praise would have been grateful to him, and their help priceless. They now declare his cause to have been just, when it needs no aid; and his purposes to have been noble, when all human thoughts of them have become vanity, and will never so much as mix their murmurs in his ears with the sentence of the Tribunal which has summoned him to receive a juster praise and tenderer blame than ours.

I have twice (I see) used the word "just" inadvertently, forgetting that it has no meaning, or may mean (you tell me) quite what we choose; and that so far as it has a meaning, "the important question is not whether the action is just." Indeed when I read this curious sentence in your reply on Tuesday last, "Justice, as we use it, implies merely the conformity of an action to any rules whatever, good or bad," I had nearly closed the discussion by telling you that there remained no ground on which we could meet, for the English workmen, in whose name I wrote to you, asked, not for conformity with bad rules, but enactment of good ones. But I will not pounce upon these careless sentences, which you are forced to write in all haste, and at all disadvantage, while I have the definitions and results determined through years of quiet labour, lying ready at my hand. You never meant what you wrote (when I said I would not tell you of unconscious meanings, I did not promise not to tell you of unconscious wants of meaning); but it is for you to tell me what you mean by a bad rule, and what by a good one. Of the law of the Eternal Lawgiver it is dictated that "the commandment is holy, and just, and good." Not merely that it is a law; but that it is such and such a law. Are these terms senseless to you? or do you understand by them only that the observance of that law is generally conducive to our interests? And if so, what are our interests? Have we ever an interest in being something, as well as in getting something; may not even all getting be at last summed in being? is it not the uttermost of interests to be just rather than unjust? Let us leave catching at phrases, and try to look in each other's faces and hearts; so define our thoughts; then reason from them. [See below.]2

Yet, lest you say I evade you in generalities, here is present answer point by point.

I. "The fare has nothing to do with the labour in preparing the fly for being hired."-Nor, of course, the price of any article with the labour expended in preparing it for being sold? This will be a useful note to the next edition of Ricardo. [The price depends on the relative forces of the buyer and the seller. The price asked by the seller no doubt depends on the labour expended. The price given by the buyer depends on the degree in which he desires to possess the thing sold, which has nothing to do with the labour laid out on it.]

The answer to your instances3 is that all just price involves an allowance for average necessary, not for unnecessary, labour. The just price

1 [Romans vii. 12.]

2 [The interpolations in square brackets are the remarks of the Gazette, thus made in Ruskin's letter as it appeared in its columns.]

3 [One of the instances given by the Gazette on this point was that a sovereign made of Californian gold will not buy more wool at Sydney than a sovereign made of Australian gold, although far more labour will have been expended in bringing it to Sydney.]

of coals at Newcastle does not involve an allowance for their carriage to Newcastle. But the just price of a cab at a stand involves an allowance to the cabman for having stood there. [Why? who is to determine what is necessary?]

II. "This admits the principle of Bargaining." No, Sir; it only admits the principle of Begging. If you like to ask your guide to give you his legs for nothing, or your workman his arms for nothing, or your shopkeeper his goods for nothing, and they consent, for love, or for play,-you are doubtless both dignified and fortunate; but there is no question of trade in the matter; only of Alms. [We mean by Alms money or goods given merely from motives of benevolence, and without return. In the case supposed the guide goes one mile to please himself, and ten more for hire, which satisfies him. How does he give Alms? He goes for less money than he otherwise would require because he likes the job, not because his employer likes it. The Alms are thus given by himself to himself.]

III. It is true that " every one can affix to words any sense he chooses." But if I pay for a yard of broadcloth, and the shopman cuts me three-quarters, I shall not put up with my loss more patiently on being informed that Bishop Butler meant by justice something quite different from what Bentham meant by it, or that to give for every yard, threequarters, is the rule of that establishment. [If the word "yard" were as ambiguous as the word "justice," Mr. Ruskin ought to be much obliged to the shopman for defining his sense of it, especially if he gave you full notice before he cut the cloth.]

