawn, were washed with crimson at sunset."

And so also now this chance word of the daily journal, about the Sirens, brought to my mind the divine passage in the Cratylus of Plato, about the place of the dead.

"And none of those who dwell there desire to depart thence,—no, not even the Sirens; but even they, the seducers, are there themselves beguiled, and they who lulled all men, themselves laid to rest—they, and all others—such sweet songs doth death know how to sing to them."

So also the Hebrew.

"And desire shall fail, because man goeth to his long home." For you know I told you the Sirens were not pleasures, but desires; being always represented in old Greek art as having human faces, with birds' wings and feet; and sometimes with eyes upon their wings; and there are not two more important passages in all literature, respecting the laws of labor and of life, than those two great descriptions of the Sirens in Homer and Plato,—the Sirens of death, and Sirens of eternal life, representing severally the earthly and heavenly desires of men; the heavenly desires singing to the motion of circles of the spheres, and the earthly on the rocks of fatalest shipwreck. A fact which may indeed be regarded "sentimentally," but it is also a profoundly important politico-economical one.

And now for Shakespeare's song.

167. You will find, if you look back to the analysis of it, given in 'Munera Pulveris,' Sec. 134, that the whole play of 'The Tempest' is an allegorical representation of the powers of true, and therefore spiritual, Liberty, as opposed to true, and therefore carnal and brutal Slavery. There is not a sentence nor a rhyme, sung or uttered by Ariel or Caliban, throughout the play, which has not this under-meaning.

168. Now the fulfilment of all human liberty is in the peaceful inheritance of the earth, with its "herb yielding seed, and fruit tree yielding fruit" after his kind; the pasture, or arable, land, and the blossoming, or wooded and fruited, land uniting the final elements of life and peace, for body and soul. Therefore, we have the two great Hebrew forms of benediction, "His eyes shall be red with wine, and his teeth white with milk," and again, "Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse the evil and choose the good." And as the work of war and sin has always been the devastation of this blossoming earth, whether by spoil or idleness, so the work of peace and virtue is also that of the first day of Paradise, to "Dress it and to keep it." And that will always be the song of perfectly accomplished Liberty, in her industry, and rest, and shelter from troubled thoughts in the calm of the fields, and gaining, by migration, the long summer's day from the shortening twilight:—

"Where the bee sucks, there lurk I; In a cowslip's bell I lie; There I couch when owls do cry. On the bat's back I do fly After summer merrily: Merrily, merrily, shall I live now Under the blossom that hangs on the bough."

And the security of this treasure to all the poor, and not the ravage of it down the valleys of the Shenandoah, is indeed the true warrior's work. But, that they may be able to restrain vice rightly, soldiers must themselves be first in virtue; and that they may be able to compel labor sternly, they must themselves be first in toil, and their spears, like Jonathan's at Bethaven, enlighteners of the eyes.



LETTER XXV.

OF INEVITABLE DISTINCTION OF RANK, AND NECESSARY SUBMISSION TO AUTHORITY. THE MEANING OF PURE-HEARTEDNESS. CONCLUSION.

169. I was interrupted yesterday, just as I was going to set my soldiers to work; and to-day, here comes the pamphlet you promised me, containing the Debates about Church-going, in which I find so interesting a text for my concluding letter that I must still let my soldiers stand at ease for a little while. Look at its twenty-fifth page, and you will find, in the speech of Mr. Thomas, (carpenter,) this beautiful explanation of the admitted change in the general public mind, of which Mr. Thomas, for his part, highly approves, (the getting out of the unreasonable habit of paying respect to anybody.) There were many reasons to Mr. Thomas's mind why the working classes did not attend places of worship: one was, that "the parson was regarded as an object of reverence. In the little town he came from, if a poor man did not make a bow to the parson he was a marked man. This was no doubt wearing away to a great extent" (the base habit of making bows), "because, the poor man was beginning to get education, and to think for himself. It was only while the priest kept the press from him that he was kept ignorant, and was compelled to bow, as it were, to the parson.... It was the case all over England. The clergyman seemed to think himself something superior. Now he (Mr. Thomas) did not admit there was any inferiority" (laughter, audience throughout course of meeting mainly in the right), "except, perhaps, on the score of his having received a classical education, which the poor man could not get."

