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•  TIME  AND    TIDE 


BY  WEARE    AND   TYNE 


TWENTY-FIVE   LETTERS 


WOEKING  MAN  OF  SUNDERLAND 


LAWS  OP  WORK, 


BY 


JOH^.fe^S^i^,  LL.D., 

HONOBABY  STUDENT  OF   CHRIST-CHUBCH,    OXOX. 
y  OF  THB 

UlTIVERS 

NEW  YORK: 
JOHlSr  WILEY  &  SON,  535  BROADWAY 

1868. 


VM/ 


Ths  Nbw  York  Printing  Company, 

8,,  83,  and  85  Centrt  Street, 

Nbw  York. 


CONTENTS 


«~»^ 

PAGE 

Preface ix 


Letter  I. — Co-operation.  ^ 

The  two  kinds  of  Co-operation — In  its  highest  sense  it  is  not  yet 

thought  of 1 


Letter  II. — Contentment. 

Co-operation,  as  hitherto  understood,  is  perRaps  not  expedient 6 

Letter  III. — Legislation.    ^ 

Of  true  Legislation,     That  every  Man  may  be  a  Law  to  himself.  . .     12 

Letter  lY. — Expenditure. 

The  Expenses  for  Art  and  for  War 18 

Letier  Y. — Entertainment.  \ 

The    Corruption    of    Modem    Pleasure.  —  (Co vent    Garden    Pan- 
tomime.)       22 

Letter  YI. — Dexterity. 
The  Corruption  of  Modem  Pleasure. — (The  Japanese  Jugglers.) ...     29 

Letiee  YII. — Festivity. 

Of  the  various  Expressions  of  National  Festivity 83 


iv  contents. 

Letter  YIII. — Things  Writfen. 

rxQM 
The  Four  possible  Theories  respecting  the  Authority  of  the  Bible. .     37 

Letter  IX. — Thanksgiving. 

The  Use  of   Music  and  Dancing  under  the  Jewish  Theocracy, 

compared  with  their  Use  by  the  Modem  French 44 

Letter  X. — Wheat-Siffing. 

The  Meaning,  and  actual  Operation,  of  Satanic  or  Demoniacal 
Influence  54 

Letter  XL — The  Golden  Bough. 

The  Satanic  Power  is  mainly  Twofold  :  the  Power  of  causing  False- 
hood and  the  Power  qf  causing  Pain.  The  Resistance  is  by 
Law  of  Honour  and  Law  of  Delight 64 

/  LETfER  XII. — Dictatorship.  ^ 

V      The  Necessity  of  Imperative  Law  to  the  Prosperity  of  States 08 

Letter  XIII. — Episcopacy  and  Dukedom.  ^ 

The  proper  Oflaces  of  the  Bishop  and  Duke;  or,  "Overseer"  and 
"  Leader" • 76 

Letter  XIV. — Trade-Warrant. 

The  First  Group  of  Essential  Laws. — Against  Theft  by  False  Work 
and  by  Bankruptcy. — Necessary  Publicity  of  Accounts 85 

Letter  XV. — Pee-centage. 

]/       The  Nature  of  Theft  by  Unjust  Profits.— Crime  can  finally  be 

arrested  only  by  Education 01 


contents.  v 

Letter  XYI. — Education. 

PAGE 

Of  Public  Education  irrespective  of  Class-distinction.     It  consists 

essentially  in  giving  Habits  of  Mercy,  and  Habits  of  Truth ...     99 

Letter   XYII. — Difficulties. 

The  Relations  of  Education  to  Position  ia  Life 110 

Letter  XYIII. — Humility. 

The  harmful  Effects  of  Servile  Employments.  The  possible 
Practice  and  Exhibition  of  sincere  Humility  by  Religious 
Persons 115 

Letter  XIX. — Broken  Reeds. 

The  General  Pressure  of  Excessive  and  Improper  Work,  in  English 

Life 123 

Letier   XX. — Rose-Gardens. 

Of  Improvidence  in  Marriage  in  the  Middle  Classes ;  and  of  the 

advisable  Restrictions  of  it 131 

Lefier   XXI. — Gentillesse. 

Of  the  Dignity  of  the  Four  Fine  Arts ;  and  of  the  Proper  System 

of  RetaU  Trade 140 

Letter   XXII. — The  Master. 

Of  the  normal  Position  and  Duties  of  the  Upper  Classes.     Greneral 

Statement  of  the  Land  Question 148 

Letter  XXIII. — Landmarks. 

f  the  Just  Tenure  of  Lands ;  and  the  proper  Functions  of  high 
PubUc  Officers. 157 


vi  contents. 

Letter  XXIY. — The  Eod  and  Honeycomb. 

PAOK 

The  Office  of  the  Soldier 170 

Letter  XXY. — Hyssop. 

^y^i  inevitable  Diatinction  of  Rank,  and  necessary  Submission  to 

Authority.     The  Meaning  of  Pure-heartedness.     Conclusion. .   182 


APPENDICES 


Appendix  1. 

PAOB 

Expenditure  on  Science  and  Art  196 

Appendix  2.* 

Legislation  of  Frederick  the  Great  197 

Appendix  3. 

Effect  of  Modem  Entertainments  on  the  Mind  of  Youth  200 

Appendix  4. 
Drunkenness  as  the  Cause  of  Crime 201 

Appendix  6. 

Abuse  of  Food OaS 

Appendix  6. 

Law  of  Property 204 

Appendix  7. 

Ambition  of  Bishops -05 


CONTENTS.  VI I 

Appendix  8. 

PAGE 

Regulations  of  Trade 206 

Appendix  9. 

Greatness  Coal-begotten 208 

Appendix  10. 
Letter  to  the  Editor  of  the  PaU  Mall  Gazette 209 


PREFACE. 


The  following  letters  were  written  to  Mr.  Thomas 
Dixon,  a  working  cork-cutter  of  Sunderland,  during  the 
agitation  for  reform  in  the  spring  of  the  present  year. 
They  contain,  in  the  plainest  terms  I  could  use,  the  sub- 
stance of  what  I  then  desired  to  say  to  our  English  work- 
men, which  was  briefly  this : — "  The  reform  you  desire 
may  give  you  more  influence  in  Parliament ;  but  your 
influence  there  will  of  course  be  useless  to  you, — perhaps 
worse  than  useless, — until  you  have  wisely  made  up  your 
minds  as  to  what  you  wish  Parliament  to  do  for  you ;  and 
when  you  have  made  up  your  minds  about  that,  you  will 
find,  not  only  that  you  can  do  it  for  yourselves,  without 
the  intervention  of  Parliament ;  but  that  eventually  no- 
body Imt  yourselves  can  do  it.  And  to  help  you,  as  far 
as  one  of  your  old  friends  may,  in  so  making  up  your 
minds,  such  and  such  things  are  what  it  seems  to  me  you 
should  ask  for,  and,  moreover,  strive  for,  with  your  heart 
and  might." 

The  letters  now  published  relate  only  to  one  division 
of  the  laws  which  I  desired  to  recommend  to  the  con- 
sideration of  our  operatives, — those,  namely,  bearing  upon 
honesty  of  work,  and  honesty  of  exchange.  I  hope  in 
the  course  of  next  year  that  I  may  be  able  to  complete 


X  PREFACE. 

the  second  part  of  the  series,  which  will  relate  to  the 
possible  comforts  and  wholesome  laws  of  familiar  liouse- 
hold  life,  and  the  share  which  a  labouring  nation  may 
attain  in  the  skill,  and  the  treasures,  of  the  higher  arts. 
The  letters  are  republished  as  they  were  written,  with 
here  and  there  correction  of  a  phi*ase,  and  omission  of  one 
or  two  passages  of  merely  personal  or  tempora?y  interest ; 
the  headings  only  are  added,  in  order  to  give  the  reader 
some  clue  to  the  general  aim  of  necessarily  desultory  dis- 
cussion ;  and  the  portions  of  Mr.  Dixon's  letters  in  reply, 
referred  to  in  the  text,  are  added  in  the  Appendix ;  and 
will  be  found  well  deserving  of  attention. 

Denmark  Hill,  December  14, 1867. 


-    or  THB 


UIVIB-SITY 


OIB' 


TIME    AND    TIDE, 
BY  WEARE    AND  TYNE. 


€ttkx  1, 

The  two  kinds  of  Oo-qperation. — In  its  highest  sense  it  is 
not  yet  thought  of. 

Denmark  Hill,  Febnwry  4,  1867. 

My  dear  Feiend — Yon  have  now  everything  I  have 
yet  published  on  political  economy ;  but  there  are  several 
points  in  these  books  of  mine  which  I  intended  to  add 
notes  to,  and  it  seems  little  likely  I  shall  get  that  soon 
done.  So  I  think  the  best  way  of  making  up  for  the 
want  of  these  is  to  write  you  a  few  simple  letters,  which 
you  can  read  to  other  people,  or  send  to  be  printed,  if 
you  like,  in  any  of  your  journals  where  you  think  they 
may  be  useful. 

I  especially  want  you,  for  one  thing,  to  understand  the 
sense  in  which  the  word  "co-operation"  is  used  in  my 
books.     You  will  find  I  am  always  pleading  for  it ;  and 


2        '    '  '  TIME   AND   TIDE. 


yet  I  don't  at  all  mean  the  co-operation  of  partnerehip  (as 
opposed  to  the  system  of  wages)  which  is  now  so  gradu- 
ally extending  itself  among  our  great  firms.  I  am  glad 
to  see  it  doing  so,  yet  not  altogether  glad ;  for  none  of 
you  who  are  engaged  in  the  immediate  struggle  between 
the  system  of  co-operation  and  the  system  of  mastership 
know  how  much  the  dispute  involves ;  and  none  of  us 
know  the  results  to  which  it  may  finally  lead.  For  the 
alternative  is  not,  in  reality,  only  between  two  modes  of 
conducting  business — it  is  between  two  different  states  of 
society.  It  is  not  the  question  whether  an  amount  of 
wages,  no  greater  in  the  end  than  that  at  present 
received  by  the  men,  may  be  paid  to  them  in  a  way 
which  shall  give  them  share  in  the  risks,  and  interest  in 
the  prosperity  of  the  business.  The  question  is,  really, 
whether  the  profits  which  are  at  present  taken,  as  his 
own  right,  by  the  person  whose  capital,  or  energy,  or 
ingenuity,  has  made  him  head  of  the  firm,  are  not  in 
some  proportion  to  be  divided  among  the  subordinates 
of  it. 

I  do  not  wish,  for  the  moment,  to  enter  into  any 
inquiry  as  to  the  just  claims  of  capital,  or  as  to  the  pro- 
portions in  which  profits  ought  to  be,  or  are  in  actually 
existing  firms,  divided.  I  merely  take  the  one  assured 
and  essential  condition,  that  a  somewhat  larger  income 


LETTER   I. CO-OPERATION. 


will  be  in  co-operative  firms  secured  to  the  subordinates, 
by  the  diminution  of  the  income  of  the  chief.     And  the 
general   tendency  of  such  a  system   is  to   increase  the 
facilities   of  advancement   among    the  subordinates;    to 
stimulate  their  ambition ;   to  enable  them  to  lay  by,  if 
they  are  provident,  more  ample  and  more  early  provision 
for  declining  years ;  and  to  form  in  the  end  a  vast  class 
of  persons  wholly  difierent  from  the  existing  operative- 
members   of  society,  possessing  each   a   moderate  com- 
petence; able  to  procure,  therefore,  not  indeed  many  of 
the  luxuries,  but  all  the  comforts  of  life ;   and  to  devote 
some  leisure  to  the  attainments  of  liberal  education,  and 
to  the  other  objects  of  free  life.     On  the  other  hand,  by 
the  exact  sum  which  is  divided  among  them,  more  than 
their  present  wages,  the  fortune  of  the  man  who,  under 
the  present  system,  takes  all  the  profits  of  the  business, 
will  be  diminished  ;  and  the  acquirement  of  large  private 
fortune  by  regular  means,  and:  all  the  conditions  of  life 
belonging  to  such  fortune,  will  be  rendered  impossible  in 
the  mercantile  community. 

Now,  the  magnitude  of  the  social  change  hereby  in- 
volved, and  the  consequent  differences  in  the  moral 
relations  between  individuals,  have  not  as  yet  been 
thought  of,— much  less  estimated,— by  any  of  your 
writers  on  commercial  subjects;  and  it  is  because  I  do 


4:  TIME   AND   TIDE. 

not  yet  feel  able  to  grapple  with  them  that  I  have  left 
untouched,  in  the  books  I  send  you,  the  question  of  co- 
operative labour.  When  I  use  the  word  "  co-operation," 
it  is  not  meant  to  refer  to  these  new  constitutions  of 
firms  at  all.  I  use  the  word  in  a  far  wider  sense,  as 
opposed,  not  to  masterhood,  but  to  corripetition.  I  do 
not  mean  for  instance,  by  co-operation,  that  all  the  master 
bakers  in  a  town  are  to  give  a  sh^re  of  their  profits  to 
the  men  who  go  out  with  the  bread ;  but  that  the  masters 
are  not  to  try  to  undersell  each  other,  nor  seek  each  to 
get  the  other's  business,  but  are  all  to  form  one  society, 
selling  to  the  public  under  a  common  law  of  severe 
penalty  for  unjust  dealing,  and  at  an  established  price. 
I  do  not  mean  that  all  bankers'  clerks  should  be  partners 
in  the  bank ;  but  I  do  mean  that  all  bankers  should  be 
members  of  a  great  national  body,  answerable  as  a  society 
for  all  deposits ;  and  that  the  private  business  of  specu- 
lating with  other  people's  money  should  take  another 
name  than  that  of  "  banking."     And,  for  final  instance, 

I  I  mean  by  "  co-operatiau  "  not  only  fellowships  between 
trading  firms,  but  between  trading  nations;  so  that 
it  shall  no  more  be  thought  (as  it  is  now,  with  ludicrous 
and  vain  selfishness)  an  advantage  for  one  nation  to 
undersell   another,  and  take  its  occupation  away  from 

^it;  but  that  the  primal  and  eternal  law  of  vital  com- 


J^<s>.d<^^'^"-^  'j 


LETTER   I. — CO-OPERATION.  5 

merce  shall  be  of  all  men  understood — ^namely,  that 
every  nation  is  fitted  by  its  character,  and  the  nature 
of  its  territories,  for  some  particular  employments  or 
manufactures -S  and  that  it  is  the  true  interest  of  every 
other  nation  to  encourage  it  in  such  specialty,  and  by 
no  means  to  interfere  with,  but  in  all  ways  forward 
and  protect  its  efforts,  ceasing  all  rivalship  with  it,  so 
soon  as  it  is  strong* enough  to  occupy  its  proper  place. 
You  see,  therefore,  that  the  idea  of  co-operation,  in  the 
sense  in  which  I  employ  it,  has  hardly  yet  entered  into 
the  minds  of  political  inquirers ;  and  I  will  not  pursue 
it  at  present;  but  return  to  that  system  which  is  be- 
ginning to  obtain  credence  and  practice  among  us.  This, 
ho^^^er,  must  be  in  a  following  letter. 


