On the Old Road Volume Ii Part 34

[Footnote 123: See _Munera Pulveris_, - 139: "No man can become largely rich by his personal will.... It is only by the discovery of some method of taxing the labor of others that he can become opulent." And see also _Time and Tide_, - 81.--ED.]

USURY.[124]

A REPLY AND A REJOINDER.

148. I have been honored by the receipt of a letter from the Bishop of Manchester, which, with his Lords.h.i.+p's permission, I have requested the editor of the _Contemporary Review_ to place before the large circle of his readers, with a brief accompanying statement of the circ.u.mstances by which the letter has been called forth, and such imperfect reply as it is in my power without delay to render.

J. RUSKIN.

MANCHESTER, _December_ 8, 1879.

DEAR SIR,--In a letter from yourself to the Rev. F. A.

Malleson,[125] published in the _Contemporary Review_ of the current month, I observe the following pa.s.sage:--"I have never yet heard so much as _one_ (preacher) heartily proclaiming against all those 'deceivers with vain words,' that no 'covetous person, which is an idolater, hath _any_ inheritance in the Kingdom of Christ and of G.o.d;' and on myself personally and publicly challenging the Bishops of England generally, and by name the Bishop of Manchester, to say whether usury was, or was not, according to the will of G.o.d, I have received no answer from any one of them." I confess, for myself, that until I saw this pa.s.sage in print a few days ago, I was unaware of the existence of such challenge, and therefore I could not answer it. It appears to have been delivered (A) in No. 82 of a series of letters which, under the t.i.tle of _Fors Clavigera_, you have for some time been addressing to the working cla.s.ses of England, but which, from the peculiar mode of their publication, are not easily accessible to the general reader and which I have only caught a glimpse of, on the library-table of the Athenaeum Club, on the rare occasions when I am able to use my privileges as a member of that Society. I have no idea why I had the honor of being specially mentioned by name (B); but I beg to a.s.sure you that my silence did not arise from any discourtesy towards my challenger, nor from that discretion which, some people may think, is usually the better part of episcopal valor, and which consists in ignoring inconvenient questions from a sense of inability to answer them; but simply from the fact that I was not conscious that your lance had touched my s.h.i.+eld.

149. The question you have asked is just one of those to which Aristotle's wise caution applies: "We must distinguish and define such words, if we would know how far, and in what sense, the opposite views are true" (_Eth. Nic._, ix, c. viii. - 3). What do you mean by "usury"?

(C) Do you comprehend under it _any_ payment of money as interest for the use of borrowed capital? or only exorbitant, inequitable, grinding interest, such as the money-lender, Fufidius, extorted?

Quinas hic capiti mercedes exsecat, atque Quanto perditior quisque est, tanto acrius urget: Nomina sectatur modo sumta veste virili Sub patribus duris tironum. Maxime, quis non, Jupiter, exclamat, simul atque audivit?

--_Hor. Sat._ i. 2, 14-18.

Usury, in itself, is a purely neutral word, carrying with it, in its primary meaning, neither praise nor blame; and a "usurer" is defined in our dictionaries as "a person accustomed to lend money and take interest for it"--which is the ordinary function of a banker, without whose help great commercial undertakings could not be carried out; though it is obvious how easily the word may pa.s.s into a term of reproach, so that to have been "called a usurer" was one of the bitter memories that rankled most in Shylock's catalogue of his wrongs.

150. I do not believe that anything has done more harm to the practical efficacy of religions sanctions than the extravagant attempts that are frequently made to impose them in cases which they never originally contemplated, or to read into "ordinances," evidently "imposed for a time"--[Greek: dikaiomata mechri kairou] (Heb. ix. 10)--a law of eternal and immutable obligation. Just as we are told (D) not to expect to find in the Bible a scheme of physical science, so I do not expect to find there a scheme of political economy. What I do expect to find, in relation to my duty to my neighbor, are those unalterable principles of equity, fairness, truthfulness, honesty (E), which are the indispensable bases of civil society. I am sure I have no need to remind you that, while a Jew was forbidden by his law to take usury--_i.e._, interest for the loan of money--from his brother, if he were waxen poor and fallen into decay with him, and this generous provision was extended even to strangers and sojourners in the land (Lev. xxv. 35-38), and the interesting story in Nehemiah (v. 1-13), tells us how this principle was recognized in the latest days of the commonwealth--still in that old law there is no denunciation of usury in general, and it was expressly permitted in the case of ordinary strangers[126] (Deut. xxiii. 20).

