When two men compete for work from one employer, the tendency of that law is to underpay the workmen; when two employers compete for one workman, its tendency is to overpay the workman (§ 50).

The payment in all cases of "just" wages would tend to the more equal distribution of property and diminish the power of wealth in single hands ( 51-53)—a statement which leads Ruskin to explain that he is not a socialist (§ 54); his object is to declare that as the poor have no right to the property of the rich, so neither have the rich any right to that of the poor (§§ 54-55). It is the rule of justice he wishes to enforce; hence the title of the essay, Qui Judicatis Terram.

The Fourth Essay takes up the question, What is value? (for the exchanges of labour were to be of equal value, § 74). Ruskin notices first a lack of consistency in the definitions given by Mill and Ricardo (S$ 56-60): the examination of a passage in Mill leading him to point out the unsatisfactory nature of any economic analysis which measures utility only by "capacity to satisfy a desire or serve a purpose," and does not go on to inquire what kind of desire and what kind of purpose (§ 58).

Value, according to Ruskin's definition, is "that which avails towards life"; it is intrinsic and fixed (§ 61).

1

Wealth is "the possession of useful articles which we can use ($62); or "the possession of the valuable by the valiant" (§ 63). Many things popularly accounted "wealth," and many persons accounted wealthy, are in fact only forms of "illth" (§ 64). In a community regulated only by laws of demand and supply, "the persons who remain poor are the entirely foolish, the entirely wise, the idle, the reckless, the humble, the thoughtful, the dull, the imaginative, the sensitive, the well-informed, the improvident, the irregularly and impulsively wicked, the clumsy knave, the open thief, and the entirely merciful, just, and godly person" (§ 65).

Passing to the consideration of Price (or, exchange value), Ruskin says that there can be no profit in exchange, but only acquisition (§ 66); and thence he derives the principles of just exchange (§§ 67, 68). Price is "the quantity of labour given by the person desiring a thing, in order to obtain possession of it" (§ 69). Since price is thus measured in terms of labour, "cheapness of labour" means "dearness of the object wrought for" (§§ 70, 71).

Labour may be either positive (that which produces life) or negative (that which produces death). The prosperity of a nation

1 Compare Fors Clavigera, Letters 46 and 70.

depends on the quantity of labour which it expends in obtaining and employing means of life; wise consumption is the crown of production (§ 72).

On this essential point in Ruskin's doctrine compare Crown of Wild Olive, $ 77.

So, in the case of Capital, the question for the economist is, What substance good for life will it furnish? The final object of Political Economy being to get good method, and great quantity, of consumption ($73–75).

Mill's assertion that "a demand for commodities is not demand for labour" is thus shown by Ruskin to be a "colossal" error (§ 76).

As consumption is the end and aim of production, so life is the end and aim of consumption: "there is no wealth but life" (§ 77).

This is the pith of the book. The remaining sections glance slightly at the over-population question (§ 78); at the necessity for educating the poor and instilling into all classes habits of contentment with simple joys ($79-82). The advancement towards this true felicity must be by individual, not public effort (§ 83), and so Ruskin concludes with a personal appeal (§§ 84, 85) to his readers to forward the coming of the kingdom "when Christ's gift of bread, and bequest of peace, shall be Unto this last as unto thee.'

With regard to public effort Ruskin stated in his Preface "the worst of the political creed" to which he wished his principles to lead. The reforms advocated were:

1. National Schools for the young to be established at Government cost and under Government discipline over the whole country.

2. Every child to be taught, further, some trade or calling.

3. In connexion with these technical classes, Government workshops to be established, at which, without any attempt at establishing a monopoly, "good and exemplary work should be done, and pure and true substance sold."

4. Any person out of employment to be set forthwith to work at the nearest Government workshop.

5. Such work to be paid for at a fixed rate in each employment. 6. Those who would work if they could, to be taught. Those who could work if they would, to be set to penal work.

7. For the old and destitute comfort and home to be provided.

"MUNERA PULVERIS"

The volume, whose contents we have thus briefly summarised, was an introduction to Ruskin's economic teaching. It was mainly destructive, its primary object being to challenge the accepted science, and was only incidentally constructive; that is to say, Ruskin only indicated in passing and by inference the terms of an alternative system. Carlyle, as we have seen, encouraged him to go on; and Froude, "thinking that there was something in it," invited him to pursue the subject in Fraser's Magazine. In this second collection of essays Ruskin gives a series of definitions and a list of headings which were to have served as "a Preface" to a more elaborate treatise (Preface, § 20). His object was now constructive, and only incidentally destructive. In broad outline he defined in Munera Pulveris the terms on which, as he conceived, a system of Political Economy should be based, and stated the questions with which such a system ought to deal.

Political Economy, he begins by stating, is a system of conduct founded on the sciences and impossible except under certain conditions of moral culture. It regulates the acts and habits of a Society or State, with reference to its means of maintenance (§ 1)-viz. (1) the support of its population in healthy and happy life; and (2) the increase of its numbers so far as is consistent with its happiness (§ 3). The material things which it is the object of political economy to produce and use are those which sustain and nourish the body or the soul, and no others (§ 8).