Now, my dear friend, here is the element which is the veriest devil of all that have got into modern flesh; this infidelity of the nineteenth century St. Thomas in there being anything better than himself alive;[A] coupled, as it always is, with the farther resolution—if unwillingly convinced of the fact,—to seal the Better living thing down again out of his way, under the first stone handy. I had not intended, till we entered on the second section of our inquiry, namely, into the influence of gentleness (having hitherto, you see, been wholly concerned with that of justice), to give you the clue out of our dilemma about equalities produced by education; but by the speech of our superior carpenter, I am driven into it at once, and it is perhaps as well.

[A] Compare 'Crown of Wild Olive,' Sec. 136.

170. The speech is not, observe, without its own root of truth at the bottom of it, nor at all, as I think, ill intended by the speaker; but you have in it a clear instance of what I was saying in the sixteenth of these letters,—that education was desired by the lower orders because they thought it would make them upper orders, and be a leveler and effacer of distinctions. They will be mightily astonished, when they really get it, to find that it is, on the contrary, the fatalest of all discerners and enforcers of distinctions; piercing, even to the division of the joints and marrow, to find out wherein your body and soul are less, or greater, than other bodies and souls, and to sign deed of separation with unequivocal seal.

171. Education is, indeed, of all differences not divinely appointed, an instant effacer and reconciler. Whatever is undivinely poor, it will make rich; whatever is undivinely maimed, and halt, and blind, it will make whole, and equal, and seeing. The blind and the lame are to it as to David at the siege of the Tower of the Kings, "hated of David's soul." But there are other divinely-appointed differences, eternal as the ranks of the everlasting hills, and as the strength of their ceaseless waters. And these, education does not do away with; but measures, manifests, and employs.

In the handful of shingle which you gather from the sea-beach, which the indiscriminate sea, with equality of fraternal foam, has only educated to be, every one, round, you will see little difference between the noble and mean stones. But the jeweler's trenchant education of them will tell you another story. Even the meanest will be better for it, but the noblest so much better that you can class the two together no more. The fair veins and colors are all clear now, and so stern is nature's intent regarding this, that not only will the polish show which is best, but the best will take most polish. You shall not merely see they have more virtue than the others, but see that more of virtue more clearly; and the less virtue there is, the more dimly you shall see what there is of it.

172. And the law about education, which is sorrowfulest to vulgar pride, is this—that all its gains are at compound interest; so that, as our work proceeds, every hour throws us farther behind the greater men with whom we began on equal terms. Two children go to school hand in hand, and spell for half an hour over the same page. Through all their lives, never shall they spell from the same page more. One is presently a page ahead,—two pages, ten pages,—and evermore, though each toils equally, the interval enlarges—at birth nothing, at death, infinite.

173. And by this you may recognize true education from false. False education is a delightful thing, and warms you, and makes you every day think more of yourself. And true education is a deadly cold thing with a Gorgon's head on her shield, and makes you every day think worse of yourself.

Worse in two ways, also, more's the pity. It is perpetually increasing the personal sense of ignorance and the personal sense of fault. And this last is the truth which is at the bottom of the common evangelical notion about conversion, and which the Devil has got hold of, and hidden, until, instead of seeing and confessing personal ignorance and fault, as compared with the sense and virtue of others, people see nothing but corruption in human nature, and shelter their own sins under accusation of their race (the worst of all assertions of equality and fraternity). And so they avoid the blessed and strengthening pain of finding out wherein they are fools, as compared with other men, by calling everybody else a fool too; and avoid the pain of discerning their own faults, by vociferously claiming their share in the great capital of original sin.

I must also, therefore, tell you here what properly ought to have begun the next following section of our subject—the point usually unnoticed in the parable of the Prodigal Son.

174. First, have you ever observed that all Christ's main teachings, by direct order, by earnest parable, and by His own permanent emotion, regard the use and misuse of money? We might have thought, if we had been asked what a divine teacher was most likely to teach, that he would have left inferior persons to give directions about money; and himself spoken only concerning faith and love, and the discipline of the passions, and the guilt of the crimes of soul against soul. But not so. He speaks in general terms of these. But He does not speak parables about them for all men's memory, nor permit Himself fierce indignation against them, in all men's sight. The Pharisees bring Him an adulteress. He writes her forgiveness on the dust of which He had formed her. Another, despised of all for known sin, He recognized as a giver of unknown love. But He acknowledges no love in buyers and sellers in His house. One should have thought there were people in that house twenty times worse than they;—Caiaphas and his like—false priests, false prayer-makers, false leaders of the people—who needed putting to silence, or to flight, with darkest wrath. But the scourge is only against the traffickers and thieves. The two most intense of all the parables: the two which lead the rest in love and terror (this of the Prodigal, and of Dives), relate, both of them, to management of riches. The practical order given to the only seeker of advice, of whom it is recorded that Christ "loved him," is briefly about his property. "Sell that thou hast."