>^       OF  THE  ^ 

'UNIVERSITY 


Ccttcr  2. 

Co-operation^  as  hitherto  understood^  is  perhaps  not  ex- 
pedient. 

February  4. 1867. 

Limiting  the  inquiry,  then,  for  the  present,  as  proposed 
in  the  close  of  my  last  letter,  to  the  form  of  co-operation 
which  is  now  upon  its  trial  in  practice,  I  would  beg  of  you 
to  observe  that  the  points  at  issue,  in  the  comparison  of 
this  system  with  that  of  mastership,  are  by  no  means  hith- 
erto frankly  stated ;  still  less  can  they  as  yet  begfeirly 
brought  to  test.  For  all  mastership  is  not  alike  in  princi- 
ple ;  there  are  just  and  unjust  masterships  ;  and  while,  on 
the  one  hand,  there  can  be  no  question  but  that  co-opera- 
tion is  better  than  unjust  and  tyrannous  mastership,  there 
is  very  great  room  for  doubt  whether  it  be  better  than  a 
just  and  benignant  mastership. 

At  present  you — every  one  of  you — speak,  and  act,  as 
if  there  were  only  one  alternative ;  namely,  between  a 
system  in  which  profits  shall  be  divided  in  due  proportion 
among  all ;  and  the  present  one,  in  which  the  workman  is 
paid  the  least  wages  he  will  take,  under  the  pressure  of 


LETTER   II. CONTENl'MENT.  7 

competition  in  the  labour-market.  But  an  intermediate 
method  is  conceivable ;  a  method  which  appears  to  be  more 
prudent,  and  in  its  ultimate  results  more  just,  than  the 
co-operative  one.  An  arrangement  may  be  supposed,  and 
I  have  good  hope  also  may  one  day  be  effected,  by  which 
every  subordinate  shall  be  paid  sufficient  and  regular  wa- 
ges, according  to  his  rank ;  by  which  due  provision  shall 
be  made  out  of  the  profits  of  the  business  for  sick  and  su- 
perannuated workers ;  and  by  which  the  master,  leing 
held  responsible,  as  a  minor  hing  or  governor,  for  the  conr- 
duct  as  well  as  the  comfort  of  all  those  under  his  rule, 
shall,  on  that  condition,  bepermitted  to  retain  to  his  own 
use  the  surplus  profits  of  the  business,  which  the  fact  of  his 
being  its  master  may  be  assumed  to  prove  that  he  has  or- 
ganized by  superior  intellect  and  energy.  And  I  think 
this  principle  of  regular  wage-paying,  w^hether  it  be  in  the 
abstract  more  just,  or  not,  is  at  all  events  the  more  prudent ; 
for  this  reason  mainly,  that  in  spite  of  all  the  cant  which 
is  continually  talked  by  cruel,  foolish,  or  designing  persons 
about  "  the  duty  of  remaining  content  in  the  position  in 
which  Providence  has  placed  you,"  there  is  a  root  of  the 
very  deepest  and  holiest  truth  in  the  saying,  which  gives 
to  it  such  power  as  it  still  retains,  even  uttered  by  unkind 
and  unwise  lips,  and  received  into  doubtful  and  embittered 
hearts. 


8  TIME   AND  TIDE. 

If,  indeed,  no  effort  be  made  to  discover,  in  the  conrse 
of  their  early  training,  for  what  services  the  youths  of  a 
nation  are  individually  qualified ;  nor  any  care  taken  to 
place  those  who  have  unquestionably  proved  their  fitness 
for  certain  functions,  in  the  ofiices  they  could  best  fulfil, — 
then,  to  call  the  confused  wreck  of  social  order  and  life 
brought  about  by  malicious  collision  and  competition  an 
arrangement  of  Providence,  is  quite  one  of  the  most  inso- 
lent and  wicked  ways  in  which  it  is  possible  to  take  the 
name  of  God  in  vain.  But  if,  at  the  proper  time,  some 
earnest  effort  be  made  to  place  youths,  according  to  their 
capacities,  in  the  occupations  for  which  they  are  fitted,  I 
think  the  system  of  organization  will  be  finally  found  the 
best,  which  gives  the  least  encouragement  to  thoughts  of 
any  great  future  advance  in  social  life. 

The  healthy  sense  of  progress,  which  is  necessary  to 
the  strength  and  happiness  of  men,  does  not  consist  in  the 
anxiety  of  a  struggle  to  attain  liigher  place  or  rank,  but 
in  gradually  perfecting  the  manner,  and  accomplishing 
the  ends,  of  the  life  which  we  have  chosen,  or  which  cir- 
cumstances have  detennined  for  us.  Thus,  I  think  the 
object  of  a  workman's  ambition  should  not  be  to  become 
a  master ;  but  to  attain  daily  more  subtle  and  exemplary 
skill  in  his  own  craft,  to  save  from  his  wages  enough  to 
enrich  and  complete  his  home  gradually  with  more  deli- 


LETTER   II. — CONTENTMENT.  9 

cate  and  substantial  comforts ;  and  to  lay  by  such  store  as 
shall  be  sufficient  for  the  happy  maintenance  of  his  old 
age  (rendering  him  independent  of  the  help  provided  for 
the  sick  and  indigent  by  the  arrangement  pre-supposed), 
and  sufficient  also  for  the  starting  of  his  children  in  a  rank 
of  life  equal  to  his  own.  If  his  wages  are  not  enough 
to  enable  him  to  do  this,  they  are  unjustly  low ;  if  they 
are  once  raised  to  this  adequate  standard,  I  do  not  think 
that  by  the  possible  increase  of  his  gains  under  contin- 
gencies of  trade,  or  by  divisions  of  profits  with  his  mas- 
ter, he  should  be  enticed  into  fevierish  hope  of  an  entire 
change  of  condition ;  and  as  an  almost  necessary  conse- 
quence, pass  his  days  in  an  anxious  discontent  with  im- 
mediate circumstances,  and  a  comfortless  scorn  of  his  daily 
life,  for  which  no  subsequent  success  could  indemnify  him. 
And  I  am  the  more  confident  in  this  belief,  because,  even 
sirpposing  a  gradual  rise  in  sociable  rank  possible  for  all 
well-conducted  persons,  my  experience  does  not  lead  me  to 
think  the  elevation  itself,  when  attained,  would  be  con- 
ducive to  their  happiness. 

The  grounds  of  this  opinion  I  will  give  you  in  a 
ftiture  letter ;  in  the  present  one,  I  must  pass  to  a  more 
important  point,  namely,  that  if  this  stability  of  con- 
dition be  indeed  desirable  for  those  in  whom  existing 
circumstances   might   seem   to  justify   discontent,   much 


10  TIME    AND  TIDE. 

more  must  it  be  good  and  desirable  for  those  who  al- 
ready possess  everything  which  can  be  conceived  ne- 
cessary to  happiness.  It  is  the  merest  insolence  of 
selfishness  to  preach  contentment  to  a  labourer  who 
gets  thirty  shillings  a  week,  while  we  suppose  an  active 
and  plotting  covetousness  to  be  meritorious  in  a  man 
who  has  three  thousand  a  year.  In  this,  as  in  all  other 
points  of  mental  discipline,  it  is  the  duty  of  the  upper 
classes  to  set  an  example  to  the  lower;  and  to  recom- 
mend and  justify  the  restraint  of  the  ambition  of  their 
inferiors,  chiefly  by  severe  and  timely  limitation  of  their 
own.  And,  without  at  present  inquiring  into  the  greater 
or  less  convenience  of  the  possible  methods  of  accom- 
plishing such  an  object  (every  detail  in  suggestions  of 
this  kind  necessarily  furnishing  separate  matter  of  dis- 
pute), I  will  merely  state  my  long  fixed  conviction,  that 
one  of  the  most  important  conditions  of  a  healthful  system 
of  social  economy,  would  be  the  restraint  of  the  prop- 
erties and  incomes  of  the  upper  classes  within  certain 
fixed  limits.  The  temptation  to  use  every  energy  in 
the  accumulation  of  wealth  being  thus  removed,  another, 
and  a  higher  ideal  of  the  duties  of  advanced  life  would 
be  necessarily  created  in  tlw  national  mind ;  by  with- 
drawal of  those  who  had  attained  the  prescribed  limittt 
of  wealth  from  commercial  competition,  earlier  worldly 


LETTER   II. CONTENTMENT.  11 

success,  and  earlier  marriage,  with  all  its  beneficent 
moral  results,  would  become  possible  to  the  young ; 
while  the  older  men  of  active  intellect,  whose  sagacity 
is  now  lost  or  warped  in  the  furtherance  of  their  own 
meanest  interests,  would  be  induced  unselfishly  to  occupy 
themselves  in  the  superintendence  of  pubKc  institutions, 
or  furtherance  of  public  advantage. 

And  out  of  this  class  it  would  be  found  natural  and 
prudent  always  to  choose  the  members  of  the  legislative 
body  of  the  Commons;  and  to  attach  to  the  order 
also  some  peculiar  honors,  in  the  possession  of  which 
such  complacency  would  be  felt  as  would  more  than 
replace  the  unworthy  satisfaction  of  being  supposed  \ 
richer  than  others,  which  to  many  men  is  the  principal 
charm  of  their  wealth.  And  although  no  law  of  this 
purport  would  ever  be  imposed  on  themselves  by  the 
actual  upper  classes,  there  is  no  hindrance  to  its  being 
gradually  brought  into  force  from  beneath,  without 
any  violent  or  impatient  proceedings;  and  this  I  will 
endeavour  to  show  in  my  next  letter. 


Cetter  3. 

Of  True  Legislation.     That  efdeinj  Man  may  he  a  La/vo 
to  Iwrmelf. 

February  17,  1867. 
Xo,  I  have  not  been  much  worse  in  health;  but  I 
was  asked  by  a  friend  to  look  over  some  work  in  which 
you  will  all  be  deeply  interested  one  day,  so  that  I 
could  not  write  again  till  now.  I  was  the  more  sorry, 
because  there  were  several  things  I  wished  to  note 
in  your  last  letter;  one  especially  leads  me  directly  to 
what  I  in  any  case  was  desirous  of  urging  upon  you. 
You  say,  "In  vol.  6th  of  Frederick  the  Great  I  find 
a  great  deal  that  I  feel  quite  certain,  if  our  Queen  or 
Government  could  make  law,  thousands  of  our  English 
workmen  would  hail  with  a  shout  of  joy  and  gladness." 
I  do  not  remember  to  what  you  especially  alhide,  but 
whatever  the  rules  you  speak  of  may  be,  unless  there 
be  anything  in  them  contrary  to  the  rights  of  present 
English  property,  why  should  you  care  whether  the 
Government  makes  them  law  or  not?      Can  you  not. 


LETTER   in. LEGISLATION.  13 

joii  thousands  of  English  workmen,  simply  make  them^^ 
a  law  to  yourselves,  by  practising  them? 

It  is  now  some  five  or  six  years  since  I  first  had  occa- 
sion to  speak  to  the  members  of  the  London  "Working 
Men's  College  on  the  subject  of  Reform,  and  the  sub- 
stance of  what  I  said  to  them  was  this :  "  You  are  all 
agape,  my  friends,  for  this  mighty  privilege  of  having 
your  opinions  represented  in  Parliament.  The  concession 
might  be  desirable, — at  all  events  courteous, — if  only  it 
were  quite  certain  you  had  got  any  opinions  to  represent. 
But  have  you  ?  Are  you  agreed  on  any  single  thing  you 
systematically  want  ?  Less  work  and  more  wages,  of 
coiu'se ;  but  how  much  lessening  of  work  do  you  suppose 
is  possible  ?  Do  you  think  the  time  will  ever  come  for 
everybody  to  have  no  work  and  all  wages  ?     Or  have  you 

yet  taken  the  trouble  so  much  as  to  think  out  the  nature 

1 
of  the  true  connection  between  wao^es  and  work,  and  to  1 1 

^  I 

determine,  even  approximately,  the  real  quantity  of  the  \ 

one,  that  can,  according  to  the  laws  of  God  and  nature,  1 

be  given  for  the  other ;  for,  rely  on  it,  make  what  laws 

you  like,  that  quantity  only  can  you  at  last  get  ? 