It seems to me plain also that our Blessed Lord's precept about "lending, hoping for nothing again" (Luke vi. 35), has the same, or a similar, cla.s.s of circ.u.mstances in view, and was intended simply to govern a Christian man's conduct to the poor and needy, and "such as have no helper," and cannot, without a violent twist (F), be construed into a general law determining forever and in all cases the legitimate use of capital. Indeed, on another occasion, and in a very memorable parable, the great Founder of Christianity recognizes, and impliedly sanctions, the practice of lending money at interest. "Thou oughtest,"

says the master, addressing his unprofitable servant, "thou oughtest"--[Greek: edei se]--"to have put my money to the exchangers; and then, at my coming, I should have received mine own _with usury_."

151. "St. Paul, no doubt, denounces the covetous." (G) But who is the [Greek: pleonektes]? Not the man who may happen to have money out on loan at a fair rate of interest; but, as Liddell and Scott give the meaning of the word, "one who has or claims _more than his share_; hence, greedy, grasping, selfish." Of such men, whose affections are wholly set on things of the earth, and who are not very scrupulous how they gratify them, it may, perhaps, not improperly be said (H) that they "have no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of G.o.d." But here, again, it would be a manifest "wresting" of the words to make them apply to a case which we have no proof that the Apostle had in contemplation when he uttered them. Rapacity, greed of gain, harsh and oppressive dealing, taking unfair advantage of our own superior knowledge and another's ignorance, shutting up the bowels of compa.s.sion towards a brother who we see has need--all these and the like things are forbidden by the very spirit of Christianity, and are manifestly "_not_ according to the will of G.o.d," for they are all of them forms of injustice or wrong. But money may be lent at interest without one of these bad pa.s.sions being brought in to play, and in these cases I confess my inability to see where, either in terms or in spirit, such use of money is condemned either by the Christian code of charity, or by that natural law of conscience which we are told (I) is written on the hearts of men.

152. Let me take two or three simple instances by way of ill.u.s.tration.

The following has happened to myself. All my life through--from the time when my income was not a tenth part of what it is now--I have felt it a duty, while endeavoring to discharge all proper claims, to live within that income, so to adjust my expenditure to it that there should be a margin on the right side. This margin, of course, acc.u.mulated, and reached in time, say, 1000. Just then, say, the London and North-Western Railway Company proposed to issue Debenture Stock, bearing four per cent. interest, for the purpose of extending the communications, and so increasing the wealth, of the country. Whom in the world am I injuring--what conceivable wrong am I doing--where or how am I thwarting "the Will of G.o.d"--if I let the Company have my 1000, and have been receiving from them 40 a year for the use of it ever since? Unless the money had been forthcoming from some quarter or other, a work which was absolutely necessary for the prosperity of the nation, and which finds remunerative employment (K) for an immense number of Englishmen, enabling them to bring up their families in respectability and comfort, would never have been accomplished. Will you tell me that this method of carrying out great commercial enterprises, sanctioned by experience (L) as the most, if not the only, practicable one, is "not according to the Will of G.o.d"?

153. Take another instance. In Lancas.h.i.+re a large number of cotton mills have been erected on the joint-stock principle with limited liability.