And the arbitrament of the day of the Last Judgment is made to rest wholly, neither on belief in God, nor in any spiritual virtue in man, nor on freedom from stress of stormy crime, but on this only, "I was an hungered and ye gave me drink; naked, and ye clothed me; sick, and ye came unto me."

175. Well, then, the first thing I want you to notice in the parable of the Prodigal Son (and the last thing which people usually do notice in it), is—that it is about a Prodigal! He begins by asking for his share of his father's goods; he gets it, carries it off, and wastes it. It is true that he wastes it in riotous living, but you are not asked to notice in what kind of riot; he spends it with harlots—but it is not the harlotry which his elder brother accuses him of mainly, but of having devoured his father's living. Nay, it is not the sensual life which he accuses himself of—or which the manner of his punishment accuses him of. But the wasteful life. It is not said that he had become debauched in soul, or diseased in body, by his vice; but that at last he would fain have filled his belly with husks, and could not. It is not said that he was struck with remorse for the consequences of his evil passions, but only that he remembered there was bread enough and to spare, even for the servants, at home.

Now, my friend, do not think I want to extenuate sins of passion (though, in very truth, the sin of Magdalene is a light one compared to that of Judas); but observe, sins of passion, if of real passion, are often the errors and backfalls of noble souls; but prodigality is mere and pure selfishness, and essentially the sin of an ignoble or undeveloped creature; and I would rather, ten times rather, hear of a youth that (certain degrees of temptation and conditions of resistance being understood) he had fallen into any sin you chose to name, of all the mortal ones, than that he was in the habit of running bills which he could not pay.

Farther, though I hold that the two crowning and most accursed sins of the society of this present day are the carelessness with which it regards the betrayal of women, and the brutality with which it suffers the neglect of children, both these head and chief crimes, and all others, are rooted first in abuse of the laws, and neglect of the duties concerning wealth. And thus the love of money, with the parallel (and, observe, mathematically commensurate looseness in management of it), the "mal tener," followed necessarily by the "mal dare," is, indeed, the root of all evil.

176. Then, secondly, I want you to note that when the prodigal comes to his senses, he complains of nobody but himself, and speaks of no unworthiness but his own. He says nothing against any of the women who tempted him—nothing against the citizen who left him to feed on husks—nothing of the false friends of whom "no man gave unto him"—above all, nothing of the "corruption of human nature," or the corruption of things in general. He says that he himself is unworthy, as distinguished from honorable persons, and that he himself has sinned, as distinguished from righteous persons. And that is the hard lesson to learn, and the beginning of faithful lessons. All right and fruitful humility, and purging of heart, and seeing of God, is in that. It is easy to call yourself the chief of sinners, expecting every sinner round you to decline—or return—the compliment; but learn to measure the real degrees of your own relative baseness, and to be ashamed, not in heaven's sight, but in man's sight; and redemption is indeed begun. Observe the phrase, I have sinned "against heaven," against the great law of that, and before thee, visibly degraded before my human sire and guide, unworthy any more of being esteemed of his blood, and desirous only of taking the place I deserve among his servants.

177. Now, I do not doubt but that I shall set many a reader's teeth on edge by what he will think my carnal and material rendering of this "beautiful" parable. But I am just as ready to spiritualize it as he is, provided I am sure first that we understand it. If we want to understand the parable of the sower, we must first think of it as of literal husbandry; if we want to understand the parable of the prodigal, we must first understand it as of literal prodigality. And the story has also for us a precious lesson in this literal sense of it, namely this, which I have been urging upon you throughout these letters, that all redemption must begin in subjection and in the recovery of the sense of Fatherhood and authority, as all ruin and desolation begin in the loss of that sense. The lost son began by claiming his rights. He is found when he resigns them. He is lost by flying from his father, when his father's authority was only paternal. He is found by returning to his father, and desiring that his authority may be absolute, as over a hired stranger.

And this is the practical lesson I want to leave with you, and all other working men.