"  Do  you  know  how  many  mouths  can  be  fed  on  an 

acre  of  land,  or  how  fast  those  mouths  multiply;   and 

have  you  considered  what  is  to  be  done  finally  with  un- 

feedable  mouths  ?     '  Send  them  to  be  fed  elsewhere,'  do 


14  TIME   Al^D   TIDE. 

you  say  ?  Have  you,  then,  formed  auy  opinion  as  to  the 
time  at  which  emigration  should  begin,  or  the  countries 
to  whicli  it  should  preferably  take  place,  or  the  kind  of 
population  which  should  be  left  at  home?  Have  you 
planned  the  permanent  state  which  you  would  wish  Eng- 
land to  hold,  emigrating  over  her  edges,  like  a  full  well, 
constantly  ?  How  full  would  you  have  her  be  of  people, 
first;  and  of  what  sort  of  people?  Do  you  want  her  to 
be  notliing  but  a  large  workshop  and  forge,  so  that  the 
name  of  ^  Englishman '  shall  be  synonymous  with  '  iron- 
monger,' all  over  the  world ;  or  would  you  like  to  keep 
some  of  your  lords  and  landed  gentry  still,  and  a  few 
green  fields  and  trees  ? 

"  You  know  well  enough  that  there  is  not  one  of  these 
questions,  I  do  not  say  which  you  can  answer,  but  which 
you  have  ever  thought  of  answering ;  and  yet  you  want  to 
have  voices  in  Parliament  I  Your  voices  are  not  worth  a 
rat's  squeak,  either  in  Parliament  or  out  of  it,  till  you 
have  some  ideas  to  utter  with  them ;  and  when  you  have 
the  thoughts,  you  will  not  want  to  utter  them,  for  you 
will  see  that  your  way  to  the  fulfilling  of  them  does  not 
lie  through  speech.  You  think  such  matters  need  debat- 
ing about  ?  By  all  means  debate  about  them ;  but  debate 
among  yourselves,  and  with  such  honest  helpers  of  your 
thoughts  as  you  can  find.    If  that  way  you  cannot  get  at 


LETTER   m. LEGISLATION.  15 

the  truth,  do  you  suppose  you  could  get  at  it  sooner  in 
the  House  of  Commons,  where  the  only  aim  of  many  of 
the  members  would  be  to  refute  every  word  uttered  in 
your  favor ;  and  where  the  settlement  of  any  question 
whatever  depends  merely  on  the  perturbations  of  the 
balance  of  conflicting  interests  ? " 

That  was,  in  main  particulars,  what  I  then  said  to  the 
men  of  the  Working  Men's  College ;  and  in  this  recur- 
rent agitation  about  Reform,  that  is  what  I  would  stead- 
fastly say  again.  Do  you  think  it  is  only  under  the 
lacquered  splendours  of  Westminster, — ^you  working  men 
of  England, — that  your  affairs  can  be  rationally  talked 
over  ?  You  have  perfect  liberty  and  power  to  talk  over, 
and  establish  for  yourselves,  whatever  laws  you  please, 
so  long  as  you  do  not  interfere  with  other  people's  liber- 
ties or  properties.  Elect  a  parliament  of  your  own. 
Choose  the  best  men  among  you,  the  best  at  least  you 
can  find,  by  whatever  system  of  election  you  think  like- 
liest to  secure  such  desirable  result.  Invite  trustworthy 
persons  of  other  classes  to  join  your  council ;  appoint 
time  and  place  for  its  stated  sittings,  and  let  this  par- 
liament, chosen  after  your  own  hearts,  deliberate  upon 
the  possible  modes  of  the  regulation  of  industry,  and 
advisablest  schemes  for  helpful  discipline  of  life ;  and  so 
lay  before  you  the  best  laws  they  can  de\dse,  which  such 


J 


16  TIME   AND  TIDE. 

of  jou  as  were  wise  might  submit  to,  and  teach  their 
children  to  obey.  And  if  any  of  the  laws  thus  deter- 
mined appeared  to  be  inconsistent  with  the  present  cir- 
cumstances or  customs  of  trade,  do  not  make  a  noise 
about  them,  nor  try  to  enforce  them  suddenly  on  others, 
nor  embroider  them  on  flags,  nor  call  meetings  in  parks 
about  them,  in  spite  of  railings  and  police;  but  keep 
them  in  your  thoughts  and  sight,  as  objects  of  patient 
purpose,  and  future  achievement  by  peaceful  strength. 

For  you  need  not  think  that  even  if  you  obtained  a 
majority  of  representatives  in  the  existing  parliament, 
you  could  immediately  compel  any  system  of  business, 
broadly  contrary  to  that  now  established  by  custom.  If 
you  could  pass  laws  to-morrow,  wholly  favourable  to 
yourselves,  as  you  might  think,  because  unfavourable  to 
your  masters,  and  to  the  upper  classes  of  society, — the 
only  result  would  be,  that  the  riches  of  the  country  would 
at  once  leave  it,  and  you  would  perish  in  riot  and  famine. 
Be  assured  that  no  great  change  for  the  better  can  ever 
be  easily  accomplished,  nor  quickly;  nor  by  impulb  ., 
ill-regulated  effort,  nor  by  bad  men  ;  nor  even  by  good 
men,  without  much  suffering.  The  suffering  must,  in- 
deed, come,  one  way  or  another,  in  all  greatly  critical 
periods ;  the  only  question,  for  us,  is  whether  we  will 
reach  our  ends  (if  we  ever  reach  them)  through  a  chain 


LETTER   m. LEGISLATION.  17 

of  involuntary  miseries,  many  of  them  useless,  and  all 
ignoble ;  or  whether  we  will  know  the  worst  at  once,  and 
deal  with  it  by  the  wisely  sharp  methods  of  God-sped 
courage. 

This,  I  repeat  to  you,  it  is  wholly  in  your  own  power 
to  do,  but  it  is  in  your  power  on  one  condition  only,  that 
of  steadfast  truth  to  yourselves,  and  to  all  men.  If  there 
is  not,  in  the  sum  of  it,  honesty  enough  among  you  to 
teach  you  to  frame,  and  strengthen  you  to  obey,  just 
laws  of  trade,  there  is  no  hope  left  for  you.  No  political 
constitution  can  ennoble  knaves  ;  ho  privileges  can  assist 
them  ;  no  possessions  enrich  them.  Their  gains  are 
occult  curses  ;  comfortless  loss  their  truest  blessing  ; 
failure  and  pain  IS'ature's  only  mercy  to  them.  Look  to 
it,  therefore,  first,  that  you  get  some  wholesome  honesty 
for  the  foundation  of  all  things.  Without  the  resolution 
in  your  hearts  to  do  good  work,  so  long  as  your  right 
hands  have  motion  in  them;  and  to  do  it  whether  the 
issu^  be  that  you  die  or  live,  no  life  worthy  the  name  will 
ev^i^'be  possible  to  you,  while,  in  once  forming  the  resolu- 
tion that  your  work  is  to  be  well  done,  life  is  really  won, 
here  and  for  ever.  And  to  make  your  children  capable 
of  such  resolution,  is  the  beginning  of  all  true  education, 
of  which  I  have  more  to  say  in  a  future  letter. 


Ccttcr  4. 

Th^e  Expenses  for  Art  and  for  War. 

February  19,  1867. 
In  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette  of  yesterday,  second  column 
of  second  page,  you  will  find,  close  to  each  other,  two 
sentences  which  bear  closely  on  matters  in  hand.  The 
first  of  these  is  the  statement,  that  in  the  debate  on  the 
grant  for  the  Blacas  collection,  "  Mr.  Bernal  Osborne  got 
an  assenting  cheer,  when  he  said  that  '  whenever  science 
and  art  were  mentioned  it  was  a  sign  to  look  after  the 
national  pockets.' "  I  want  you  to  notice  this  fact,  i.  e. 
(the  debate  in  question  being  on  a  total  grant  of  164,000Z. 
of  which  48,000^.  only  were  truly  for  art's  sake,  and  the 
rest  for  shop's  sake),  in  illustration  of  a  passage  in  my 
Sesame  and  Lilies,  pp.  81  and  82,*  to  which  I  shall  have 
again  to  refer  you,  with  some  further  comments,  in  the 
sequel  of  these  letters.  The  second  passage  is  to  the  eifect 
that  "  The  Trades'  Union  Bill  was  read  a  second  time,  after 
a  claim  from  Mr.  Hadfield,  Mr.  Osborne,  and  Mr.  Sam- 
uelson,  to  admit  working  men  into  the  commission;  to 

*  Appendix  1. 


LETTER   IV. EXPENDITTIRE.  19 

which  Mr.  Watkins  answered  'that  the  working  men's 
friend  was  too  conspicuous  in  the  body ; '  and  Mr.  Eoe- 
buck,  *  that  when  a  butcher  was  tried  for  murder  it  was 
not  necessary  to  have  butchers  on  the  jury.'  " 

I^ote  this  second  passage  with  respect  to  what  I  said  hi 
my  last  letter,  as  to  the  impossibility  of  the  laws  of  work 
being  investigated  in  the  House  of  Commons.  What 
admixture  of  elements,  think  you,  would  avail  to  obtain 
so  much  as  decent  hearing  (how  should  we  then  speak  of 
impartial  judgment  ?)  of  the  cause  of  working  men,  in  an 
assembly  which  permits  to  one  of  its  principal  members 
this  insolent  discourtesy  of  language,  in  dealing  with  a 
preliminary  question  of  the  highest  importance ;  and  per- 
mits it  as  so  far  expressive  of  the  whole  colom-  and  tone  of 
its  own  thoughts,  that  the  sentence  is  quoted  by  one  of 
the  most  temperate  and  accurate  of  our  daily  journals,  as 
representing  the  total  answer  of  the  opposite  side  in 
the  debate  ?  'No ;  be  assured  you  can  do  nothing  yet  at 
Westminster.  You  must  have  your  own  parliament,  and 
if  you  cannot  detect  enough  honesty  among  you  to  con- 
stitute a  justly-minded  one,  for  the  present  matters  must 
take  their  course,  and  that  will  be,  yet  awhile,  to  the 
worse. 

I  meant  to  have  continued  this  subject,  but  I  see  two 
other  statements  in  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette  of  to-day,  with 


20  TIME   AJSTD   TIDE. 

which,  and  a  single  remark  upon  them,  I  think  it  will  be 
well  to  close  my  present  letter. 

1.  "The  total  sum  asked  for  in  the  army  estimates, 
published  this  morning,  is  14,Y52,200Z.,  being  an  increase 
of  412,000Z.  over  the  previous  year." 

2.  "  Yesterday  the  annual  account  of  the  navy  receipt 
and  expenditure  for  the  year  ending  31  st  March,  186^), 
was  issued  from  the  Admiralty.     The  expenditure  wa 
10,268,215Z.  7s:' 

Omitting  the  seven  shillings,  and  even  the  odd  hun- 
dred thousands  of  pounds,  the  net  annual  expendi- 
ture for  army  and  navy  appears  to  be  twenty-four 
millions. 

The  "grant  in  science  and  art,"  two-thirds  of  which 
was  not  in  reality  for  either,  but  for  amusement  and  shop 
interests  in  the  Paris  Exliibition — the  grant  which  the 
House  of  Commons  feels  to  be  indicative  of  general  dan- 
ger to  the  national  pockets — is,  as  above  stated,  164,000/. 
Now,  I  believe  the  three  additional  ciphers  which  turn 
thousands  into  millions  produce  on  the  intelligent  English 
mind  usually,  the  effect  of — three  ciphers.  But  calculate 
the  proportion  of  these  two  sums,  and  then  imagine  to 
yourself  the  beautiful  state  of  rationality  of  any  private 
gentleman,  who,  having  regretfully  spent  164Z.  on  pic- 
tures for  his  walls,  paid  willingly  24,000/.  annually  to  the 


LETTER   IV. EXPENDITURE.  21 

policemen  who  looked  after  his  shutters  !     You  practical 
English! — will   you    ever  unbar  the    shutters   of   your" 
brains,  and  hang  a  picture  or  two  in  those  state  cham- 
bers? 


Ccttcr  5. 

The  Corruption  of  Modern  Pleasure. — {Covent  Garden 
Pantomime.) 

February  25,  1867. 

There  is  this  great  advantage  in  the  writing  real  let- 
ters, that  the  direct  correspondence  is  a  sufficient  reason  for 
saying,  in  or  out  of  order,  everything  that  the  chances  of 
the  day  bring  into  one's  head,  in  connection  with  the 
matter  in  hand ;  and  as  such  things  very  usually  go  out 
of  one's  head  again,  after  they  get  tired  of  their  lodging, 
they  would  otherwise  never  get  said  at  all.  And  thus 
to-day,  quite  out  of  order,  but  in  very  close  connection 
with  another  part  of  our  subject,  I  am  going  to  tell  you 
what  I  was  thinking  on  Friday  evening  last,  in  Coven r 
Garden  Theatre,  as  I  was  looking,  and  not  laughing,  at 
the  pantomime  of  Ali  Baba  and  the  Forty  Thieves. 

