jesters and story-tellers, moralists, historians, priests, so far as these, in any degree, paint, or sing, or tell their tale, or charm their charm, or "perform" their rite, for pay,'—in so far, they are all slaves; abject utterly, if the service be for pay only; abject less and less in proportion to the degrees of love and of wisdom which enter into their duty, or can enter into it, according as their function is to do the bidding and the work of a manly people; or to amuse, tempt, and deceive, a childish one. 146. There is always, in such amusement and temptation, to a certain extent, a government of the rich by the poor, as of the poor by the rich; but the latter is the prevailing and necessary one, and it consists, when it is honourable, in the collection of the profits of labour from those who would have misused them, and the administration of those profits for the service either of the same persons in future, or of others; and when it is dishonourable, as is more frequently the case in modern times, it consists in the collection of the profits of labour from those who would have rightly used them, and their appropriation to the service of the collector himself. 147. The examination of these various modes of collection and use of riches will form the third branch of our future inquiries; but the key to the whole subject lies in the clear understanding of the difference between selfish and unselfish expenditure. It is not easy, by any course of reasoning, to enforce this on the generally unwilling hearer; yet the definition of unselfish expenditure is brief and simple. It is expenditure which, if you are a capitalist, does not pay you, but pays somebody else; and if you are a consumer, does not please you, but pleases somebody else. Take one special instance, in further illustration of the general type given above. I did not invent that type, but spoke of a real river, and of real peasantry, the languid and sickly race which inhabits, or haunts-for they are 1 [Compare Unto this Last, § 22 (above, p. 40).] often more like spectres than living men-the thorny desolation of the banks of the Arve in Savoy.1 Some years ago, a society, formed at Geneva, offered to embank the river for the ground which would have been recovered by the operation; but the offer was refused by the (then Sardinian) government. The capitalists saw that this expenditure would have "paid" if the ground saved from the river was to be theirs. But if, when the offer that had this aspect of profit was refused, they had nevertheless persisted in the plan, and merely taking security for the return of their outlay, lent the funds for the work, and thus saved a whole race of human souls from perishing in a pestiferous fen (as, I presume, some among them would, at personal risk, have dragged any one drowning creature out of the current of the stream, and not expected payment therefor), such expenditure would have precisely corresponded to the use of his power made, in the first instance, by our supposed richer peasant-it would have been the king's, of grace, instead of the usurer's, for gain." 148. "Impossible, absurd, Utopian!" exclaim nine-tenths of the few readers whom these words may find. No, good reader, this is not Utopian: but I will tell you what would have seemed, if we had not seen it, Utopian on the side of evil instead of good; that ever men should have come to value their money so much more than their lives, that if you call upon them to become soldiers, and take chance of a bullet through their heart, and of wife and children being left desolate, for their pride's sake, they will do it gaily, without thinking twice; but if you [In a letter to Dr. John Brown from Lausanne (August 6, 1860) Ruskin had written : "The annexation of Savoy to France will be an immense benefit to Savoy. Already some stir is being made in the cretinous torpor of the country, and French engineers are surveying the Arve banks. The river has flowed just where it chose these thousand years, on one side of the valley to-day, on the other to-morrow. A few millions of francs judiciously spent will gain to Savoy as many millions of acres of fruitfullest land and healthy air instead of miasma." On the subject of inundations, see Unto this Last, § 72 n. (above, p. 97).] 2 [Compare Fors Clavigera, Letter 78, where this passage and § 152 are referred to.] ask them, for their country's sake, to spend a hundred pounds without security of getting back a hundred-andfive,* they will laugh in your face. 149. Not but that also this game of life-giving and taking is, in the end, somewhat more costly than other forms of play might be. Rifle practice is, indeed, a not unhealthy pastime, and a feather on the top of the head is a pleasing appendage; but while learning the stops and fingering of the sweet instrument, does no one ever calculate the cost * I have not hitherto touched on the subject of interest of money;1 it is too complex, and must be reserved for its proper place in the body of the work. The definition of interest (apart from compensation for risk) is, "the exponent of the comfort of accomplished labour, separated from its power"; the power being what is lent: and the French economists who have maintained the entire illegality of interest are wrong; yet by no means so curiously or wildly wrong as the English and French ones opposed to them, whose opinions have been collected by Dr. Whewell at page 41 of his Lectures; it never seeming to occur to the mind of the compiler, any more than to the writers whom he quotes, that it is quite possible, and even (according to Jewish proverb ') prudent, for men to hoard as ants and mice do, for use, not usury; and lay by something for winter nights, in the expectation of rather sharing than lending the scrapings. My Savoyard squirrels would pass a pleasant time of it under the snow-laden pine-branches, if they always declined to economize because no one would pay them interest on nuts. 3 (I leave this note as it stood: but, as I have above stated, should now side wholly with the French economists spoken of, in asserting the absolute illegality of interest.) 