178. You are on the eve of a great political crisis; and every rascal with a tongue in his head will try to make his own stock out of you. Now this is the test you must try them with. Those that say to you, "Stand up for your rights—get your division of living—be sure that you are as well off as others, and have what they have!—don't let any man dictate to you—have not you all a right to your opinion?—are you not all as good as everybody else?—let us have no governors, or fathers—let us all be free and alike." Those, I say, who speak thus to you, take Nelson's rough order for—and hate them as you do the Devil, for they are his ambassadors. But those, the few, who have the courage to say to you, "My friends, you and I, and all of us, have somehow got very wrong; we've been hardly treated, certainly; but here we are in a piggery, mainly by our own fault, hungry enough, and for ourselves, anything but respectable: we must get out of this; there are certainly laws we may learn to live by, and there are wiser people than we are in the world, and kindly ones, if we can find our way to them; and an infinitely wise and kind Father, above all of them and us, if we can but find our way to Him, and ask Him to take us for servants, and put us to any work He will, so that we may never leave Him more." The people who will say that to you, and (for by no saying, but by their fruits, only, you shall finally know them) who are themselves orderly and kindly, and do their own business well,—take those for your guides, and trust them; on ice and rock alike, tie yourselves well together with them, and with much scrutiny, and cautious walking (perhaps nearly as much back as forward, at first), you will verily get off the glacier, and into meadow land, in God's time.

179. I meant to have written much to you respecting the meaning of that word "hired servants," and to have gone on to the duties of soldiers, for you know "Soldier" means a person who is paid to fight with regular pay—literally with "soldi" or "sous"—the "penny a day" of the vineyard laborers; but I can't now: only just this much, that our whole system of work must be based on the nobleness of soldiership—so that we shall all be soldiers of either plowshare or sword; and literally all our actual and professed soldiers, whether professed for a time only, or for life, must be kept to hard work of hand, when not in actual war; their honor consisting in being set to service of more pain and danger than others; to life-boat service; to redeeming of ground from furious rivers or sea—or mountain ruin; to subduing wild and unhealthy land, and extending the confines of colonies in the front of miasm and famine, and savage races.

And much of our harder home work must be done in a kind of soldiership, by bands of trained workers sent from place to place and town to town; doing, with strong and sudden hand, what is needed for help, and setting all things in more prosperous courses for the future.

Of all which I hope to speak in its proper place after we know what offices the higher arts of gentleness have among the lower ones of force, and how their prevalence may gradually change spear to pruning-hook, over the face of all the earth.

180. And now—but one word more—either for you, or any other readers who may be startled at what I have been saying, as to the peculiar stress laid by the Founder of our religion on right dealing with wealth. Let them be assured that it is with no fortuitous choice among the attributes or powers of evil, that "Mammon" is assigned for the direct adversary of the Master whom they are bound to serve. You cannot, by any artifice of reconciliation, be God's soldier, and his. Nor while the desire of gain is within your heart, can any true knowledge of the Kingdom of God come there. No one shall enter its stronghold,—no one receive its blessing, except, "he that hath clean hands and a pure heart;" clean hands that have done no cruel deed,—pure heart, that knows no base desire. And, therefore, in the highest spiritual sense that can be given to words, be assured, not respecting the literal temple of stone and gold, but of the living temple of your body and soul, that no redemption, nor teaching, nor hallowing, will be anywise possible for it, until these two verses have been, for it also, fulfilled:—

"And He went into the temple, and began to cast out them that sold therein, and them that bought. And He taught daily in the temple."



APPENDICES.



APPENDIX I.

Page 21.—Expenditure on Science and Art.

The following is the passage referred to. The fact it relates is so curious, and so illustrative of our national interest in science, that I do not apologize for the repetition:—

"Two years ago there was a collection of the fossils of Solenhofen to be sold in Bavaria; the best in existence, containing many specimens unique for perfectness, and one, unique as an example of a species (a whole kingdom of unknown living creatures being announced by that fossil). This collection, of which the mere market worth, among private buyers, would probably have been some thousand or twelve hundred pounds, was offered to the English nation for seven hundred: but we would not give seven hundred, and the whole series would have been in the Munich museum at this moment, if Professor Owen[A] had not, with loss of his own time, and patient tormenting of the British public in the person of its representatives, got leave to give four hundred pounds at once, and himself become answerable for the other three!—which the said public will doubtless pay him eventually, but sulkily, and caring nothing about the matter all the while; only always ready to cackle if any credit comes of it. Consider, I beg of you, arithmetically, what this fact means. Your annual expenditure for public purposes (a third of it for military apparatus) is at least fifty millions. Now seven hundred pounds is to fifty million pounds, roughly, as seven pence to two thousand pounds. Suppose, then, a gentleman of unknown income, but whose wealth was to be conjectured from the fact that he spent two thousand a year on his park walls and footmen only, professes himself fond of science; and that one of his servants comes eagerly to tell him that an unique collection of fossils, giving clue to a new era of creation, is to be had for the sum of sevenpence sterling; and that the gentleman who is fond of science, and spends two thousand a year on his park, answers, after keeping his servant waiting several months, 'Well, I'll give you fourpence for them, if you will be answerable for the extra threepence yourself till next year.'"