When  you  begin  seriously  to  consider  the  question  re- 
ferred to  in  my  second  letter,  of  the  essential,  and  in  the 
outcome  inviolable,  connection  between  quantity  of  wages, 
and  quantity  of  work,  you  will  see  that  "  wages  "  in  the 


LETTER   V. ENTERTAINMENT.  23 

full  sense  don't  mean  "pay"  merely,  but  the  reward, 
whatever  it  may  be,  of  pleasm-e  as  well  as  profit,  and  of 
various  other  advantages,  which  a  man  is  meant  by 
Providence  to  get  during  life,  for  work  well  done.  Even 
limiting  the  idea  to  "  pay,"  the  question  is  not  so  much 
what  quantity  of  coin  you  get,  as — what  you  can  get  for 
it  when  you  have  it.  Whether  a  shilling  a  day  be  good 
pay  or  not,  depends  wholly  on  what  a  "  shilling's  worth  " 
is ;  tliat  is  to  say,  what  quantity  of  the  things  you  want 
may  be  had  for  a  shilling.  And  that  again  depends  on 
what  you  do  want ;  and  a  great  deal  more  than  that  de- 
pends, besides,  on  "  what  you  want."  If  you  want  only 
drink,  and  foul  clothes,  such  and  such  pay  may  be  enough 
for  you ;  if  you  want  good  meat  and  good  clothes,  you 
must  have  larger  wage;  if  clean  rooms  and  fresh  air, 
larger  still,  and  so  on.  You  say,  perhaps,  "every  one 
wants  better  things."  So  far  from  that,  a  wholesome 
taste  for  cleanliness  and  fresh  air  is  one  of  the  final  at- 
tainments of  humanity.  There  are  now  not  many  Euro- 
pean gentlemen,  even  in  the  highest  classes,  who  have  a 
pure  and  right  love  of  fresh  air.  They  would  put  the 
fiJth  of  tobacco  even  into  the  first  breeze  of  a  May 
morning. 

But  there  are  better  things  even  than  these,  which  one 
may  want.     Grant,  that  one  has  good  food,  clothes,  lodg- 


24  TIME   AND  TIDE. 

ing,  and  breathing,  is  that  all  the  pay  one  ought  to  have 
for  one's  work?  Wholesome  means  of  existence,  and 
nothing  more  ?  Enough,  perhaps,  you  think,  if  every- 
body could  get  these.  It  may  be  so ;  I  will  not,  at  this 
moment,  dispute  it ;  nevertheless,  I  will  boldly  say  that 
you  should  sometimes  want  more  than  these  ;  and  for  one 
of  many  things  more,  you  should  want  occasionally  to  be 
amused ! 

You  know  the  upper  classes,  most  of  them,  want  to  be  ^ 
amused  all  day  long.     They  think 

"One  moment  wnamused  a  misery 
Not  made  for  feeble  men." 

Perhaps  you  have  been  in  the  habit  of  despising  them 
for  this ;  and  thinking  how  much  worthier  and  nobler  it 
was  to  work  all  day,  and  care  at  night  only  for  food  and 
rest,  than  to  do  no  useful  thing  all  day,  eat  unearned 
food,  and  spend  the  evening  as  the  morning,  in  "  change 
of  follies  and  relays  of  joy."  No,  my  good  fi-iend,  that  is 
one  of  the  fatallest  deceptions.  It  is  not  a  noble  thing, 
in  sum  and  issue  of  it,  not  to  care  to  be  amused.  It  is 
indeed  a  far  higher  Tnoi^al  state,  but  it  is  a  much  lower 
creatv/re  state  than  that  of  the  upper  classes. 

Yonder  poor  horse,  calm  slave  in  daily  chains  at  tlu 
railroad  siding,  wlio  drags  the  detached  rear  of  the  train 


l^fiTTER   V. ENTERTAINMENT.  25 

to  the  front  again,  and  slips  aside  so  deftly  as  the  buffers 
meet,-  and,  within  eighteen  inches  of  death  every  ten 
minutes,  fulfils  his  dexterous  and  changeless  duty  all  day 
long,  content  for  eternal  reward  with  his  night's  rest,  and 
his  champed  mouthful  of  hay ; — anything  more  earnestly 
moral  and  beautiful  one  cannot  imagine — I  never  see  the 
creature  without  a  kind  of  worship.  And  yonder  musi- 
cian, who  used  the  greatest  power  which  (in  the  art  he 
knew)  the  Father  of  spirits  ever  yet  breathed  into  the 
clay  of  this  world ; — who  used  it,  I  say,  to  follow  and  fit 
with  perfect  sound  the  words  of  the  Zaiiberfldte  and  of 
Don  Giovanni — ^basest  and  most  monstrous  of  conceivable 
human  words  and  subjects  of  thought — for  the  futm-e 
"  amusement "  of  his  race ! — ^IS'o  such  spectacle  of  uncon- 
scious (and  in  that  unconsciousness  all  the  more  fearful) 
moral  degradation  of  the  highest  faculty  to  the  lowest 
purpose  can  be  found  in  history.  That  Mozart  is  never- 
theless a  nobler  creature  than  the  horse  at  the  siding; 
nor  would  it  be  the  least  nearer  the  purpose  of  his  Maker 
that  he,  and  all  his  frivolous  audiences,  should  evade  the 
degradation  of  the  profitless  piping,  only  by  living,  like 
horses,  in  daily  physical  labour  for  daily  bread. 
'     There  are  three  things  to  which  man  is  born* — ^labour, 

*  I  ask  the  reader's  thoughtful  attention  to  this  paragraph,  on  which 
much  of  what  else  I  have  to  say  depends. 


26  TIME  AND  Tmi:, 

and  sorrow,  and  joy.  Each  of  these  three  things  has  its 
baseness  and  its  nobleness.  There  is  base  labour,  and 
noble  labour.  There  is  base  sorrow,  and  noble  sorrow. 
There  is  base  joj,  and  noble  joy.  But  you  must  not 
think  to  avoid  the  corruption  of  these  things  by  doing 
without  the  things  themselves.  Kor  can  any  life  be  right 
that  has  not  all  three.  Labour  without  joy  is  base. 
Labour  without  sorrow  is  base.  Sorrow  without  labour 
is  base.     Joy  without  labour  is  base. 

I  dare  say  you  think  I  am  a  long  time  in  coming  to 
the  pantomime;  I  am  not  ready  to  come  to  it  yet  in 
due  course,  for  we  ought  to  go  and  see  the  Japanese 
jugglers  first,  in  order  to  let  me  fully  explain  to  you 
what  I  mean.  But  I  can't  write  much  more  to-day : 
so  I  shall  merely  tell  you  what  part  of  the  play  set 
me  thinking  of  all  this,  and  leave  you  to  consider  of 
it  yourself,  till  I  can  send  you  another  letter.  The  pan- 
tomime was,  as  I  said,  Ali  JSaha  and  the  Forty  Thieves. 
The  forty  thieves  were  girls.  The  forty  thieves  had 
forty  companions,  who  were  girls.  The  forty  thie vi- 
and their  forty  companions  were  in  some  way  mixed 
up  with  about  four  hundred  and  forty  fairies,  who 
were  girls.  There  was  an  Oxford  and  Cambridge  boat 
race,  in  which  the  Oxford  and  Cambridge  men  wer. 
girls.     There  was  a  transformation  scene,  with  a  forest. 


LETTER   V. ENTERTAINMENT.  27 

in  wbicli  the  flowers  were  girls,  and  a  chandelier,  in 
which  the  lamps  were  girls,  and  a  great  rainbow,  which 
was  all  of  girls. 

Mingled  incongruously  with  these  seraphic,  and,  as 
far  as  my  boyish  experience  extends,  novel,  elements 
of  pantomime,  there  were  yet  some  of  its  old  and  fast- 
expiring  elements.  There  were,  in  speciality,  two 
thoroughly  good  pantomime  actors — Mr.  W,  H.  Payne 
and  Mr.  Frederick  Payne.  All  that  these  two  did,  was 
done  admirably.  There  were  tw^o  subordinate  actors, 
who  played  subordinately  well,  the  fore  and  hind  legs 
of  a  donkey.  And  there  was  a  little  actress,  of  whom 
I  have  chiefly  to  speak,  who  played  exquisitely  the 
little  part  she  had  to  play.  The  scene  in  which  she 
appeared  was  the  only  one  in  the  whole  pantomime 
in  which  there  was  any  dramatic  effort,  or,  with  a  few 
rare  exceptions,  any  dramatic  possibility.  It  was  the 
home  scene,  in  which  Ali  Baba's  wife,  on  washing  day, 
is  called  upon  by  butcher,  baker,  and  milkman,  with 
nnpaid  bills;  and  in  the  extremity  of  her  distress 
hears  her  husband's  knock  at  the  door,  and  opens  it 
for  him  to  drive  in  his  donkey,  laden  with  gold.  The 
children,  who  have  been  beaten  instead  of  getting 
breakfast,  presently  share  in  the  raptures  of  their 
father   and  mother;   and   the  little  lady  I   spoke   of — 


28  TIME   AND    TroE. 

eight  or  nine  years  old — dances  a  pas-de-deux  with  the 
donkey. 

She  did  it  beautifully  and  simply,  as  a  child  ought 
to  dance.  She  was  not  an  infant  prodigy;  there  was 
no  evidence,  in  the  finish  or  strength  of  her  motion, 
that  she  had  been  put  to  continual  torture  through 
half  her  eight  or  nine  years.  She  did  nothing  more 
than  any  child,  well  taught,  but  painlessly,  might  easily 
do.  She  caricatured  no  older  person, — attempted  no 
curious  or  fantastic  skill.  She  was  dressed  decently, — 
she  moved  decently, — she  looked  and  behaved  innocently, 
— and  she  danced  her  joyful  dance  with  perfect  grace, 
spirit,  sweetness,  and  self-forgetfulness.  And  through 
all  the  vast  theatre,  full  of  English  fathers  and  mothers 
and  children,  there  was  not  one  hand  lifted  to  give 
her  sign  of  praise  but  mine. 

Presently  after  this,  came  on  the  forty  thieves,  who,  as 
I  told  you,  were  girls ;  and,  there  being  no  thieving  to  be 
presently  done,  and  time  hanging  heavy  on  their  hands, 
arms,  and  legs,  the  forty  thief-girls  proceeded  to  light 
forty  cigars.  Whereupon  the  British  public  gave  them  a 
round  of  applause.  Whereupon  1  fell  a-thinking;  and 
saw  little  more  of  the  piece,  except  as  an  ugly  and  dis- 
turbing dream. 


>y     OF  THE  ^^ 

UNIVERSITY 


Cctter  e. 

The  Corruption  of  Modern  Pleasure. — {The  Japanese 
Jugglers.) 

February  28, 1867. 
•  I  HAVE  your  pleasant  letter  with  references  to  Fred- 
erick. I  will  look  at  them  carefuUj.*  Mr.  Carljle  him- 
self will  be  pleased  to  hear  this  letter  when  he  comes 
home.  I  heard  from  him  last  week  at  Mentone.  He  is 
well,  and  glad  of  the  light  and  calm  of  Italy.  I  must 
get  back  to  the  evil  light,  and  uncalm,  of  the  places  I 
was  taking  you  through. 

(Parenthetically,  did  you  see  the  article  in  The  Times 
of  yesterday  on  bribery,  and  the  conclusion  of  the  com- 
mission— "  iS^o  one  sold  any  opinions,  for  no  one  had  any 
opinions  to  sell.") 

Both  on  Thursday  and  Friday  last  I  had  been  tor- 
mented by  many  things,  and  wanted  to  disturb  my  course 
of  thought  any  way  I  could.  I  have  told  you  what  en- 
tertainment I  got  on  Friday,  first,  for  it  was  then  that  I 

*  Appendix  2. 


30  TIME   AND   TIDE. 

began  meditating  over  these  letters ;  let  me  tell  you  now 
what  entertainment  I  found  on  Thursday. 

You  may  have  heard  that  a  company  of  Japanese  jug- 
glers has  come  over  to  exhibit  in  London.  There  has 
long  been  an  increasing  interest  in  Japanese  art,  which 
has  been  very  harmful  to  many  of  our  own  painters,  and 
I  greatly  desired  to  see  what  these  people  were,  and  what 
they  did.  "Well,  I  have  seen  Blondin,  and  various  Eng- 
lish and  French  circus  work,  but  never  yet  anything  that 
surprised  me  so  much  as  one  of  these  men's  exercises  on 
a  suspended  pole.  Its  special  character  was  a  close  ap- 
proximation to  the  action  and  power  of  the  monkey,  even 
to  the  prehensile  power  in  the  foot ;  so  that  I  asked  a 
sculptor-friend  who  sat  in  front  of  me,  whether  he 
thought  such  a  grasp  could  be  acquired  by  practice,  or 
indicated  difference  in  race.  He  said  he  thought  it  might 
be  got  by  practice.  There  was  also  much  inconceivably 
dexterous  work  in  spinning  of  tops — making  them  pass 
in  balanced  motion  along  the  edge  of  a  sword,  and  along 
a  level  string,  and  the  like ; — the  father  performing  in  the 
presence  of  his  two  children,  who  encouraged  him  con- 
tinually with  short,  sharp  cries,  like  those  of  animals. 
Then  there  was  some  fairly  good  sleight-of-hand  juggling 
of  little  interest;  ending  with  a  dance  by  the  juggler, 
first  as  an  animal,  and  then  as  a  goblin.     Now,  there  was 


LETTER    VI. ^DEXTERITY.  31 

this  great  difference  between  the  Japanese  masks  used  in 
this  dance  and  our  common  pantomime  masks  for  beasts 
and  demons, — that  our  English  masks  are  only  stupidly 
and  loathsomely  ugly,  by  exaggeration  of  feature,  or  of 
defect  of  feature.  But  the  Japanese  masks  (like  the  fre- 
quent monsters  of  Japanese  art)  were  inventively  fright- 
ful, like  fearful  dreams ;  and  whatever  power  it  is  that 
acts  on  human  minds,  enabling  them  to  invent  such,  ap- 
pears to  me  not  only  to  deserve  the  term  "  demoniacal," 
as  the  only  word  expressive  of  its  character ;  but  to  be 
logically  capable  of  no  other  definition. 

The  impression,  therefore,  produced  upon  me  by  the 
whole  scene,  was  that  of  being  in  the  presence  of  human 
creatures  of  a  partially  inferior  race,  but  not  without 
great  human  gentleness,  domestic  affection,  and  ingenious 
intellect ;  who  were,  nevertheless,  as  a  nation,  afflicted  by 
an  evil  spirit,  and  driven  by  it  to  recreate  themselves  in 
achieving,  or  beholding  the  achievement,  through  years 
of  patience,  of  a  certain  correspondence  with  the  nature 
of  the  lower  animals. 

