Coremment and cooperation thing the Laws of Life, Anant competition the Lows Death.. " their general principles affects Глория for in the ро montidate that reavit, that the whol the then a papers will on prend ultimat равил extension in to rang; It has long been known and declared then the for. have no from the Rich known & declared, ite Propet of lich right to thigh the I with it also to be understand that the Rich have no птас th ще A PAGE OF THE MS. OF “UNTO THIS LAST" (§ 54) pp. 74-7 in a single phrase spoken three years ago at Manchester: "Soldiers of the Ploughshare as well as Soldiers of the Sword":1 and they were all summed in a single sentence in the last volume of Modern Painters-" Government and co-operation are in all things the Laws of Life; Anarchy and competition the Laws of Death."" And with respect to the mode in which these general principles affect the secure possession of property, so far am I from invalidating such security, that the whole gist of these papers will be found ultimately to aim at an extension in its range; and whereas it has long been known and declared that the poor have no right to the property of the rich, I wish it also to be known and declared that the rich have no right to the property of the poor. 3 55. But that the working of the system which I have undertaken to develop would in many ways shorten the apparent and direct, though not the unseen and collateral, power, both of wealth, as the Lady of Pleasure, and of capital as the Lord of Toil, I do not deny: on the contrary, I affirm it in all joyfulness; knowing that the attraction of riches is already too strong, as their authority is already too weighty, for the reason of mankind. I said in my last paper that nothing in history had ever been so disgraceful to human intellect as the acceptance among us of the common doctrines of political economy as a science. I have many grounds for saying this, but one of the chief may be given in few words. I know no previous instance in history of a nation's establishing a systematic disobedience to the first principles of its professed religion. The writings which we (verbally) esteem as divine, not only denounce the love of money as the source of all evil, and as an [A Joy for Ever, § 15 (Vol. XVI. p. 26); and see above (Preface, § 6), p. 22. [Part viii. ch. i. § 6 (Vol. VII. p. 207).] Really in the first paper: see § 1; above, p. 25.] 1 Timothy vi. 10; Matthew vi. 24. For other references by Ruskin, in a similar sense, to the modern attitude towards the Bible, see Two Paths, § 178 n. (Vol. XVI. p. 397); Vol. VI. p. 458; Time and Tide, § 34 (below, p. 348); and Crown of Wild Olive, § 35.] idolatry abhorred of the Deity, but declare mammon service to be the accurate and irreconcileable opposite of God's service: and, whenever they speak of riches absolute, and poverty absolute, declare woe to the rich, and blessing to the poor. Whereupon we forthwith investigate a science of becoming rich, as the shortest road to national prosperity. "Tai Cristian dannerà l'Etiòpe, Quando si partiranno i due collegi, L'UNO IN ETERNO RICCO, E L'ALTRO INOPE." 1 1 [Paradiso, xix. 109. In Cary's translation : "Christians like these the Ethiop shall condemn, One rich eternally, the other poor." Dante's reference in the first line is to Matthew xii. 41: "The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and condemn it."] ESSAY IV AD VALOREM 1 56. In the last paper we saw that just payment of labour consisted in a sum of money which would approximately obtain equivalent labour at a future time: we have now to examine the means of obtaining such equivalence. Which question involves the definition of Value, Wealth, Price, and Produce. 2 None of these terms are yet defined so as to be understood by the public. But the last, Produce, which one might have thought the clearest of all, is, in use, the most ambiguous; and the examination of the kind of ambiguity attendant on its present employment will best open the way to our work. In his chapter on Capital,* Mr. J. S. Mill instances, as a capitalist, a hardware manufacturer, who, having intended to spend a certain portion of the proceeds of his business in buying plate and jewels, changes his mind, and "pays it as wages to additional work people." The effect is stated by Book I. chap. iv. s. 1. To save space, my future references to Mr. Mill's work will be by numerals only, as in this instance, I. iv. 1. Ed. in 2 vols. 8vo, Parker, 1848. 1 [See § 47, p. 64.] [The MS. continues :-- "Most persons confuse the value of a thing with its price (which is as though they should estimate the healing powers of a medicine by the charge of the apothecary); confuse the wealth (or the possessions which constitute the well-being of an individual) with riches (or the possessions which constitute power over others); and, finally, confuse production, or profit, which is an increase of the possessions of the world, with Acquisition or Gain, which is an increase of the possessions of one person by the diminution of those of another. This last word, production, indeed, which one might. . ."] |