[A] I originally stated this fact without Professor Owen's permission; which, of course, he could not with propriety have granted, had I asked it; but I considered it so important that the public should be aware of the fact, that I did what seemed to me right, though rude.



APPENDIX II.

Page 33.—Legislation of Frederick the Great.

The following are the portions of Mr. Dixon's letters referred to:—

"Well, I am now busy with Frederick the Great; I am not now astonished that Carlyle calls him Great, neither that this work of his should have had such a sad effect upon him in producing it, when I see the number of volumes he must have had to wade through to produce such a clear terse set of utterances; and yet I do not feel the work as a book likely to do a reader of it the good that some of his other books will do. It is truly awful to read these battles after battles, lies after lies, called Diplomacy; it's fearful to read all this, and one wonders how he that set himself to this—He, of all men—could have the rare patience to produce such a labored, heart-rending piece of work. Again, when one reads of the stupidity, the shameful waste of our moneys by our forefathers, to see our National Debt (the curse to our labor now, the millstone to our commerce, to our fair chance of competition in our day) thus created, and for what? Even Carlyle cannot tell; then how are we to tell? Now, who will deliver us? that is the question; who will help us in these days of idle or no work, while our foreign neighbors have plenty and are actually selling their produce to our men of capital cheaper than we can make it? House-rent getting dearer, taxes getting dearer, rates, clothing, food, etc. Sad times, my master, do seem to have fallen upon us. And the cause of nearly all this lies embedded in that Frederick; and yet, so far as I know of it, no critic has yet given an exposition of such laying there. For our behoof, is there no one that will take this, that there lies so woven in with much other stuff so sad to read, to any man that does not believe man was made to fight alone, to be a butcher of his fellow-man? Who will do this work, or piece of work, so that all who care may know how it is that our debt grew so large, and a great deal more that we ought to know?—that clearly is one great reason why the book was written and was printed. Well, I hope some day all this will be clear to our people, and some man or men will arise and sweep us clear of these hindrances, these sad drawbacks to the vitality of our work in this world."

"57, Nile Street, Sunderland, Feb. 7, 1867.

"DEAR SIR,—

"I beg to acknowledge the receipt of two letters as additions to your books, which I have read with deep interest, and shall take care of them, and read them over again, so that I may thoroughly comprehend them, and be able to think of them for future use. I myself am not fully satisfied with our co-operation, and never have been; it is too much tinged with the very elements that they complain of in our present systems of trade—selfishness. I have for years been trying to direct the attention of the editor of the Co-operator to such evils that I see in it. Now further, I may state that I find you and Carlyle seem to agree quite on the idea of the Masterhood qualification. There again I find you both feel and write as all working men consider just. I can assure you there is not an honest, noble working man that would not by far serve under such master-hood, than be the employe or workman of a co-operative store. Working men do not as a rule make good masters; neither do they treat each other with that courtesy as a noble master treats his working man. George Fox shadows forth some such treatment that Friends ought to make law and guidance for their working men and slaves, such as you speak of in your letters. I will look the passage up, as it is quite to the point, so far as I now remember it. In Vol. VI. of Frederick the Great, I find a great deal there that I feel quite certain, if our Queen or Government could make law, thousands of English working men would hail it with such a shout of joy and gladness as would astonish the Continental world. These changes suggested by Carlyle and placed before the thinkers of England, are the noblest, the truest utterances on real kinghood, that I have ever read; the more I think over them, the more I feel the truth, the justness, and also the fitness of them, to our nation's present dire necessities; yet this is the man, and these are the thoughts of his, that our critics seem never to see, or if seen, don't think worth printing or in any way wisely directing the attention of the public thereto, alas! All this and much more fills me with such sadness that I am driven almost to despair. I see from the newspapers, Yorkshire, Lancashire, and other places are sternly endeavoring to carry out the short time movement until such times as trade revives, and I find the masters and men seem to adopt it with a good grace and friendly spirit. I also beg to inform you I see a Mr. Morley, a large manufacturer at Nottingham, has been giving pensions to all his old workmen. I hope such a noble example will be followed by other wealthy masters. It would do more to make a master loved, honored, and cared for, than thousands of pounds expended in other ways. The Government Savings Banks is one of the wisest acts of late years done by our Government. I, myself, often wish the Government held all our banks instead of private men; that would put an end to false speculations, such as we too often in the provinces suffer so severely by, so I hail with pleasure and delight the shadowing forth by you of these noble plans for the future: I feel glad and uplifted to think of the good that such teaching will do for us all.