These,  then,  were  the  two  forms  of  diversion  or  recrea- 
tion of  my  mind  possible  to  me,  in  two  days  when  I 
needed  such  help,  in  this  metropolis  of  England.  I 
might,  as  a  rich  man,  have  had  better  music,  if  I  had  so 
chosen,  though,  even  so,  not  rational  or  helpful ;  but  a 


32  TIME   AJ^D   TIDE. 

poor  man  could  only  have  these,  or  worse  than  these,  if 
he  cared  for  any  manner  of  spectacle.  (I  am  not  at  pres- 
ent, observe,  speaking  of  pure  acting,  which  is  a  study, 
and  recreative  only  as  a  noble  book  is ;  but  of  means  of 
mere  amusement.) 

!N"ow,  lastly,  in  illustration  of  the  effect  of  these  and 
other  such  "amusements,"  and  of  the  desire  to  obtain 
them,  on  the  minds  of  our  youth,  read  The  Times  corre- 
spondent's letter  from  Paris,  in  the  tenth  page  of  the 
paper,  to-day ;  *  and  that  will  be  quite  enough  for  you  to 
read,  for  the  present,  I  believe. 

*  Appendix  3. 


Ccttcr  7. 

Of  the  various  Expressions  of  National  Festivity, 

March  4,  1867. 

The  subject  which  I  want  to  bring  before  you  is  now 
branched,  and,  worse  than  branched,  reticulated,  in  so 
many  directions,  that  I  hardly  know  which  shoot  of  it  to 
trace,  or  which  knot  to  lay  hold  of  first. 

I  had  intended  to  return  to  those  Japanese  jugglers, 
after  a  visit  to  a  theatre  in  Paris;  but  I  had  better, 
perhaps,  at  once  tell  you  the  piece  of  the  performance 
which,  in  connection  with  the  scene  in  the  English  panto- 
mine,  bears  most  on  matters  in  hand. 

It  was  also  a  dance  by  a  little  girl — though  one  older 
than  Ali  Baba's  daughter  (I  suppose  a  girl  of  twelve  or 
fourteen).  A  dance,  so-called,  which  consisted  only  in  a 
series  of  short,  sharp  contractions  and  jerks  of  the  body 
and  limbs,  resulting  in  attitudes  of  distorted  and  quaint 
ugliness,  such  as  might  be  produced  in  a  puppet  by  sharp 
twitching  of  strings  at  its  joints ;  these  movements  being 
made  to  the  sound  of  two  instruments,  which  between 
them  accomplished  only  a  quick  vibratory  beating  and 


34  TIME   AND   TIDE. 

strumming,  in  nearly  the  time  of  a  hearth-cricket's  song, 
but  much  harsher,  and  of  course  louder,  and  without  any 
sweetness ;  only  in  the  monotony  and  unintended  aimless 
construction  of  it,  reminding  one  of  various  other  insect 
and  reptile  cries  or  warnings ;  partly  of  the  cicala's  hiss ; 
partly  of  the  little  melancholy  German  frog  which  says 
"  Mu,  mu,  mu,"  all  summer-day  long,  with  its  nose  out  of 
the  pools  by  Dresden  and  Leipsic ;  and  partly  of  the 
deadened  quivering  and  intense  continuousness  of  the 
alarm  of  the  rattlesnake. 

While  this  was  going  on,  there  was  a  Bible  text  repeat- 
ing itself  over  and  over  again  in  my  head,  whether  1 
would  or  no  : — "  And  Miriam  the  prophetess,  the  sister 
of  Aaron,  took  a  timbrel  in  her  hand,  and  all  the  women 
went  out  after  her  with  timbrels  and  with  dances."  To 
which  text  and  some  others,  I  shall  ask  your  attention 
presently ;  but  I  must  go  to  Paris  first. 

Not  at  once,  however,  to  the  theatre,  but  to  a  book- 
seller's shop,  No.  4,  Eue  Yoltaire,  where,  in  the  year 
1858,  was  published  the  fifth  edition  of  Balzac's  Contes 
Drolatiques^  illustrated  by  425  designs  by  Gustavo 
Dor4 

Both  text  and  illustrations  are  as  powerful  as  it  is  ever 
in  the  nature  of  evil  things  to  be — (there  is  no  final 
strength  but  in   Tightness.)     Nothing   more  witty,   nor 


LETTER    VII. FESTIVriT".  35 

more  inventively  horrible,  has  yet  been  produced  in  the 
evil  literature,  or  by  the  evil  art,  of  man ;  nor  can  I  con- 
ceive it  possible  to  go  beyond  either  in  their  specialities 
of  corruption.  The  text  is  full  of  blasphemies,  subtle, 
tremendous,  hideous  in  shamelessness,  some  put  into  the 
mouths  of  priests ;  the  illustrations  are,  in  a  word,  one 
continuous  revelry  in  the  most  loathsome  and  monstrous 
aspects  of  death  and  sin,  enlarged  into  fantastic  ghastli- 
ness  of  caricature,  as  if  seen  through  the  distortion  and 
trembling  of  the  hot  smoke  of  the  mouth  of  hell.  Take 
this  following  for  a  general  tj^pe  of  what  they  seek  in 
death :  one  of  the  most  laboured  designs  is  of  a  man  cut  in 
two,  downwards,  by  the  sweep  of  a  sword — one-half  of  him 
falls  towards  the  spectator ;  the  other  half  is  elaborately 
drawn  in  its  section — giving  the  profile  of  the  divided 
nose  and  lips ;  cleft  jaw — breast — and  enti'ails  ;  and  this 
is  done  with  farther  pollution  and  horror  of  intent  in  the 
circumstances,  which  I  do  not  choose  to  describe — still 
less  some  other  of  the  desi'gns  which  seek  for  fantastic 
extreme  of  sin,  as  this  for  the  utmost  horror  of  death. 
But  of  all  the  425,  there  is  not  one  which  does  not  vio- 
late every  instinct  of  decency  and  law  of  virtue  or  life, 
written  in  the  human  soul. 

I^ow,   my  friend,   among   the    many  "Signs    of  the 
Times  "  the  production  of  a  book  like  this  is  a  significant 


36  TIME   AND   TTOE. 

one :  but  it  becomes  more  significant  still  when  con- 
nected with  the  farther  fact,  that  M.  Gustave  Dore,  the 
designer  of  this  series  of  plates,  has  just  been  received 
with  loud  acclaim  by  the  British  Evangelical  Public,  as 
the  fittest  and  most  able  person  whom  they  could  at 
present  find  to  illustrate,  to  their  minds,  and  recommend 
with  graciousness,  of  sacred  art,  their  hitherto  unadorned 
Bible  for  them. 

Of  which  Bible  and  of  the  use  we  at  present  make  of 
it  in  England,  having  a  grave  word  or  two  to  say  in  my 
next  letter  (preparatory  to  the  examination  of  that  verse 
which  haunted  me  through  the  Japanese  juggling,  and 
of  some  others  also),  I  leave  you  first  this  sign  of  the 
public  esteem  of  it  to  consider  at  your  leisure. 


Ccttcr  S. 

The  Four  Possible  Theories  respecting  the  Authority  of 
the  Bible. 

March  7, 1867. 

I  HAVE  your  yesterday's  letter,  but  must  not  allow  my- 
self to  be  diverted  from  the  business  in  band  for  this 
once,  for  it  is  the  most  important  of  which  I  have  to 
write  to  you. 

You  must  have  seen  long  ago  that  the  essential  dif- 
ference between  the  political  economy  I  am  trying  to 
teach,  and  the'  popular  science,  is,  that  mine  is  based  on 
presumaMy  attainable  honesty  in  men,  and  conceivable 
respect  in  them  for  the  interests  of  others,  while  the  pop- 
ular science  founds  itself  wholly  on  their  supposed  con- 
stant regard  for  their  own,  and  on  their  honesty  only  so 
far  as  thereby  likely  to  be  secured. 

It  becomes,  therefore,  for  me,  and  for  all  who  believe 
anything  I  say,  a  great  primal  question  on  what  this  pre- 
sumably attainable  honesty  is  to  be  based. 

"  Is  it  to  be  based  on  rehgion  ?  "  you  may  ask.  "  Are 
we  to  be  honest  for  fear  of  losing  heaven  if  we  are  dis- 


38  TIME   AND   TIDE. 

>  y^  I  honest,  or  (to  put  it  as  generously  as  we  may)  for  fear  of 
/    dfepleasing  God?     Or,  are  we  to  be  honest  on  specula- 
->    tion,  because  honesty  is  the  best  policy  ;  and  to  invest  in 
virtue  as  in  an  undepreciable  stock  ?  " 

And  my  answer  is — not  in  any  hesitating  or  diffident 
way  (and  you  know,  my  fi-iend,  that  whatever  people  may 
say  of  me,  I  often  do  speak  diffidently ;  though  when  I  am 
diffident  of  things,  I  like  to  avoid  speaking  of  them,  if  it 
may  be ;  but  here  I  say  with  no  shadow  of  doubt) — ^your 
honesty  is  not  to  be  based  either  on  religion  or  policy. 
Both  your  religion  and  policy  must  be  based  on  it  Your 
honesty  must  be  based,  as  the  sun  is,  in  vacant  heaven ; 
poised,  as  the  lights  in  the  firmament,  which  have  rule  over 
the  day  and  over  the  night.  If  you  ask  why  you  are  to  be 
honest — you  are,  in  the  question  itself,  dishofloured.  "  Be- 
cause you  are  a  man,"  is  the  only  answer ;  and  therefore  I 
said  in  a  former  letter  that  to  make  your  children  capaUe 
of  honesty  is  the  beginning  of  education.  Make  them  men 
first,  and  religious  men  afterwards,  and  all  will  be  sound ; 
'\  but  a  knave's  religion  is  always  the  rottenest  thing  about 

^-  It   is   not,  therefore,  Decanse  I   am  endeavouring   to 

lay  down  a  foundation  of  religious  concrete  on  whicli  to 
build  piers  of  policy,  that  you  so  often  find  me  quoting 
Bible  texts  in  defence  of  this  or  that  principle  or  assertion. 

^  ""^ 


LETTER   Vra. THINGS  WBITl'EN.  6y 

But  the  fact  that  such  references  are  an  offence,  as  I  know 
them  to  be,  to  many  of  the  readers  of  these  political  essays, 
is  one  among  many  others,  which  I  would  desire  you  to 
reflect  upon  (whether  you  are  yourself  one  of  the  offended 
or  not),  as  expressive  of  the  singular  position  which  the 
mind  of  the  British  public  has  at  present  taken  with  re- 
spect to  its  worshipped  Book.  The  positions,  honestly  ten- 
able, before  I  use  any  more  of  its  texts,  I  must  try  to  de- 
fine for  you. 

All  the  theories  possible  to  theological  disputants 
respecting  the  Bible  are  resolvable  into  four,  and  four  only. 

1.  The  first  is  that  of  the  comparatively  illiterate 
modern  religious  world,  namely,  that  every  word  of  the 
book  known  to  them  as  "  The  Bible  "  was  dictated  by  the 
Supreme  Being,  and  is  in  every  syllable  of  it  His  "  Word." 
This  theory  is  of  course  tenable,  though  honestly,  yet  by 
no  ordinarily  well-educated  person. 

2.  The  second  theory  is,  that  although  admitting  verbal 
error,  the  substance  of  the  whole  collection  of  books  called 
the  Bible  is  absolutely  true,  and  furnished  to  man  by  Di- 
vine inspiration  of  the  speakers  and  writers  of  it;  and 
that  every  one  who  honestly  and  prayerfully  seeks  for 
such  truth  in  it  as  is  necessary  for  salvation,  wiU  infallibly 
find  it  there. 

This  theory  is  that  held  by  most  of  our  good  and  up- 


40  TIME   AJ!^D   TroE. 

right  clergymen,  and  the  better  class  of  the  professedly 
religious  laity. 

3.  The  third  theory  is  that  the  group  of  books  which 
we  call  the  Bible  were  neither  written  nor  collected  under 
any  Divine  guidance,  securing  them  from  substantial 
error ;  and  that  they  contain,  like  all  other  human 
writings,  false  statements  mixed  with  true,  and  erring 
thoughts  mixed  with  just  thoughts ;  but  that  they  never- 
theless relate,  on  the  whole,  faithfully,  the  dealings  of  the 
one  God  with  the  first  races  of  man,  and  His  dealings 
with  them  in  aftertime  through  Christ ;  that  they  record 
true  miracles,  and  bear  true  witness  to  the  resurrection  of 
the  dead,  and  the  life  of  the  world  to  come. 

This  is  a  theory  held  by  many  of  the  active  leaders  of 
modem  thought  in  England. 

4.  The  fourth,  and  last  possible  theory  is  that  the  mass 
of  religious  Scripture  contains  merely  the  best  efforts 
which  we  hitherto  know  to  have  been  made  by  any  of  the 
races  of  men  towards  the  discovery  of  some  relations  with 
the  spiritual  world;  that  they  are  only  trustworthy  as 
expressions  of  the  enthusiastic  visions  or  beliefs  of  earnest 
men  oppressed  by  the  world's  darkness,  and  have  no  more 
authoritative  claim  on  our  faith  than  the  religious  specu- 
lations and  histories  of  the  Egyptians,  Greeks,  Persians, 
and  Indians ;  but  are,  in  common  with  all  these,  to  be  rev- 


LErrER  vin. — things  wRrrrEN.  41 

erentlj  studied,  as  containing  the  best  wisdom  which 
human  intellect,  earnestly  seeking  for  help  from  God,  has 
hitherto  been  able  to  gather  between  birth  and  death. 