The thing has been pushed too far probably, and at one time there was a good deal of unwholesome speculation in floating companies. But that is not the question before us; and the enterprises gave working men an opportunity of investing their savings, which was a great stimulus to thrift, and, so far, an advantage to the country. In a mill, which it would perhaps cost 50,000 to build and fit with machinery, the subscribed capital, which would be ent.i.tled to a division of profits after all other demands had been satisfied, would not amount probably to more than 20,000. The rest would be borrowed at rates of interest varying according to the conditions of the market. You surely would not maintain that those who lent their money for such a purpose, and were content with 5 or 6 per cent, for the use of it, thus enabling, in good times, the shareholders to realize 20 or 25 per cent, on their subscribed capital, were doing wrong either to the shareholders or anyone else, or could in any sense be charged with acting "not according to the will of G.o.d"?

154. Take yet one case more. A farmer asks his landlord to drain his land. "Gladly," says his squire, "if you will pay me five per cent on the outlay." In other words, "if you will let me share the increased profits to this extent." The bargain is agreeable to both sides; the productiveness of the land is largely increased; who is wronged? Surely such a transaction could not fairly be described as "not according to the will of G.o.d"; surely, unless the commerce and productive industries of the country are to be destroyed, and, with the destruction, its population is to be reduced to what it was in the days of Elizabeth, these and similar transactions--which can be kept entirely clear of the sin of covetousness, and rest upon the well-understood basis of mutual advantage, each and all being gainers by them--are not only legitimate, but inevitable (M). And now that I have taken up your challenge, and, so far as my ability goes, answered it, may I, without staying to inquire how far your charge against the clergy can be substantiated, that they "generally patronize and encourage all the iniquity of the world by steadily preaching away the penalties of it" (N), be at least allowed to demur to your wholesale denunciation of the great cities of the earth, which you say "have become loathsome centers of fornication and covetousness, the smoke of their sin going up into the face of Heaven, like the furnace of Sodom, and the pollution of it rotting and raging through the bones and souls of the peasant people round them, as if they were each a volcano, whose ashes brake out in blains upon man and beast."[127] Surely, Sir, your righteous indignation at evil has caused you to overcharge your language. No one can have lived in a great city, as I have for the last ten years, without being aware of its sins and its pollutions. But unless you can prevent the aggregation of human beings into great cities, these are evils which must necessarily exist; at any rate, which always have existed. The great cities of to-day are not worse than great cities always have been (O). In one capital respect, I believe they are better. There is an increasing number of their citizens who are aware of these evils, and who are trying their best, with the help of G.o.d, to remedy them. In Sodom there was but one righteous man who "vexed his soul" at the unlawful deeds that he witnessed day by day, on every side; and he, apparently, did no more than vex his soul. In Manchester, the men and women, of all ranks and persuasions, who are actively engaging in some Christian or philanthropic work, to battle against these gigantic evils, are to be reckoned by hundreds. Nowhere have I seen more conspicuous instances of Christian effort, and of single-hearted devotion to the highest interests of mankind. And though, no doubt, if these efforts were better organized, more might be achieved, and elements, which one could wish absent, sometimes mingle with and mar the work, still a great city, even "with the smoke of its sin going up into the face of Heaven," is the n.o.blest field of the n.o.blest virtues, because it gives the amplest scope for the most varied exercise of them.

If you will teach us clergy how better to discharge our office as ministers of a Kingdom of Truth and Righteousness, we shall all owe you a deep debt of grat.i.tude; which no one will be more forward to acknowledge than, my dear Sir, yours faithfully and with much respect,

J. MANCHESTER.

JOHN RUSKIN, Esq.

155. The foregoing letter, to which I would fain have given my undivided and unwearied attention, reached my hands, as will be seen by its date, only in the close of the year, when my general correspondence always far overpa.s.ses my powers of dealing with it, and my strength--such as now is left me--had been spent, nearly to lowest ebb, in totally unexpected business arising out of the threatened mischief at Venice. But I am content that such fragmentary reply as, under this pressure, has been possible to me, should close the debate as far as I am myself concerned.

The question at issue is not one of private interpretation; and the interests concerned are too vast to allow its decision to be long delayed.