"Yours truly, "THOMAS DIXON."

"57, Nile Street, Sunderland, Feb. 24, 1867.

"DEAR SIR,—

"I now give you the references to Frederick the Great. Vol. VI.: Land Question, 365 page, where he increases the number of small farmers to 4,000 (202, 204). English soldiers and T. C.'s remarks on our system of purchase, etc. His law, (620, 623, 624). State of Poland and how he repaired it, (487, 488, 489, 490). I especially value the way he introduced all kinds of industries therein, and so soon changed the chaos into order. Again, the school-masters also are given (not yet in England, says T. C.). Again the use he made of 15,000l. surplus in Brandenburg; how it was applied to better his staff of masters. To me, the Vol. VI. is one of the wisest pieces of modern thought in our language. I only wish I had either your power, C. Kingsley, Maurice, or some such able pen-generalship, to illustrate and show forth all the wise teaching on law, government, and social life I see in it, and shining like a star through all its pages.[A] I feel also the truth of all you have written, and will do all I can to make such men or women that care for such thoughts, see it, or read it. I am copying the letters as fast and as well as I can, and will use my utmost endeavor to have them done that justice to they merit.

"Yours truly, "THOMAS DIXON."

[A] I have endeavored to arrange some of the passages to which Mr. Dixon here refers, in a form enabling the reader to see their bearing on each other more distinctly, as a sequel to the essay on War in the 'Crown of Wild Olive.'



APPENDIX III.

Page 33.—Effect of Modern Entertainments on the Mind of Youth.

The letter of the Times' correspondent referred to contained an account of one of the most singular cases of depravity ever brought before a criminal court; but it is unnecessary to bring any of its details under the reader's attention, for nearly every other number of our journals has of late contained some instances of atrocities before unthought of, and, it might have seemed, impossible to humanity. The connection of these with the modern love of excitement in the sensational novel and drama may not be generally understood, but it is direct and constant; all furious pursuit of pleasure ending in actual desire of horror and delight in death. I entered into some fuller particulars on this subject in a lecture given in the spring at the Royal Institution.

[Any part of the Lecture referred to likely to be of permanent interest will be printed, somewhere, in this series.]



APPENDIX IV.

Page 76.—Drunkenness as the Cause of Crime.

The following portions of Mr. Dixon's letter referred to, will be found interesting:—

"DEAR SIR,—

"Your last letter, I think, will arouse the attention of thinkers more than any of the series, it being on topics they in general feel more interested in than the others, especially as in these you do not assail their pockets so much as in the former ones. Since you seem interested with the notes or rough sketches on gin, G * * * of Dublin was the man I alluded to as making his money by drink, and then giving the results of such traffic to repair the Cathedral of Dublin. It was thousands of pounds. I call such charity robbing Peter to pay Paul! Immense fortunes are made in the Liquor Traffic, and I will tell you why; it is all paid for in cash, at least such as the poor people buy; they get credit for clothes, butchers' meat, groceries, etc., while they give the gin-palace keeper cash; they never begrudge the price of a glass of gin or beer, they never haggle over its price, never once think of doing that; but in the purchase of almost every other article they haggle and begrudge its price. To give you an idea of its profits—there are houses here whose average weekly takings in cash at their bars is 50l., 60l., 70l., 80l., 90l., to 150l., per week. Nearly all the men of intelligence in it, say it is the curse of the working classes. Men whose earnings are, say 20s. to 30s. per week, spend on the average 3s. to 6s. per week (some even 10s.). It's my mode of living to supply these houses with corks that makes me see so much of the drunkenness; and that is the cause why I never really cared for my trade, seeing the misery that was entailed on my fellow men and women by the use of this stuff. Again, a house with a license to sell spirits, wine, and ale, to be consumed on the premises, is worth two to three times more money than any other class of property. One house here worth nominally 140l. sold the other day for 520l.; another one worth 200l. sold for 800l. I know premises with a license that were sold for 1,300l., and then sold again two years after for 1,800l.; another place was rented for 50l., now rents at 100l.—this last is a house used by working men and laborers chiefly! No, I honor men like Sir W. Trevelyan, that are teetotalers, or total abstainers, as an example to poor men, and, to prevent his work-people being tempted, will not allow any public-house on his estate. If our land had a few such men it would help the cause. We possess one such a man here, a banker. I feel sorry to say the progress of temperance is not so great as I would like to see it. The only religious body that approaches to your ideas of political economy is Quakerism as taught by George Fox. Carlyle seems deeply tinged with their teachings. Silence to them is as valuable to him. Again, why should people howl and shriek over the law that the Alliance is now trying to carry out in our land called the Permissive Bill? If we had just laws we then would not be so miserable or so much annoyed now and then with cries of Reform and cries of Distress. I send you two pamphlets;—one gives the working man's reasons why he don't go to church; in it you will see a few opinions expressed very much akin to those you have written to me. The other gives an account how it is the poor Indians have died of Famine, simply because they have destroyed the very system of Political Economy, or one having some approach to it, that you are now endeavoring to direct the attention of thinkers to in our country. The Sesame and Lilies I have read as you requested. I feel now fully the aim and object you have in view in the Letters, but I cannot help directing your attention to that portion where you mention or rather exclaim against the Florentines pulling down their Ancient Walls to build a Boulevard. That passage is one that would gladden the hearts of all true Italians, especially men that love Italy and Dante!"