1 [On this subject, see above, § 98 n. (p. 220).] 2 [The original essay here inserted :— "(I should be glad if a writer, who sent me some valuable notes on this subject, and asked me to return a letter which I still keep at his service, would send me his address.)"] 3 [Six Lectures on Political Economy delivered at Cambridge in Michaelmas Term, 1861. Cambridge printed at the University Press, 1862. An octavo volume, pp. 102. The lectures were delivered to the Prince of Wales and a few other students; the volume was not published, but Whewell distributed copies to his friends to Ruskin among the number. A passage from his letter in acknowledging the author's gift has been published : "Like all other books I ever opened, from Adam Smith downwards, written by clever men on this subject, it fills me with wonder. . . . You know (I suppose by your sending me the book) that I am entirely opposed to all the modern views on this subject." (Isaac Todhunter: William Whewell, an Account of his Writings, 1876, vol. i. pp. 234, 237).] . 4 [Proverbs vi. 6-8: "Go to the ant, thou sluggard; which provideth her meat in the summer."] 5 [See p. 220, author's note of 1872.] of an overture? What melody does Tityrus meditate on his tenderly spiral pipe?1 The leaden seed of it, broad-cast, true conical "Dents de Lion" seed-needing less allowance for the wind than is usual with that kind of herb-what crop are you likely to have of it? Suppose, instead of this volunteer marching and counter-marching, you were to do a little volunteer ploughing and counter-ploughing?? It is more difficult to do it straight: the dust of the earth, so disturbed, is more grateful than for merely rhythmic footsteps. Golden cups, also, given for good ploughing, would be more suitable in colour: (ruby glass, for the wine which 3 giveth his colour" on the ground, might be fitter for the rifle prize in ladies' hands). Or, conceive a little volunteer exercise with the spade, other than such as is needed for moat and breastwork, or even for the burial of the fruit of the laden avena-seed, subject to the shrill Lemures' criticism 66 Wer hat das Haus so schlecht gebaut ?4 If you were to embank Lincolnshire more stoutly against the sea? or strip the peat of Solway, or plant Plinlimmon 1 [The reference is of course to Virgil (Ecl. i. 1, whence Tennyson calls him "Poet of the happy Tityrus piping underneath his beechen bowers"); Ruskin then plays on the term "dandelion" (called lion's tooth from the toothed outline of the leaves), comparing the cannon shell to some peaked "Dent du Lion" in the Alps-and thinking, perhaps, in his allusion to the allowance for the wind in shooting, of Wordsworth's lines (in Vandracour and Julia): "a tuft of winged seed That, from the dandelion's naked stalk, . . . Driven by the autumnal whirlwind to and fro."] 2 [See above, p. 74 and n.] 3 Proverbs xxiii. 31.) 4 [Ruskin explained this passage in a letter to his father (Annecy, April 12, 1863): "The Wer hat das Haus so schlecht gebaut' is from the phantom chorus digging the grave of Faust in the second part of Faust. It is entirely grand and simple : Ghost (Solo). Ghosts (Chorus). Ghost (Solo). Ghosts (Chorus). For other allusions by Ruskin and Eagle's Nest, § 62.] 'Who has built the house so badly, For thee-guest in grey robe 'Who has furnished the room so ill, It was hired only for a little while, to the second part of Faust, see Aratra Pentelici, § 12, moors with larch-then, in due season, some amateur reaping and threshing? "Nay, we reap and thresh by steam, in these advanced days." I know it, my wise and economical friends. The stout arms God gave you to win your bread by, you would fain shoot your neighbours, and God's sweet singers with; then you invoke the fiends to your farm-service; and— When young and old come forth to play On a sulphurous holiday, Tell how the darkling goblin sweat (His feast of cinders duly set), And, belching night, where breathed the morn, That ten day-labourers could not end.1 * 150. Going back to the matter in hand we will press the example closer. On a green knoll above that plain of the Arve, between Cluse and Bonneville, there was, in the year 1860, a cottage, inhabited by a well-doing family * Compare Chaucer's feeling respecting birds (from Canace's falcon, to the nightingale, singing, "Domine, labia-" to the Lord of Love 3) with the usual modern British sentiments on this subject. Or even Cowley's : "What prince's choir of music can excel That which within this shade does dwell, To which we nothing pay, or give? They, like all other poets, live Without reward, or thanks for their obliging pains! "Tis well if they become not prey." Yes; it is better than well; particularly since the seed sown by the wayside has been protected by the peculiar appropriation of part of the 1 [Ruskin here re-writes Milton: see L'Allegro, 97-109.] 2 [Mr. Allen's recollection of the incident here related is that it belongs to a rather later date that of Ruskin's residence at Mornex in 1862-1863. The cottage was in a village at the foot of the Brezon.] 3 [For Canace's falcon, see The Squieres Tale, lines 411 seq., and for another reference to Canace, see Modern Painters, vol. iii. (Vol. V. p. 274); for "Domine, labia" (from the verse in the Psalms with which matins began), see The Court of Love. For other references to the birds of Chaucer, see Harbours of England, § 12 (Vol. XIII. p. 23); Eagle's Nest, § 56, where several stanzas are quoted from The Cuckow and the Nightingale; and Love's Meinie, §§ 35-38, where Ruskin quotes the company of birds in The Romaunt of the Rose. The passage from Cowley is in his piece called "The Garden,” line 60, etc.] [Matthew xiii. 4.] XVII. S |