The Bishop will, I trust, not attribute to disrespect the mode of reply in the form of notes attached to special pa.s.sages, indicated by inserted letters, which was adopted in _Fors Clavigera_ in all cases of important correspondence, as more clearly defining the several points under debate.

156. (A) "The challenge appears to have been delivered." May I respectfully express my regret that your lords.h.i.+p should not have read the letter you have honored me by answering. The number of _Fors_ referred to does not deliver--it only reiterates--the challenge given in the _Fors_ for January 1st, 1875, with reference to the prayer "Have mercy upon all Jews, Turks, infidels, and heretics, and so fetch them home, blessed Lord, to Thy flock, that they may be saved among the remnant of the true Israelites," in these following terms: "Who _are_ the true Israelites, my Lord of Manchester, on your Exchange? Do they stretch their cloth, like other people?--have they any underhand dealings with the liable-to-be-d.a.m.ned false Israelites--Rothschilds and the like? or are they duly solicitous about those wanderers' souls? and how often, on the average, do your Manchester clergy preach from the delicious parable, savoriest of all Scripture to rogues (at least since the eleventh century, when I find it to have been specially headed with golden t.i.tle in my best Greek MS.) of the Pharisee and Publican,--and how often, on the average, from those objectionable First and Fifteenth Psalms?"

(B) "I have no idea why I had the honor of being specially mentioned by name." By diocese, my Lord; not name, please observe; and for this very simple reason: that I have already fairly accurate knowledge of the divinity of the old schools of Canterbury, York, and Oxford; but I looked to your Lords.h.i.+p as the authoritative exponent of the more advanced divinity of the school of Manchester, with which I am not yet familiar.

157. (C) "What do you mean by usury?" What _I_ mean by that word, my Lord, is surely of no consequence to anyone but my few readers, and fewer disciples. What David and his Son meant by it I have prayed your Lords.h.i.+p to tell your flock, in the name of the Church which dictates daily to them the songs of the one, and professes to interpret to them the commands of the other.

And although I can easily conceive that a Bishop at the court of the Third Richard might have paused in reply to a too curious layman's question of what was meant by "Murder"; and can also conceive a Bishop at the court of the Second Charles hesitating as to the significance of the word "Adultery"; and farther, in the present climacteric of the British Const.i.tution, an elder of the Church of Glasgow debating within himself whether the Commandment which was severely prohibitory of Theft might not be mildly permissive of Misappropriation;--at no time, nor under any conditions, can I conceive any question existing as to the meaning of the words [Greek: tokos], _foenus_; _usura_, or usury: and I trust that your Lords.h.i.+p will at once acquit me of wis.h.i.+ng to attach any other significance to the word than that which it was to the full intended to convey on every occasion of its use by Moses, by David, by Christ, and by the Doctors of the Christian Church, down to the seventeenth century.

Nor, even since that date, although the commercial phrase "interest" has been adopted in order to distinguish an open and unoppressive rate of usury from a surrept.i.tious and tyrannical one, has the debate of lawfulness or unlawfulness ever turned seriously on that distinction. It is neither justified by its defenders only in its mildness, nor condemned by its accusers only in its severity. Usury in any degree is a.s.serted by the Doctors of the early Church to be sinful, just as theft and adultery are a.s.serted to be sinful, though neither may have been accompanied with violence; and although the theft may have been on the most splendid scale, and the fornication of the most courtly refinement.

So also, in modern days, though the voice of the Bank of England in Parliament declares a loan without interest to be a monster,[128] and a loan made below the current rate of interest, a monster in its degree, the increase of dividends above that current rate is not, as far as I am aware, shunned by shareholders with an equally religious horror.

158. But--this strange question being asked--I give its simple and broad answer in the words of Christ: "The taking up that thou layedst not down;"--or, in explained and literal terms, usury is any money paid, or other advantage given, for the loan of anything which is restored to its possessor uninjured and undiminished. For simplest instance, taking a cabman the other day on a long drive, I lent him a s.h.i.+lling to get his dinner. If I had kept thirteen pence out of his fare, the odd penny would have been usury.