APPENDIX V.

Page 78.—Abuse of Food.

Paragraphs cut from 'Manchester Examiner' of March 16, 1867:—

"A PARISIAN CHARACTER.—A celebrated character has disappeared from the Palais Royal. Rene Lartique was a Swiss, and a man of about sixty. He actually spent the last fifteen years in the Palais Royal—that is to say, he spent the third of his life at dinner. Every morning at ten o'clock he was to be seen going into a restaurant (usually Tissat's), and in a few moments was installed in a corner, which he only quitted about three o'clock in the afternoon, after having drunk at least six or seven bottles of different kinds of wine. He then walked up and down the garden till the clock struck five, when he made his appearance again at the same restaurant, and always at the same place. His second meal, at which he drank quite as much as at the first, invariably lasted till half-past nine. Therefore, he devoted nine hours a day to eating and drinking. His dress was most wretched—his shoes broken, his trousers torn, his paletot without any lining and patched, his waistcoat without buttons, his hat a rusty red from old age, and the whole surmounted by a dirty white beard. One day he went up to the comptoir, and asked the presiding divinity there to allow him to run in debt for one day's dinner. He perceived some hesitation in complying with the request, and immediately called one of the waiters, and desired him to follow him. He went into the office, unbuttoned a certain indispensable garment, and, taking off a broad leather belt, somewhat startled the waiter by displaying two hundred gold pieces, each worth one hundred francs. Taking up one of them, he tossed it to the waiter, and desired him to pay whatever he owed. He never again appeared at that restaurant, and died a few days ago of indigestion."

"REVENGE IN A BALL-ROOM.—A distressing event lately took place at Castellaz, a little commune of the Alpes-Maritimes, near Mentone. All the young people of the place being assembled in a dancing-room, one of the young men was seen to fall suddenly to the ground, whilst a young woman, his partner, brandished a poniard, and was preparing to inflict a second blow on him, having already desperately wounded him in the stomach. The author of the crime was at once arrested. She declared her name to be Marie P——, twenty-one years of age, and added that she had acted from a motive of revenge, the young man having led her astray formerly with a promise of marriage, which he had never fulfilled. In the morning of that day she had summoned him to keep his word, and, upon his refusal, had determined on making the dancing-room the scene of her revenge. She was at first locked up in the prison of Mentone, and afterwards sent on to Nice. The young man continues in an alarming state."



APPENDIX VI.

Page 94.—Regulations of Trade.

I print portions of two letters of Mr. Dixon's in this place; one referring to our former discussion respecting the sale of votes:—

"57, Nile Street, Sunderland, March 21, 1867.

"I only wish I could write in some tolerable good style, so that I could idealize, or rather realize to folks, the life and love, and marriage of a working man and his wife. It is in my opinion a working man that really does know what a true wife is, for his every want, his every comfort in life depends on her; and his children's home, their daily lives and future lives, are shaped by her. Napoleon wisely said, 'France needs good mothers more than brave men. Good mothers are the makers or shapers of good and brave men.' I cannot say that these are the words, but it is the import of his speech on the topic. We have a saying amongst us: 'The man may spend and money lend, if his wife be ought,'—i. e. good wife;—'but he may work and try to save, but will have nought, if his wife be nought,'—i. e. bad or thriftless wife.