This  has  been,  for  the  last  half  century,  the  theory  of 
the  leading  scholars  and  thinkers  of  Europe. 

There  is  yet  indeed  one  farther  condition  of  incredulity 
attainable,  and  sorrowfully  attained,  by  many  men  of 
powerfully  intellect — the  incredulity,  namely,  of  inspira- 
tion in  any  sense,  or  of  help  given  by  any  Divine  power, 
to  the  thoughts  of  men.  But  this  form  of  infidelity  merely 
indicates  a  natural  incapacity  for  receiving  certain  emo- 
tions ;  though  many  honest  and  good  men  belong  to  this 
insentient  class. 

The  educated  men,  therefore,  who  may  be  seriously  ap- 
pealed to,  in  these  days,  on  questions  of  moral  respon- 
sibility, as  modified  by  Scripture,  are  broadly  divisible 
into  three  classes,  severally  holding  the  three  last  theories 
above  stated. 

I^ow,  whatever  power  a  passage  from  the  statedly  au- 
thoritative portions  of  the  Bible  may  have  over  the  mind 
of  a  person  holding  the  fourth  theory,  it  will  have  a  pro- 
portionately greater  over  that  of  persons  holding  the 
third  or  the  second.  I,  therefore,  always  imagine  myself 
speaking  to  the  fourth  class  of  theorists.  If  I  can  per- 
suade or  influence  thMfi^  I  am  logically  sure  of  the  others. 


42  TIME    AND   TIDE. 

I  say  ''  logically, "  for  in  the  actual  fact,  strange  as  it  may 
seem,  no  persons  are  so  little  likely  to  submit  to  a  pas- 
sage of  Scripture  not  to  their  liking,  as  those  who  are 
most  positive  on  the  subject  of  its  general  inspiration. 

Addressing,  then,  this  fourth  class  of  thinkers,  I  would 
say  to  them,  when  asking  them  to  enter  on  any  subject  of 
importance  to  national  morals,  or  conduct,  "  This  book, 
which  has  been  the  accepted  guide  of  the  moral  intelli- 
gence of  Europe  for  some  1,500  years,  enforces  certain 
simple  laws  of  human  conduct  which  you  know  have  also 
been  agreed  upon  in  every  main  point  by  all  the  reli- 
gious and  by  all  the  greatest  profane  writers,  of  every  age 
and  country.  This  book  primarily  forbids  pride,  lasciv- 
iousness,  and  covetousness  ;  and  you  know,  that  all  great 
thinkers,  in  every  nation  of  mankind,  have  similarly  for- 
bade these  mortal  vices.  This  book  enjoins  truth,  temper- 
ance, charity,  and  equity  ;  and  you  know  that  every  great 
Egyptian,  Greek,  and  Indian,  enjoins  these  also.  You 
know  besides,  that  through  all  the  mysteries  of  human  fate 
and  history,  this  one  great  law  of  fate  is  written  on  the 
walls  of  cities,  or  in  their  dust, — written  in  lettei*s  of  light 
and  letters  of  blood, — that  where  truth,  temperance,  and 
equity  have  been  preserved,  all  strength,  and  peace,  and 
/  joy  have  been  preserved  also ; — that  were  lying,  lasciv- 
iousness,  and  covetousness  have  been  practised,  there  has 


LETTER  Vm. — ^THINGS  WRITTEN.  43 

followed  aD  infallible,  and  for  centuries  irrecoverable,  ruin. 
And  you  know,  lastly,  that  tbe  observance  of  this  common 
law  of  righteousness,  commending  itself  to  all  the  pure 
instincts  of  men,  and  fruitful  in  their  temporal  good,  is  by 
the  religious  writers  of  every  nation,  and  chiefly  in  this 
venerated  Scripture  of  ours,  connected  with  some  distinct 
hope  of  better  life,  and  righteousness,  to  come. 

"  Let  it  not  then  offend  you  if,  deducing  principles  of 
action  first  from  the  laws  and  facts  of  nature,  I  neverthe- 
less fortify  them  also  by  appliance  of  the  precepts,  or  sug- 
gestive and  probable  teachings  of  this  Book,  of  which  the 
authority  is  over  many  around  you,  more  distinctly  than 
over  you,  and  which,  confessing  to  be  divine,  ihey^  at 
least,  can  only  disobey  at  their  moral  peril." 

On  these  grounds,  and  in  this  temper,  I  am  in  the 
habit  of  appealing  to  passages  of  Scripture  in  my  writ- 
ings on  political  economy ;  and  in  this  temper  I  will  ask 
you  to  consider  with  me  some  conclusions  which  appear 
to  me  derivable  from  that  text  about  Miriam,  w^hich 
haunted  me  through  the  jugglery;  and  from  certain 
others. 


Ccttcr  9. 

The  Use  of  Music  a/nd  Dcmcing  urider  the  Jewish  The- 
ocracy^ compared  with  their  Use  hy  the  Modern 
French, 

March  10, 1867. 

Having,  I  hope,  made  you  now  clearly  understand 
with  what  feeling  I  would  use  the  authority  of  the  book 
which  the  British  public,  professing  to  consider  sacred, 
have  lately  adorned  for  themselves  with  the  work  of  the 
boldest  violator  of  the  instincts  of  human  honour  and  de- 
cency known  yet  in  art-history,  I  will  pursue  by  the  help 
of  that  verse  about  Miriam,  and  some  others,  the  subject 
which  occupied  my  mind  at  both  theatres,  and  t«> 
which,  though  in  so  apparently  desultory  manner,  I 
have  been  nevertheless  very  earnestly  endeavouring  to 
lead  you. 

The  going  forth  of  the  women  of  Israel  after  Miriam 
with  timbrels  and  with  dances,  was,  as  you  doubtless  re 
member,   their   expression   of   passionate    triumph    an«l 
thankfulness,  after  the  full  accomplishment  of  their  deli\ 


LETTER   IX. THANKSGIVING.  45 

erance  from  the  Egyptians.  That  deliverance  had  been 
hj  the  utter  death  of  their  enemies,  and  accompanied  by 
stupendous  miracle;  no  human  creatures  could  in  an 
hour  of  triumph  be  surrounded  by  circumstances  more 
solemn.  I  am  not  going  to  try  to  excite  your  feelings 
about  them.  Consider  only  for  yourself  what  that  see 
ing  of  the  Egyptians  "  dead  upon  the  sea-shore "  meant 
to  every  soul  that  saw  it.  And  then  reflect  that  these 
intense  emotions  of  mingled  horror,  triumph,  and  grati- 
tude were  expressed,  in  the  visible  presence  of  the  Deity, 
by  music  and  dancing.  If  you  answer  that  you  do  not 
believe  the  Egyptians  so  perished,  or  that  God  ever  ap 
peared  in  a  pillar  of  cloud,  I  reply,  "  Be  it  so — believe  or 
disbelieve,  as  you  choose ; — This  is  yet  assuredly  the  fact, 
that  the  author  of  the  poem  or  fable  of  the  Exodus  sup- 
posed that  under  such  circumstances  of  Divine  interposi- 
tion as  he  had  invented,  the  triumph  of  the  Israelitish 
women  would  have  been,  and  ought  to  have  been,  under 
the  direction  of  a  prophetess,  expressed  by  music  and 
dancing." 

!N'or  was  it  possible  that  he  should  think  otherwise,  at 
whatever  period  he  wrote ;  both  music  and  dancing  being 
among  all  great  ancient  nations  an  appointed  and  very 
principal  part  of  the  worship  of  the  gods. 

And  that  very  theatrical  entertainment   at  which  I 


I 


4:6  TIME    AND   TTOE. 

sate  thinking  over  these  things  for  you — that  pantomime, 
which  depended  throughout  for  its  success  on  an  appeal 
to  the  vices  of  the  lower  London  populace,  was  in  itself 
nothing  but  a  corrupt  remnant  of  the  religious  ceremo- 
nies which  guided  the  most  serious  faiths  of  the  Greek 
mind,  and  laid  the  foundation  of  their  gravest  moral  and 
didactic — more  forcibly  so  because  at  the  same  time  dra- 
matic— literature.  Returning  to  the  Jewish  history,  you 
find  soon  afterwards  this  enthusiastic  religious  dance  and 
song  employed  in  their  more  common  and  habitual  man- 
ner, in  the  idolatries  under  Sinai ;  but  beautifully  again 
and  tenderly,  after  the  triumph  of  Jephthah,  "  And  be- 
hold his  daughter  came  out  to  meet  him  with  timbrels 
and  with  dances."  Again,  still  more  notably  at  the  tri- 
umph of  David  with  Saul,  "  the  women  came  out  of  all 
the  cities  of  Israel  singing  and  dancing,  to  meet  King 
Saul  with  tabrets,  with  joy,  and  with  instruments  of  mu- 
sic." And  you  have  this  joyful  song  and  dance  of  the 
virgins  of  Israel  not  only  incidentally  alluded  to  in  the 
most  solemn  passages  of  Hebrew  religious  poetry  (as  in 
Psalm  Ixviii.,  24,  25,  and  Psalm  cxlix.,  2,  3),  but  ap- 
proved, and  the  restoration  of  it  promised  as  a  sign  of 
God's  perfect  blessing,  most  earnestly  by  the  saddest  of 
the  Hebrew  prophets,  and  in  one  of  the  most  beautiful 
of  all  his  sayings. 


LETTER   IX. TIIANKSGmNG.  47 

"  The  Lord  hath  appeared  of  old  unto  me  saying,  *  Yea, 
I  have  loved  thee  with  an  everlasting  love.  Therefore, 
with  loving-kindness  have  I  drawn  thee. — I  will  build 
thee,  and  thou  shalt  be  built,  O  Yirgin  of  Israel ;  thou 
shalt  again  be  adorned  with  thy  tabrets,  and  shalt  go 
forth  in  the  dances  with  them  that  make  merry"  (Jerem. 
xxxi.,  3,  4;  and  compare  v.  13).  And  finally,  you  have 
in  two  of  G^uite  the  most  important  passages  in  the  whole 
series  of  Scripture  (one  in  the  Old  Testament,  one  in  the 
Kew),  the  rejoicing  in  the  repentance  from,  and  remission 
of  sins,  ex-pressed  by  means  of  music  and  dancing,  namely, 
in  the  rapturous  dancing  of  Bavid  before  the  returning 
ark;  and  in  the  joy  of  the  Father's  household  at  the 
repentance  of  the  prodigal  son. 

I  could  put  all  this  much  better  and  more  convincino-ly 
before  you,  if  I  were  able  to  take  any  pains  in  writing  at 
present ;  but  I  am  not,  as  I  told  you ;  being  weary  and 
ill ;  neither  do  I  much  care  now  to  use  what,  in  the  very 
truth,  are  but  tricks  of  literary  art,  in  dealing  with  this  so 
grave  subject.  You  see  I  write  you  my  letter  straight- 
forward, and  let  you  see  all  my  scratchings  out  and 
puttings  in ;  and  if  the  way  I  say  things  shocks  you,  or 
any  other  reader  of  these  letters,  I  cannot  help  it ;  this 
only  I  know,  that  what  I  tell  you  is  true,  and  written 
more  earnestly  than  anything  I  ever  wrote  with  my  best 


48  TIME   AND   TIDE. 

literary  care;  and  that  you  will  find  it  useful  to  think 
upon,  however  it  be  said.  Now,  therefore,  to  draw 
towards  our  conclusion.  Supposing  the  Bible  inspired,  in 
any  of  the  senses  above  defined,  you  have  in  these  pas- 
sages a  positively  Divine  authority  for  the  use  of  song 
and  dance,  as  a  means  of  religious  service,  and  expression 
of  national  thanksgiving.  Supposing  it  not  inspired,  ycKi 
have  (taking  the  passages  for  as  slightly  authoritative  as 
you  choose)  record  in  them,  nevertheless,  of  a  state  of 
mind  in  a  great  nation  producing  the  most  beautiful 
religious  poetry  and  perfect  moral  law  hitherto  known  to 
us,  yet  only  expressible  by  them,  to  the  fulfilment  of  their 
joyful  passion,  by  means  of  processional  dance  and  choral 
song. 

Now  I  want  you  to  contrast  this  state  of  religious 
rapture  ^vith  some  of  our  modern  phases  of  mind  in 
parallel  circumstances.  You  see  that  the  promise  of 
Jeremiah's,  "  Thou  shalt  go  forth  in  the  dances  of  them 
that  make  merry,"  is  immediately  followed  by  this, 
"  Thou  shalt  yet  plant  vines  upon  the  mountains  of 
Samaria."  And  again,  at  the  yearly  feast  to  the  Lord 
in  Shiloh,  the  dancing  of  the  virgins  was  in  the  midst 
of  the  vineyards  (Judges  xxi.,  21),  the  feast  of  the  vint- 
age being  in  the  south,  as  our  harvest-home  in  the 
north,  a    peculiar    occasion    of  joy  and    thanksgiving. 