Or again. I lent one of my servants, a few years ago, eleven hundred pounds, to build a house with, and stock its ground. After some years he paid me the eleven hundred pounds back. If I had taken eleven hundred pounds and a penny, the extra penny would have been usury.

I do not know whether by the phrase, presently after used by your Lords.h.i.+p, "religious sanctions," I am to understand the Law of G.o.d which David loved, and Christ fulfilled, or whether the splendor, the commercial prosperity, and the familiar acquaintance with all the secrets of science and treasures of art, which we admire in the City of Manchester, must in your Lords.h.i.+p's view be considered as "cases" which the intelligence of the Divine Lawgiver could not have originally contemplated. Without attempting to disguise the narrowness of the horizon grasped by the glance of the Lord from Sinai, nor the inconvenience of the commandments which Christ has directed those who love Him to keep, am I too troublesome or too exigent in asking from one of those whom the Holy Ghost has made our overseers, at least a distinct chart of the Old World as contemplated by the Almighty; and a clear definition of even the inappropriate tenor of the orders of Christ: if only that the modern scientific Churchman may triumph more securely in the circ.u.mference of his heavenly vision, and accept more gratefully the glorious liberty of the free-thinking children of G.o.d?

159. To take a definite, and not impertinent, instance, I observe in the continuing portion of your letter that your Lords.h.i.+p recognizes in Christ Himself, as doubtless all other human perfections, so also the perfection of an usurer; and that, confidently expecting one day to hear from His lips the convicting sentence, "Thou knewest that I was an austere man," your Lords.h.i.+p prepares for yourself, by the disposition of your capital no less than of your talents, a better answer than the barren, "Behold, there thou hast that is thine!" I would only observe in reply, that although the conception of the Good Shepherd, which in your Lords.h.i.+p's language is "implied" in this parable, may indeed be less that of one who lays down his life for his sheep, than of one who takes up his money for them, the pa.s.sages of our Master's instruction, of which the meaning is not implicit, but explicit, are perhaps those which His simpler disciples will be safer in following. Of which I find, early in His teaching, this, almost, as it were, in words of one syllable: "Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away."

There is nothing more "implied" in this sentence than the probable disposition to turn away, which might be the first impulse in the mind of a Christian asked to lend for nothing, as distinguished from the disciple of the Manchester school, whose princ.i.p.al care is rather to find, than to avoid, the enthusiastic and enterprising "him that would borrow of thee." We of the older tradition, my Lord, think that prudence, no less than charity, forbids the provocation or temptation of others into the state of debt, which some time or other we might be called upon, not only to allow the payment of without usury, but even altogether to forgive.

160. (D) "Just as we are told." Where, my Lord, and by whom? It is possible that some of the schemers in physical science, of whom, only a few days since, I heard one of the leading doctors explain to a pleased audience that serpents once had legs, and had dropped them off in the process of development, may have advised the modern disciple of progress of a new meaning in the simple phrase, "upon thy belly shalt thou go"; and that the wisdom of the serpent may henceforth consist, for true believers of the scientific Gospel, in the providing of meats for that spiritual organ of motion. It is doubtless also true that we shall look vainly among the sayings of Solomon for any expression of the opinions of Mr. John Stuart Mill; but at least this much of Natural science, enough for our highest need, we may find in the Scriptures--that by the Word of the Lord were the heavens made, and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth;--and this much of Political, that the Blessing of the Lord, _it_ maketh rich--and He addeth no sorrow with it.

(E) "What I do expect to find." Has your Lords.h.i.+p _no_ expectations loftier than these, from severer scrutiny of the Gospel? As for instance, of some ordinance of Love, built on the foundation of Honesty?