"Now, since you are intending to treat of the working man's parliament and its duties, I will just throw out a few suggestions of what I consider should be the questions or measures that demand an early inquiry into and debate on. That guilds be established in every town, where masters and men may meet, so as to avoid the temptations of the public-house and drink. And then, let it be made law that every lad should serve an apprenticeship of not less than seven years to a trade or art, before he is allowed to be a member of such guild; also, that all wages be based on a rate of so much per hour, and not day, as at present; and let every man prove his workmanship before such a guild, and then allow to him such payment per hour as his craft merits. Let there be three grades, and then let there be trials of skill in workmanship every year; and then, if the workman of the third grade prove that he has made progress in his craft, reward him accordingly. Then, before a lad is put to any trade, why not see what he is naturally fitted for? Combe's book, entitled The Constitution of Man, throws a good deal of truth on to these matters. Now, here are two branches of the science of life that, so far, have never once been given trial of in this way. We certainly use them after a crime has been committed, but not till then.

"Next to that, cash, payment for all and everything needed in life. Credit is a curse to him that gives it, and that takes it. He that lives by credit lives in general carelessly. If there was no credit, people then would have to live on what they earned! Then, after that, the Statute of Limitations of Fortune you propose. By the hour system, not a single man need be idle; it would give employment to all, and even two hours per day would realize more to a man than breaking stones. Thus you would make every one self-dependent—also no fear of being out of work altogether. Then let there be a Government fund for all the savings of the working man. I am afraid you will think this a wild, discursive sort of a letter.

"Yours truly, "THOMAS DIXON."

"I have read your references to the Times on 'Bribery.' Well, that has long been my own opinion; they simply have a vote to sell, and sell it the same way as they sell potatoes, or a coat, or any other salable article. Voters generally say, 'What does this gentleman want in Parliament? Why, to help himself and his family or friends; he does not spend all the money he spends over his election for pure good of his country! No: it's to benefit his pocket, to be sure. Why should I not make a penny with my vote, as well as he does with his in Parliament?' I think that if the system of canvassing or election agents were done away with, and all personal canvassing for votes entirely abolished, it would help to put down bribery. Let each gentleman send to the electors his political opinions in a circular, and then let papers be sent, or cards, to each elector, and then let them go and record their votes in the same way they do for a councillor in the Corporation. It would save a great deal of expense, and prevent those scenes of drunkenness so common in our towns during elections. Bewick's opinions of these matters are quite to the purpose, I think (see page 201 of Memoir). Again, respecting the Paris matter referred to in your last letter, I have read it. Does it not manifest plainly enough that Europeans are also in a measure possessed with that same demoniacal spirit like the Japanese?"



APPENDIX VII.

The following letter did not form part of the series written to Mr. Dixon; but is perhaps worth reprinting. I have not the date of the number of the Gazette in which it appeared, but it was during the tailors' strike in London.

"TO THE EDITOR OF THE Pall Mall Gazette.

"Sir,—

"In your yesterday's article on strikes you have very neatly and tersely expressed the primal fallacy of modern political economy—to wit, that 'the value of any piece of labor cannot be defined'—and that 'all that can be ascertained is simply whether any man can be got to do it for a certain sum.' Now, sir, the 'value' of any piece of labor, that is to say, the quantity of food and air which will enable a man to perform it without losing actually any of his flesh or his nervous energy, is as absolutely fixed a quantity as the weight of powder necessary to carry a given ball a given distance. And within limits varying by exceedingly minor and unimportant circumstances, it is an ascertainable quantity. I told the public this five years ago—and under pardon of your politico-economical contributors—it is not a 'sentimental,' but a chemical fact.

"Let any half-dozen of recognized London physicians state in precise terms the quantity and kind of food, and space of lodging, they consider approximately necessary for the healthy life of a laborer in any given manufacture, and the number of hours he may, without shortening his life, work at such business daily, if so sustained.

"And let all masters be bound to give their men a choice between an order for that quantity of food and lodging, or such wages as the market may offer for that number of hours' work.

"Proper laws for the maintenance of families would require further concession—but, in the outset, let but this law of wages be established, and if then we have any more strikes you may denounce them without one word of remonstrance either from sense or sensibility.

"I am, Sir, "Your obedient servant, "JOHN RUSKIN."

THE END