LE'rrEE  IX. — TiiAJ!^^KSGivma.  49 

I  happened  to  pass  the  autumn  of  1863  in  one  of  the 
great  vine  districts  of  Switzerland,  under  the  slopes  of 
the  outlying  branch  of  the  Jura  which  limits  the  arable 
plain  of  the  Canton  Zurich,  some  iifteen  miles  north 
of  Zurich  itself.  That  city  has  always  been  a  renowned 
stronghold  of  Swiss  Protestantism,  next  in  importance 
only  to  Geneva;  and  its  evangelical  zeal  for  the  con- 
version of  the  Catholics  of  Uri,  and  endeavours  to  bring 
about  that  spiritual  result  by  stopping  the  supplies  of 
salt  they  needed  to  make  their  cheeses  with,  brought 
on  (the  Uri  men  reading  their  Matt.  v.  13,  in  a  different 
sense)  the  battle  of  Keppel,  and  the  death  of  the  re- 
former, Zwinglius.  The  town  itself  shows  the  most  grati- 
fying signs  of  progress  in  all  the  modern  arts  and 
sciences  of  life.  It  is  nearly  as  black  as  ISTewcastle — 
has  a  railroad  station  larger  than  the  London  terminus 
of  the  Chatham  and  Dover — fouls  the  stream  of  the 
Limmat  as  soon  as  it  issues  from  the  lake,  so  that  you 
might  even  venture  to  compare  the  formerly  simple 
and  innocent  Swiss  river  (I  remember  it  thirty  years 
ago — a  current  of  pale  green  crystal)  with  the  highly 
educated  English  streams  of  Weare  or  Tyne;  and, 
finally,  has  as  many  French  prints  of  dissolute  tendency 
in  its  principal  shop  windows,  as  if  they  had  the  priv- 
ilege of    opening  on  the   Parisian  Boulevards.      I  was 


50  TIME  AJTOTIDE. 

aoraewhat  anxious  to  see  what  species  of  thanksgiving 
or  exultation  would  be  expressed,  at  their  vintage,  by 
the  peasantry  in  the  neighbourhood  of  this  much  en- 
lightened evangelical  and  commercial  society.  It  con- 
sisted in  two  ceremonies  only.  During  the  day,  the 
servants  of  the  farms  where  the  grapes  had  been  gathered, 
collected  in  knots  about  the  vineyards,  and  slowly  fired 
horse-pistols,  from  morning  to  evening.  At  night  they 
got  drunk,  and  staggered  up  and  down  the  hill  paths, 
uttering  at  short  intervals  yells  and  shrieks,  differing 
only  from  the  howling  of  wild  animals  by  a  certain  in- 
tended and  insolent  discordance,  only  attainable  by  the 
malignity  of  debased  human  creatures.  I  must  not 
do  the  injustice  to  the  Zurich  peasantry  of  implying 
that  this  manner  of  festivity  is  peculiar  to  them.  A 
year  before,  in  1862,  I  had  formed  the  intention  of 
living  some  years  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Geneva, 
and  had  established  myself  experimentally  on  the  eastern 
slope  of  the  Mont  Saleve ;  but  I  was  forced  to  abandon 
my  purpose  at  last,  because  I  could  not  endure  the 
rabid  howling,  on  Sunday  evenings,  of  the  holiday-- 
makers who  came  out  from  Geneva  to  get  drunk  in  the 
mountain  village.  By  the  way,  your  last  letter,  with 
its  extracts  about  our  traffic  in  gin,  is  very  valuable. 
I  will  come  to  that  part  of   the  business  in  a  little 


I 


LETTER    IX. THAI^KSGrV'LNG.  51 

while.  Meantime,  by  friend,  note  this,  respecting  what 
I  have  told  you,  that  in  the  very  centre  of  Europe, 
in  a  country  which  is  visited  for  their  chief  pleasure  by 
the  most  refined  and  thoughtful  persons  among  all 
Christian  nations — a  country  made  by  God's  hand  the 
most  beautiful  in  the  temperate  regions  of  the  earth, 
and  inhabited  by  a  race  once  capable  of  the  sternest 
patriotism  and  simplest  purity  of  life,  your  modern 
religion,  in  the  very  stronghold  of  it,  has  reduced  the 
song  and  dance  of  ancient  virginal  thanksgiving  to  the 
bowlings  and  staggerings  of  men  betraying,  in  intoxi- 
cation, a  nature  sunk  more  than  half  way  towards 
the  beasts ;  and  you  will  begin  to  understand  why 
the  Bible  should  have  been  "  illustrated "  by  Gustave 
Dore. 

One  word  more  is  needful,  though  this  letter  is  long 
already.  The  peculiar  ghastliness  of  this  Swiss  mode  of 
festivity  is  in  its  utter  failure  of  joy ;  the  paralysis  and 
helplessness  of  a  vice  in  which  there  is  neither  pleasure, 
nor  art.  But  we  are  not,  throughout  Europe,  wholly 
thus.  There  is  such  a  thing,  yet,  as  rapturous  song  arid 
dance  among  us,  though  not  indicative  by  any  means  of 
joy  over  repentant  sinners.  You  must  come  back  to 
Paris  with  me  again.  I  had  an  evening  to  spare  there, 
last  summer,  for  investigation  of  theatres ;  and  as  there 


52  TIME   AND   TIDE. 

was  nothing  at  any  of  them  that  I  cared  much  about  see- 
ing, I  asked  a  valet-de-place  at  Meurice's,  what  people 
were  generally  going  to.  He  said,  "  All  the  English  went 
to  see  the  Lanterne  Magique^  I  do  not  care  to  tell  you 
what  general  entertainment  I  received  in  following,  for 
once,  the  lead  of  my  countrymen  ;  but  it  closed  with  the 
representation  of  the  characteristic  dancing  of  all  ages  of 
the  world ;  and  the  dance  given  as  characteristic  of  mod- 
ern time  was  the  Cancan,  which  you  will  see  alluded  to  in 
the  extract  given  in  the  note  at  page  92  of  Sesame  and 
Lilies.  "  The  ball  terminated  with  a  Devilish  Chain  and 
a  Cancan  of  Hell,  at  seven  in  the  morning."  It  was  led 
by  four  principal  dancers  (who  have  since  appeared  in 
London  in  the  Huguenot  Captain)^  and  it  is  many  years 
since  I  have  seen  such  perfect  dancing,  as  far  as  finish  and 
accuracy  of  art  and  fulness  of  animal  power  and  fire  are 
concerned.  Nothing  could  be  better  done,  in  its  own  evil 
way,  the  object  of  the  dance  throughout  being  to  express 
in  every  gesture  the  wildest  fury  of  insolence  and  vicious 
passions  possible  to  human  creatures.  So  that  you  see, 
though  for  the  present  we  find  ourselves  utterly  incapable 
of  a  rapture  of  gladness  or  thanksgiving,  tlie  dance  which 
is  presented  as  characteristic  of  modern  civilization  is  still 
ra[)turous  enough — but  it  is  with  rapture  of  blasphemy. 
Kow,  just  read  from  the  17th  to  the  20th  page  of  the  pro- 


LETTER   IX. ^THANKSGIVING. 


63 


face  to  Sesame  and  Lilies,  and  I  will  try  to  bring  all  these 
broken  threads  into  some  warp  and  woof,  in  my  next  two 
letters — if  I  cannot  in  one. 


Ccttcr  10. 

The  Meanmg,   and  Actual   Operation^   of  Satanic    or 

Demoniacal  Influence. 

» 

Ma/rch  16, 1867. 

I  AM  afraid  my  weaving,  after  all,  will  be  but  rough 
work — and  many  ends  of  threads  ill-knotted — but  you 
will  see  there's  a  pattern  at  last,  meant  by  them  all. 

You  may  gather  from  the  facts  given  you  in  my  last 
letter,  that  as  the  expression  of  true  and  holy  gladness 
was  in  old  time  statedly  offered  up  by  men  for  a  part  of 
worship  to  God  their  Father — so  the  expression  of  false 
and  unholy  gladness  is  in  modern  times,  with  as  much 
distinctness  and  plainness,  asserted  by  them  openly  to  be 
offered  to  another  spirit :  "  Chain  of  the  Devil,  and  Can- 
can of  Hell "  being  the  names  assigned  to  these  modern 
forms  of  joyous  procession. 

Now,  you  know  that  among  the  best  and  wisest  of  our 
present  religious  teachers,  there  is  a  gradual  tendency  to 
disbelieve,  and  to  preach  their  disbelief,  in  the  commonly 
received  ideas  of  the  Devil,  and  of  his  place,  and  his  work. 
While,  among  some  of  our  equally  well-meaning,  but  far 


LETTER   X. WHEAT-SIFTING.  65 

less  wise,  religious  teachers,  there  is,  in  consequence,  a 
panic  spreading,  in  anticipation  of  the  moral  dangers 
which  must  follow  on  the  loss  of  the  help  of  the  Devil. 
One  of  the  last  appearances  in  public  of  the  author  of  the 
Christian  Year  was  at  a  conclave  of  clergymen  assembled 
in  defence  of  faith  in  damnation.  The  sense  of  the  meet- 
ing generally  was,  that  there  must  be  such  a  place  as  hell, 
because  no  one  would  ever  behave  decently  upon  earth  un- 
less they  were  kept  in  wholesome  fear  of  the  fires  beneath 
it :  and  Mr.  Keble  especially  insisting  on  this  view,  re- 
lated a  story  of  an  old  woman,  who  had  a  wicked  son, 
and  who  having  lately  heard  with  horror  of  the  teaching 
of  Mr.  Maurice  and  others,  exclaimed  pathetically,  "  My 
son  is  bad  enough  as  it  is,  and  if  he  were  not  afraid  of  hell, 
what  would  become  of  him  ! "  (I  write  from  memory,  and 
cannot  answer  for  the  words,  but  I  can  for  their  purport.) 

ISTow,  my  friend,  I  am  afraid  that  I  must  incur  the 
charge  of  such  presumption  as  may  be  involved  in  vari- 
ance from  hoth  these  systems  of  teaching. 

I  do  not  merely  helieve  there  is  such  a  place  as  hell.  I 
know  there  is  such  a  place ;  and  I  know  also  that  when 
men  have  got  to  the  point  of  believing  virtue  impossible 
but  through  dread  of  it,  they  have  got  into  it. 

I  mean,  that  according  to  the  distinctness  with  which 
they  hold  such  a  creed,;  the  stain  of  nether  fire  has  passed 


56  TIME   AND  TIDE. 

upon  them.  In  the  depth  of  his  heart  Mr.  Keble  could 
not  have  entertained  the  thought  for  an  instant ;  and  I 
believe  it  was  only  as  a  conspicuous  sign  to  the  religious 
world  of  the  state  into  which  thej  were  sinking,  that  this 
creed,  possible  in  its  sincerity  only  to  the  basest  of  them, 
was  nevertheless  appointed  to  be  uttered  by  the  lips  of 
the  most  tender,  gracious,  and  beloved  of  their  teachers. 

"  Yirtue  impossible  but  for  fear  of  hell " — a  lofty  creed 
for  your  English  youth — and  a  holy  one !  And  yet,  my 
friend,  there  was  something  of  right  in  the  terrors  of  this 
clerical  conclave.  For,  though  you  should  assuredly  be 
able  to  hold  your  own  in  the  straight  ways  of  God,  with- 
out always  believing  that  the  Devil  is  at  your  side,  it  is  a 
state  of  mind  much  to  be  dreaded,  that  you  should  not 
Icnow  the  Devil  when  you  see  him  there.  For  the  proba- 
bility is,  that  when  you  see  him,  the  way  you  are  walk- 
ing in  is  not  one  of  God's  ways  at  all,  but  is  leading  you 
into  quite  other  neighbourhoods  than  His.  On  His  way, 
indeed,  you  may  often,  like  Albert  Durer's  Knight,  see 
the  Fiend  behind  you,  but  you  will  find  that  he  drops 
always  farther  and  farther  behind ;  whereas  if  he  jogs 
with  you  at  your  side,  it  is  probably  one  of  his  own  by- 
paths you  are  got  on.  And,  in  any  case,  it  is  a  highly 
desirable  matter  that  you  should  know  him  when  you  set 
eyes  on  him,  which  we  are  very  far  from  doing  in  thc>< 


LETTEK   X. — WHEAT-SIFTING.  57 

days,  having  convinced  ourselves  that  the  graminivorous 
form  of  him,  with  horn  and  tail,  is  extant  no  longer. 
But  in  fearful  truth,  the  Presence  and  Power  of  him  is 
here ;  in  the  world,  with  us,  and  within  us,  mock  as  you 
may ;  and  the  fight  with  him,  for  the  time,  sore,  and 
widely  unprosperous. 

Do  not  think  I  am  speaking  metaphorically,  or  rhetori- 
cally, or  with  any  other  than  literal  and  earnest  meaning 
of  words.  Hear  me,  I  pray  you,  therefore,  for  a  little 
while,  as  earnestly  as  I  speak. 

Every  faculty  of  man's  soul,  and  every  instinct  of  it  by 
which  he  is  meant  to  live,  is  exposed  to  its  own  special 
form  of  corruption :  and  whether  within  Man,  or  in  the 
external  world,  there  is  a  power  or  condition  of  tempta- 
tion which  is  perpetually  endeavouring  to  reduce  every 
glory  of  his  soul,  and  every  power  of  his  life,  to  such  cor- 
ruption as  is  possible  to  them.  And  the  more  beautiful 
they  are,  the  more  fearful  is  the  death  which  is  attached 
as  a  penalty  to  their  degradation. 

Take  for  instance  that  which,  in  its  purity,  is  the 
source  of  the  highest  and  purest  mortal  happiness — Love. 
Think  of  it  first  at  its  highest — as  it  may  exist  in  the  dis- 
ciplined spirit  of  a  perfect  human  creature ;  as  it  has  so 
existed  again  and  again,  and  does  always,  wherever  it 
truly  exists  at  all,  as  the  purifyiTig  passion  of  the  soul. 