Farther, it is easy to ascertain the uses of words by the best scholars -[Nothing is more difficult. To ascertain what Locke meant by an "idea," or Sir W. Hamilton by the word "inconceivable," is no easy task. and well to adopt them, because they are sure to be founded on the feelings of gentlemen.-[Different gentlemen feel and think in very different ways. Though we differ from Mr. Ruskin, we hope he will not deny this.] Thus, when Horace couples his tenacem propositi with justum, he means to assert that the tenacity is only noble which is justified by uprightness, and shows itself by insufferance of the jussa "prava jubentium.” 1 And although Portia does indeed accept your definition of justice from the lips of Shylock, changing the divine "who sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not "2 into the somewhat less divine "who sweareth to his neighbour's hurt and changeth not"; and though she carries out his and your conception of such justice to the uttermost, the result is not, even in Shylock's view of it, "for the interest of both parties."

IV. To your two final questions "exhausting" (by no means, my dear Sir, I assure you) "the points at issue," I reply in both cases, "No." And

1 [Odes iii. 3, 1-2.]

2 Psalms xv. 4.]

3 [The Gazette's criticism on the previous letter had concluded thus:

"The following questions exhaust the points at issue between Mr. Ruskin and ourselves :

"Is every man bound to purchase any service or any goods offered him at a 'just' price, he having the money?

"If yes, there is an end of private property.

"If no, the purchaser must be at liberty to refuse to buy if it suits his interest to

to your plaintive "why should they do so?" while, observe, I do not admit it to be a monstrous requirement of men that they should sometimes sacrifice their own interests, I would for the present merely answer that I have never found my own interests seriously compromised by my practice, which is, when I cannot get the fair price of a thing, not to sell it, and when I cannot give the fair price of a thing, not to buy it. other day, a dealer in want of money offered me a series of Hartz minerals for two-thirds of their value. I knew their value, but did not care to spend the entire sum which would have covered it. I therefore chose forty specimens out of the seventy, and gave the dealer what he asked for the whole.

The

In the example you give, it is not the interest of the guide to take his fifty francs rather than nothing; because all future travellers, though they could afford the hundred, would then say, "You went for fifty; we will give you no more." [Does a man say to a broker, "You sold stock yesterday at 90; I will pay no more to-day"?] And for me, if I am not able to pay my hundred francs, I either forego Mont Blanc, or climb alone; and keep my fifty francs to pay at another time, for a less service, some man who also would have got nothing otherwise, and who will be honestly paid, by what I give him, for what I ask of him. I am, Sir, your obliged servant,

SATURDAY, 29th April, 1865.

JOHN RUSKIN.

do so. Suppose he does refuse, and thereupon the seller offers to lower his price, it being his interest to do so, is the purchaser at liberty to accept that offer?

"If yes, the whole principle of bargaining is admitted, and the 'justice' of the price becomes immaterial.

"If no, each party of the supposition is compelled by justice to sacrifice their interest. Why should they do so?

"The following is an example:-The 'just' price of a guide up Mont Blanc is (suppose) 100 francs. I have only 50 francs to spare. May I without injustice offer the 50 francs to a guide, who would otherwise get nothing, and may he without injustice accept my offer? If not, I lose my excursion, and he loses his opportunity of earning 50 francs. Why should this be?"

In addition to the above interpolations in the present letter, the Gazette appended a note to this letter, in which it declared its definition of justice to be a quotation from memory of Austin's definition ("Justice is the conformity of a given object to a determinate law"), adopted by him from Hobbes, and after referring Ruskin to Austin (see Lectures on Jurisprudence, vol. i. p. 232 n., in the edition of 1861) for the moral bearings of the question, concluded by summing up its views, which it doubted if Ruskin understood, and insisting on the definition of "justice" as "conformity with any rule whatever, good or bad," and on that of good rules as "those which promote the general happiness of those whom they affect." (See the next letter.)]

XVII.

2 K

5

To the Editor of the "Pall Mall Gazette" 1

SIR, I am under the impression that we are both getting prosy, or, at all events, that no one will read either my last letter, or your comments upon it, in the places in which you have so gracefully introduced them. For which I am sorry, and you, I imagine, are not.

It is true that differences of feeling may exist among gentlemen; yet I think that gentlemen of all countries agree that it is rude to interrupt your opponent while he is speaking; for a futile answer gains no real force by becoming an interjection; and a strong one can abide its time. I will therefore pray you, in future, if you publish my letters at all, to practise towards them so much of old English manners as may yet be found lingering round some old English dinner-tables; where, though we may be compelled by fashion to turn the room into a greenhouse, and serve everything cold, the pièces de résistance are still presented whole, and carved afterwards.

Of course it is open to you to reply that I dislike close argument. Which little flourish being executed, and if you are well breathed—en garde, if you please.