161. (F) "Cannot without a violent twist." I have never myself found any person sincerely desirous of obeying the Word of the Lord, who had the least wish, or occasion, to twist it; nay, even those who study it only that they may discover methods of pardonable disobedience, recognize the unturnable edge of its sword--and in the worst extremity of their need, strive not to avert, but to evade. The utmost deceivableness of unrighteousness cannot deceive itself into satisfactory misinterpretation; it is reduced always to a tremulous omission of the texts it is resolved to disobey. But a little while since, I heard an entirely well-meaning clergyman, taken by surprise in the course of family wors.h.i.+p in the house of a wealthy friend, and finding himself under the painful necessity of reading the fifteenth Psalm, omit the first sentence of the closing verse. I chanced afterwards to have an opportunity of asking him why he had done so, and received for answer, that the lowliness of Christian attainment was not yet "up" to that verse. The harmonies of iniquity are thus curiously perfect:--the economies of spiritual nourishment approve the same methods of adulteration which are found profitable in the carnal; until the prudent pastor follows the example of the well-instructed dairyman; and provides for his new-born babes the _in_sincere Milk of the Word, that they may _not_ grow thereby.

162. (G) "St. Paul, no doubt, denounces the covetous." Am I to understand your Lords.h.i.+p as considering this undeniable denunciation an original and peculiar view taken by the least of the Apostles--perhaps, in this particular opinion, not worthy to be called an Apostle? The traditions of my earlier days were wont to refer me to an earlier source of the idea; which does not, however, appear to have occurred to your Lords.h.i.+p's mind--else the reference to the authority of Liddell and Scott, for the significance of the noun [Greek: pleonektes], ought to have been made also for that of the verb [Greek: epithumeo] And your Lords.h.i.+p's frankness in referring me to the instances of your own practice in the disposal of your income, must plead my excuse for what might have otherwise seemed impertinent--in noting that the blamelessness of episcopal character, even by that least of the Apostles, required in his first Epistle to Timothy, consists not merely in contentment with an episcopal share of Church property, but in being in no respect either [Greek: aischrokordes]--a taker of gain in a base or vulgar manner, or [Greek: philarguros]--a "lover of silver," this latter word being the common and proper word for covetous, in the Gospels and Epistles; as of the Pharisees in Luke xvi. 14; and a.s.sociated with the other characters of men in perilous times, 2 Timothy iii. 2, and its relative noun [Greek: philarguria, given in sum for the root of _all_ evil in 2 Timothy vi. 10, while even the authority of Liddell and Scott in the interpretation of [Greek: pleonexia] itself as only the desire of getting more than our share, may perhaps be bettered by the authority of the teacher, who, declining the appeal made to him as an equitable [Greek: meristes] (Luke xii. 14-46), tells his disciples to beware of coveteousness, simply as the desire of getting more than we have got. "For a man's life consisteth not in the _abundance_ of the things which he possesseth."

163. Believe me, my Lord, it is not without some difficulty that I check my natural impulse to follow you, as a scholar, into the interesting a.n.a.lysis of the distinctions which may be drawn between Rapacity and Acquisitiveness; between the Avarice, or the prudent care, of possession; between the greed, and the modest expectation, of gain; between the love of money, which is the root of all evil; and the commercial spirit, which is in England held to be the fountain of all good. These delicate adjustments of the balance, by which we strive to weigh to a grain the relative quant.i.ties of devotion which we may render in the service of Mammon and of G.o.d, are wholly of recent invention and application; nor have they the slightest bearing, either on the spiritual purport of the final commandment of the Decalogue, or on the distinctness of the subsequent prohibition of practical usury.

It must be remembered, also, how difficult it has become to define the term "filthy" with precision, in the present state, moral and physical, of the English atmosphere; and still more so, to judge how far, in that healthy element, a moderate and delicately sanctified appet.i.te for gold may be developed into livelier qualms of hunger for righteousness. It may be matter of private opinion how far the lucre derived by your Lords.h.i.+p from commission on the fares and refreshments of the pa.s.sengers by the North-Western may be odoriferous or precious, in the same sense as the ointment on the head of Aaron; or how far that received by the Primate of England in royalties on the circulation of improving literature[129] may enrich--as with perfumes out of broken alabaster--the empyreal air of Addington. But the higher cla.s.s of laborers in the Lord's vineyard might surely, with true grace, receive, from the last unto the first, the reflected instruction so often given by the first unto the last, "Be content with your wages."