The inquiry into such things divides itself under three heads, according as it studies the phenomena of-I. Wealth; II. Money; or III. Riches. Wealth is "things in themselves valuable"; Money, documentary claims to such things"; Riches, "the relation of one person's possessions to another's" (§ 11).

66

WEALTH Consists of "things in themselves valuable." Value signifies the life-giving power of a thing, which involves (a) a thing essentially useful, and (b) a capacity to use it (§§ 13, 14).

Here compare Unto this Last, §§ 62, 63; Munera Pulveris, Appendix iii.

Value in this sense must be closely distinguished from Cost, which means "the quantity of labour required to produce a thing"; and Price, which means "the quantity of labour which the possessor of a thing will take in exchange for it" (§ 12).

Valuable things are: (1) Land, considered (a) as a means of producing food and mechanical power; and (b) as providing objects of sight and thought.

The development of this chapter in Ruskin's intended treatise would have been of particular interest. If one were constructing such a treatise out of his actually written passages, one would refer under (a) to Time and Tide, § 151, where he lays down the conditions of land-tenure with regard to making the most of it, and to many similar passages in Fors Clavigera ; while under (b), one would go to almost all his books for passages on the importance of national scenery as an element of national wealth; see in the General Index the headings "Landscape" and "Scenery." Compare p. 545, below; and see also Fors Clavigera, Letter 95; and consider the question which in one form or another Ruskin so often puts: "If the whole of England were turned into a mine, would it be richer or poorer?" See, for instance, Sesame and Lilies, § 83; Crown of Wild Olive, § 123 n.; Queen of the Air, § 92; and Fors Clavigera, Letter 12.

(2) Houses, Furniture, and Instruments; (3) Food, Medicines, Luxuries, Clothing; (4) Books; and (5) Works of Art.

Here, again, the discussion of these elements of national wealth is widely scattered through Ruskin's books. For typical passages, see Cestus of Aglaia, § 96, and "Kings' Treasuries" in Sesame and Lilies.

The definition of wealth thus given (i.e., that it is in "an intrinsic value developed by a vital power") opposes three current views:

(1) That a thing becomes wealth by becoming an object of desire. True wealth, however, is "the constant object of a legitimate desire, not the accidental object of a morbid one" (§§ 32-34).

On this point compare Queen of the Air, § 125.

(2) A second popular view of wealth is that the worth of things depends on the demand for them, instead of on the use of them. But all exchangeableness of commodity depends on the sum of capacity for its use; things which we cannot use may be a form of money, but they are not wealth (§§ 31, 35, 36).

The idea that the value of a thing is what it will fetch in the market is called by Ruskin in Fors Clavigera "the Judasian fallacy" (Letter 82). Compare also Letter 70.

(3) The third popular view of wealth, contradicted by Ruskin's definition, confuses Guardianship with Possession. But the things

which a man possesses but cannot use, he does not in the full sense possess at all; he is merely a curator (§§ 37, 38).

From the definition of wealth, given in opposition to these three views, it follows that the sum of wealth held by a nation depends strictly on its intrinsic quality, and varies with the number and character of its holders (§§ 39-46). Hence the questions to be asked are: (A) What is the National Store? (B) Who hold it?

(A) The first question resolves itself into three, this:

(a) What is the nature of the national store? Everything depends on whether the accumulation is of things that conduce to life, or to death (S$ 47, 48). There is also waste of toil in the production of unnecessary luxuries (§ 49); and this is not easily calculable, for it is not true that "labour is limited by capital": the amount of labour obtainable depends on the amount of heart and head put into it (S$ 50-53).

(b) What is the quantity of the store in relation to the population? Of two nations who have equal store, the more numerous is the richer, if the type of the inhabitant be as high; but the question remains what degree or extent of poverty is counterbalanced by the degree or extent of wealth (§§ 54-57).

Ruskin says (1872) that of these large plans of inquiry he had accomplished nothing (§ 57 n., p. 181). But in various places he glances at such questions. See, for instance, on the relations between rich and poor, the paper on "The Basis of Social Policy" in A Joy for Ever (Vol. XVI. pp. 161-169); and therein especially §§ 178-181. Also Sesame and Lilies, note to § 30. And, on the question of numbers, Queen of the Air, §§ 120, 121 (" utmost multitude of good men on every given space of ground").

(c) What is the quantity of the store in relation to the currency MONEY, it will be remembered, has been defined as the documentary expression of a legal claim. It is not merely "a means of exchange," but a token of right. It is not wealth, but a documentary claim to wealth; all the money in the world might be destroyed, and the world be neither richer nor poorer than it was before. 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 (§ 21-24). The worth of a piece of money, which claims a given quantity of the national store, depends on cost and price. Cost is the quantity of labour required to produce a thing. (Labour is "that quantity of our work which we die in ".) Cost is thus an ascertainable physical quantity; but price involves the human will, and is