I. Your original position was that wages (or price) bear no relation to hardship of work. On that I asked you to join issue. You now admit, though with apparent reluctance, that "the price asked by the seller, no doubt, depends on the labour expended."

The price asked by the seller has, I believe, in respectable commercial houses, and respectable shops, very approximate relation to the price paid by the buyer. I do not know if you are in the habit of asking, from your wine-merchant or tailor, reduction of price on the ground that the sum remitted will be "alms to themselves"; but, having been myself in somewhat intimate connection with a house of business in the City,2 not dishonourably accounted of during the last forty years, I know enough of their correspondents in every important town in the United Kingdom to be sure that they will bear me witness that the difference between the prices asked and the prices taken was always a very "imaginary” quantity.

But urging this no farther for the present, and marking, for gained ground, only your admission that "the price asked depends on the labour expended," will you farther tell me, whether that dependence is constant, or variable? If constant, under what law? if variable, within what limits?

II. "The_alms are thus given by himself to himself." I never said they were not. I said it was a question of alms, not of trade. And if your original leader had only been an exhortation to English workmen to consider every diminution of their pay, in the picturesque though perhaps

[From the Pall Mall Gazette, May 9, 1865, where the letter appeared under the heading "Work and Wages." Reprinted in Arrows of the Chace, vol. ii. pp. 86-90.]

2 [That of Messrs. Ruskin, Telford, and Domecq, in which Ruskin's father was senior partner: see Vol. I. p. xxiv., and Præterita, i. §§ 5, 24, 48, 149; ii. §§ 177 seq.]

somewhat dim, religious light1 of alms paid by themselves to themselves, I never should have troubled you with a letter on the subject. For, singular enough, Sir, this is not one of the passages of your letters, however apparently indefensible, which I care to attack.

So far from it, in my own serious writings I have always maintained that the best work is done, and can only be done, for love.2 But the point at issue between us is not whether there should be charity, but whether there can be trade; not whether men may give away their labour, but whether, if they do not choose to do so, there is such a thing as a price for it. And my statement, as opposed to yours, is briefly this,-that for all labour, there is, under given circumstances, a just price approximately determinable; that every conscious deflection from this price towards zero is either gift on the part of the labourer, or theft on the part of the employer; and that all payment in conscious excess of this price is either theft on the part of the labourer, or gift on that of the employer.

III. If you wish to substitute the word "moral" for "just" in the above statement, I am prepared to allow the substitution; only, as you, not I, introduced this new word, I must pray for your definition of it first, whether remembered from Mr. Hobbes, or original.

IV. I am sorry you doubt my understanding your views; but, in that case, it may be well to ask for a word or two of farther elucidation.

Justice," you say, is "conformity with any rule whatever, good or bad." And "good rules are rules which promote the general happiness of those whom they affect." And bad rules are (therefore) rules which promote the general misery of those whom they affect? Justice, therefore, may as often as not promote the general misery of those who practise it? Do you intend this ? *

Again: "Good rules are rules which promote the general happiness of those whom they affect." But "the greatest happiness of the greatest number is best secured by laying down no rule at all" (as to the price of "labour ").

Do you propose this as a sequitur? for if not, it is merely a petitio principii, and a somewhat wide one. Before, therefore, we branch into poetical questions concerning happiness, we will, with your permission, and according to my original stipulation, that we should dispute only of one point at a time, determine the matters already at issue. To which end, also, I leave without reply some parts of your last letter; not without a little strain on the pкos odóvTwv,3 for which I think, Sir, you may give me openly, credit, if not tacitly, thanks.

DENMARK HILL, May 4.

I am, Sir, your obliged servant,

JOHN RUSKIN.

"Yes. But, generally speaking, rules are beneficial; hence, generally speaking, justice is a good thing in fact. A state of society might be imagined in which it would be a hideously bad thing."-[Footnote answer of the Gazette.]

1 [Milton: Il Penseroso, 159.]

2 [See A Joy for Ever, § 98 (Vol. XVI. p. 83); Modern Painters, vol. v. (Vol. VII. p. 449); Unto this Last, 52 n. (above, p. 71); and compare a later passage in § 41 of The Crown of Wild Olive. "None of the best head-work in art, literature, or science, is ever paid for. It is indeed very clear that God means all

thoroughly good work and talk to be done for nothing."]

3 [Homer: Iliad, iv. 350; Odyssey, x. 328, etc.]