(H) "It may, perhaps, not improperly be said," The Bible Society will doubtless in future gratefully prefix this guarantee to their publications.

(I) "Which we are told." Can we then no more find for ourselves this writing on our hearts--or has it ceased to be legible?

164. (K) "Remunerative employment." I cannot easily express the astonishment with which I find a man of your Lords.h.i.+p's intelligence taking up the common phrase of "giving employment," as if, indeed, labor were the best gift which the rich could bestow on the poor. Of course, every idle vagabond, be he rich or poor, "gives employment" to some otherwise enough burdened wretch, to provide his dinner and clothes for him; and every vicious vagabond, in the destructive power of his vice, gives sorrowful occupation to the energies of resisting and renovating virtue. The idle child who litters its nursery and tears its frock, gives employment to the housemaid and seamstress; the idle woman, who litters her drawing-room with trinkets, and is ashamed to be seen twice in the same dress, is, in your Lords.h.i.+p's view, the enlightened supporter of the arts and manufactures of her country. At the close of your letter, my Lord, you, though in measured terms, indignantly dissent from my statement of the power of great cities for evil, and indeed I have perhaps been led, by my prolonged study of the causes of the Fall of Venice, into clearer recognition of some of these urban influences than may have been possible to your Lords.h.i.+p in the center of the virtues and proprieties which have been blessed by Providence in the rise of Manchester. But the Scriptural symbol of the power of temptation in the hand of the spiritual Babylon--"all kings have been drunk with the wine of her Fornication"--is perfectly literal in its exposition of the special influence of cities over a vicious, that is to say, a declining, people. They are the foci of its fornication, and the practical meaning is that the lords of the soil take the food and labor of the peasants, who are their slaves, and spend them especially in forms of luxury perfected by the definitely so-called "women of the _town_" who, whether East-cheap Doll, or West--much the reverse of cheap--Nell, are, both in the color which they give to the Arts, and in the tone which they give to the Manners, of the State, a literal plague, pestilence and burden to it, quite otherwise malignant and maleficent than the poor country la.s.sie who loses her snood among the heather. And when, at last, _real_ political economy shall exhibit the exact sources and consequences of the expenditure of the great capitals of civilization on their own indulgences, your Lords.h.i.+p will be furnished, in the statistics of their most splendid and most impious pleasure, with record of precisely the largest existing source of "remunerative employment"--(if _that_ were all the poor had to ask for), next after the preparation and practice of war. I believe it is, indeed, probable that "facility of intercourse" gives the next largest quant.i.ty of occupation; and, as your Lords.h.i.+p rightly observes, to most respectable persons. And if the entire population of Manchester lost the use of its legs, your Lords.h.i.+p would similarly have the satisfaction of observing, and might share in the profits of providing, the needful machinery of porterage and stretchers. But observe, my Lord--and observe as a final and inevitable truth--that whether you lend your money to provide an invalided population with crutches, stretchers, hea.r.s.es, or the railroad accommodation which is so often synonymous with the three, the _tax on the use_ of these, which const.i.tutes the shareholder's dividend, is a permanent burden upon them, exacted by avarice, and by no means an aid granted by benevolence.

165. (L) "Sanctioned by experience." The experience of twenty-three years, my Lord, and with the following result:--

"We have now had an opportunity of practically testing the theory. Not more than seventeen" (now twenty-three--I quote from a letter dated 1875) "years have pa.s.sed since" (by the final abolition of the Usury laws) "all restraint was removed from the growth of what Lord c.o.ke calls 'this pestilent weed,'" and we see Bacon's words verified--"the rich becoming richer, and the poor poorer, throughout the civilized world."

Letter from Mr. R. Sillar, quoted in _Fors Clavigera_, No. 43.