58  TIME   AND  TIDE. 

I  will  not  speak  of  the  transcendental  and  imaginative  in- 
tensity in  which  it  may  reign  in  noble  hearts,  as  when  it 
inspired  the  greatest  religious  poem  yet  given  to  men ; 
but  take  it  in  its  true  and  quiet  purity  in  any  simple 
lover's  heart — as  you  have  it  expressed,  for  instance, 
thus,  exquisitely,  in  the  Angel  in  the  House: — 

"  And  there,  with  many  a  bUssful  tear, 
I  vowed  to  love  and  prayed  to  wed 
The  maiden  who  had  grown  so  dear ; — 
Thanked  God,  who  had  set  her  in  my  path ; 
And  promised,  as  I  hoped  to  win, 
I  never  would  sully  my  faith 
By  the  least  selfishness  or  sin ; 
Whatever  in  her  sight  I'd  seem 
I'd  really  be  ;  I  ne'er  would  blend, 
With  my  delight  in  her,  a  dream 
'Twould  change  her  cheek  to  comprehend ; 
And,  if  she  wished  it,  would  prefer 
Another's  to  my  own  success ; 
And  always  seek  the  best  for  her 
Widi  unoflficious  tenderness." 

Take  this  for  the  pure  type  of  it  in  its  simplicity  ;  and 
then  think  of  what  corruption  this  passion  is  capable.  I 
will  give  you  a  type  of  that  also,  and  at  your  very  doors. 
I  cannot  refer  you  to  the  time  when  the  crime  happened  ; 


LETTER    X. WHEAT-SIFTING.  59 

but  it  was  some  four  or  five  years  ago,  near  J^ewcastle, 
and  it  lias  remained  always  as  a  ghastly  landmark  in  my 
mind,  owing  to  the  horror  of  the  external  circumstances. 
The  body  of  the  murdered  woman  was  found  naked, 
rolled  into  a  heap  of  ashes,  at  the  mouth  of  one  of  your 
pits. 

Take  those  two  limiting  examples,  of  the  Pure  Pas- 
sion, and  of  its  corruption.  JSTow,  whatever  influence  it 
is,  without  or  within  us,  which  has  a  tendency  to  degrade 
the  one  towards  the  other,  is  literally  and  accurately 
"  Satanic."  And  this  treacherous  or  deceiving  spirit  is 
perpetually  at  work,  so  that  all  the  worst  evil  among  us  is 
a  betrayed  or  corrupted  good.  Take  religion  itself :  the 
desire  of  finding  out  God,  and  placing  one's  self  in  some 
true  son's  or  servant's  relation  to  Him.  The  Devil,  that 
is  to  say,  the  deceiving  spirit  within  us,  or  outside  of  us, 
mixes  up  our  own  vanity  with  this  desire ;  makes  us 
think  that  in  our  love  to  God  we  have  established  some 
connection  with  Him  which  separates  us  from  om^  fellow- 
men,  and  renders  us  superior  to  them.  Then  it  takes  but 
one  wave  of  the  Devil's  hand  ;  and  we  are  burning  them 
alive  for  taking  the  liberty  of  contradicting  us. 

Take  the  desire  of  teaching — the  entirely  unselfish  and 
noble  instinct  for  telling  to  those  who  are  ignorant,  the 
truth  we  know,  and  guarding  them  from  the  errors  we 


00  TIME   AND   TIDE. 

Bee  them  in  danger  of; — there  is  no  nobler,  no  more  con- 
stant instinct  in  honourable  breasts;  but  let  the  Devil 
formalise,  and  mix  the  pride  of  a  profession  with  it — get 
foolish  people  entrusted  with  the  business  of  instruction, 
and  make  their  giddy  heads  giddier  by  putting  them  up 
in  pulpits  above  a  submissive  crowd — and  you  have  it 
instantly  corrupted  into  its  own  reverse ;  you  have  an 
alliance  against  the  light,  shrieking  at  the  sun,  and  moon, 
and  stars,  as  profane  spectra : — a  company  of  the  blind, 
beseeching  those  they  lead  to  remain  blind  also.  "  The 
heavens  and  the  lights  that  rule  them  are  untrue;  the 
laws  of  creation  are  treacherous ;  the  poles  of  the  earth 
are  out  of  poise.  But  we  are  true.  Light  is  in  us  only. 
Shut  your  eyes  close  and  fast,  and  we  will  lead  you." 

Take  the  desire  and  faith  of  mutual  help ;  the  virtue 
of  vowed  brotherhood  for  the  accomplishment  of  com- 
mon purpose  (without  which  nothing  can  be  wrought  by 
multitudinous  bands  of  men);  let  the  Devil  put  pride 
j  of  caste  into  it,  and  you  have  a  military  organization 
applied  for  a  thousand  years  to  maintain  that  higher 
caste  in  idleness  by  robbing  the  labouring  poor ;  let  the 
Devil  put  a  few  small  personal  interests  into  it,  and  you 
have  all  faithful  deliberation  on  national  law  rendered 
impossible  in  the  parliaments  of  Europe,  by  the  antag^ 
onism  of  parties. 


LETTEK   X. WHEAT-SIFTING. 


61 


Take  the  instinct  for  justice,  and  the  natural  sense 
of  indignation  against  crime ;  let  the  Devil  colour  it 
with  personal  passion,  and  you  have  a  mighty  race  of 
true  and  tender-hearted  men  living  for  centuries  in  such 
bloody  feud  that  every  note  and  word  of  their  national 
songs  is  a  dirge,  and  every  rock  of  their  hills  is  a  grave- 
stone. Take  the  love  of  beauty,  and  power  of  imagina- 
tion, which  are  the  source  of  every  true  achievement  in 
art ;  let  the  Devil  touch  them  with  sensuality,  and  they 
are  stronger  than  the  sword  or  the  flame  to  blast  the 
cities  where  they  were  born,  into  ruin  without  hope. 
Take  the  instinct  of  industry  and  ardour  of  commerce, 
which  are  meant  to  be  the  support  and  mutual  mainte- 
nance of  man ;  let  the  Devil  touch  them  with  avarice, 
and  you  shall  see  the  avenues  of  the  exchange  choked 
with  corpses  that  have  died  of  famine. 

]^ow  observe — I  leave  you  to  call  this  deceiving  spirit 
what  you  like — or  to  theorise  about  it  as  you  like.  All 
that  I  desire  you  to  recognise  is  the  fact  of  its  being  here, 
and  the  need  of  its  being  fought  with.  If  you  take  the 
Bible's  account  of  it,  or  Dante's,  or  Milton's,  you  will 
receive  the  image  of  it  as  a  mighty  spiritual  creature, 
commanding  others,  and  resisted  by  others ;  if  you  take 
JEschylus's  or  Hesiod's  account  of  it,  you  will  hold  it 
for  a  partly  elementary  and  unconscious  adversity  of  fate, 


62  TIME   Aim  TIDE. 

and  partly  for  a  group  of  monstrous  spiritual  agencies, 
connected  with  death,  and  begotten  out  of  the  dust ;  if 
you  take  a  modern  rationalist's,  you  will  accept  it  for 
a  mere  treachery  and  want  of  vitality  in  our  own  moral 
nature  exposing  it  to  loathsomeness  of  moral  disease,  as 
the  body  is  capable  of  mortification  or  leprosy.  I  do 
not  care  what  you  call  it, — whose  history  you  believe 
of  it, — nor  what  you  yourself  can  imagine  about  it ;  the 
origin,  or  nature,  or  name  may  be  as  you  will,  but  the 
deadly  reality  of  the  thing  is  with  us,  and  warring 
against  us,  and  on  our  true  war  with  it  depends  what- 
ever life  we  can  win.  Deadly  reality,  I  say.  The  puff- 
adder  or  homed  asp  are  not  more  real.  Unbelievable, — 
ihose^ — unless  you  had  seen  them;  no  fable  could  have 
been  coined  out  of  any  human  brain  so  dreadful,  within 
its  own  poor  material  sphere,  as  that  blue-lipped  serpent 
— ^working  its  way  sidelong  in  the  sand.  As  real,  but 
with  sting  of  eternal  death — this  worm  that  dies  not, 
and  fire  that  is  not  quenched,  within  our  souls,  or  around 
them.  Eternal  death,  I  say — sure,  that,  whatever  creed 
you  hold ; — if  the  old  Scriptural  one.  Death  of  perpetual 
banishment  from  before  God's  face  ;  if  the  modern  ration- 
alist one.  Death  eternal  for  us^  instant  and  unredeemable 
ending  of  lives  wasted  in  misery. 

That  is  what  this  unquestionably  present — this,   ac- 


LETTER   X. WHEAT-SIFTING.  63 

cording  to  his  power,  omni-'present — fiend,  brings  us  to, 
daily.  ITe  is  the  person  to  be  "voted"  against,  my 
working  friend;  it  is  worth  something,  having  a  vote 
against  him,  if  you  can  get  it!  Which  you  can,  indeed; 
but  not  by  gift  from  Cabinet  Ministers ;  you  must  work 
warily  with  your  own  hands,  and  drop  sweat  of  heart's 
blood,  before  you  can  record  that  vote  effectually. 
Of  which  more  in  next  letter. 


Ccttcr  11. 

TJie  Satanic  Power  is  mairdy  Twofold  /    the  Power  of 

causing  Falsehood  and  the  Power  of  causing  Pain. 

The  Resistamxie  is  hy  Law  of  Honour  and  Law  of 

Delight. 

March  19, 1867. 

Yo\j  may  perhaps  have  thought  my  last  three  or  foui* 
letters  mere  rhapsodies.  They  are  nothing  of  the  kind ; 
they  are  accurate  accounts  of  literal  facts,  which  we  have 
to  deal  with  daily.  This  thing,  or  power,  opposed  to 
God's  power,  and  speciiically  called  "  Mammon "  in  the 
Sermon  on  the  Mount,  is  in  deed  and  in  truth  a  con- 
tinually present  and  active  enemy,  properly  called  "  Arch- 
enemy,"  that  is  to  say,  "Beginning  and  Prince  of 
Enemies,"  and  daily  we  have  to  record  our  vote  for, 
or  against  him.  Of  the  manner  of  which  record  we 
were  next  to  consider. 

This  enemy  is  always  recognisable,  briefly  in  two  func- 
tions. He  is  pre-eminently  the  Lord  of  Lies  and  the 
Lord  of  PoA^n.  Wherever  lies  are,  he  is;  wherever 
pain  is,  he  has  been — so  that  of  the  Spirit  of  Wisdom 


LETTER  XI. THE  GOLDEN  BOUGH.  65 

(who  is  called  God's  Helper,  as  Satan  His  Adversary) 
it  is  written,  not  only  that  by  her  Kings  reign,  and 
Princes  decree  justice,  but  also  that  her  ways  are  ways 
of  Pleasantness,  and  all  her  paths  Peace. 

Therefore,  you  will  succeed,  you  working  men,  in 
recording  your  votes  against  this  arch-enemy,  precisely 
in  the  degree  in  which  you  can  do  away  with  falsehood 
and  pain  in  your  work  and  lives ;  and  bring  truth  into 
the  one,  and  pleasure  into  the  other ;  all  education  being 
directed  to  make  yourselves  and  your  children  capable  of 
Honesty,  and  capable  of  Delight  j  and  to  rescue  your- 
selves from  iniquity  and  agony.  And  this  is  what  I 
meant  by  saying  in  the  preface  to  Unto  this  Last  that  the 
central  requirement  of  education  consisted  in  giving 
habits  of  gentleness  and  justice;  "gentleness"  (as  I  will 
show  you  presently)  being  the  best  single  word  I  could 
have  used  to  express  the  capacity  for  giving  and  receiving 
true  pleasure;  and  "justice,"  being  similarly  the  most 
comprehensive  w^ord  for  all  kind  of  honest  dealing. 

I^ow,  I  began  these  letters  with  the  purpose  of  explain- 
ing the  nature  of  the  requirements  of  justice  first,  and 
then  those  of  gentleness,  but  I  allowed  myself  to  be  led 
into  that  talk  about  the  theatres,  not  only  because  the 
thoughts  could  be  more  easily  written  as  they  came,  but 
also  because  I  was  able  thus  to  illustrate  for  you  more 


66  TIME    AND   TIDE. 

directly  the  nature  of  the  enemy  we  have  to  deal  with. 
You  do  not  perhaps  know,  though  I  say  this  diffidently 
(for  I  often  find  working  men  know  many  things  which 
one  would  have  thought  were  out  of  their  way),  that 
music  was  among  the  Greeks,  quite  the  first  means  of 
education;  and  that  it  was  so  connected  with  their 
system  of  ethics  and  of  intellectuVal  training,  that  the  God 
of  Music  is  with  them  also  the  God  of  Kighteousness  ; — 
the  God  who  purges  and  avenges  iniquity,  and  contends 
with  their  Satan  as  represented  under  the  form  of  Python, 
"  the  corrupter."  And  the  Greeks  were  incontrovertibly 
right  in  this.  Music  is  the  nearest  at  hand,  the  most 
orderly,  the  most  delicate,  and  the  most  perfect,  of  all 
bodily  pleasures ;  it  is  also  the  only  one  which  is  equally 
helpful  to  all  the  ages  of  man, — helpful  from  the  nurse's 
song  to  her  infant,  to  the  music,  unheard  of  others,  which 
often,  if  not  most  frequently,  haunts  the  deathbed  of  pure 
and  innocent  spirits.  And  the  action  of  the  deceiving  or 
devilish  power  is  in  nothhig  shown  quite  so  distinctly 
among  us  at  this  day, — not  even  in  our  commercial  dis- 
honesties, nor  in  our  social  cruelties, — as  in  its  having 
been  able  to  take  away  music,  as  an  instrument  of  educa- 
tion, altogether ;  and  to  enlist  it  almost  wholly  in  the 
service  of  superstition  on  the  one  hand,  and  of  sensuality 
on  the  other. 


LETTER  XI. THE  GOLDEN  BOUGH.  67 

This  power  of  the  Muses,  then,  and  its  proper  influ- 
ence over  your  workmen,  I  shall  eventually  have  much  to 
insist  upon  with  you ;  and  in  doing  so  I  shall  take  that 
beautiful  parable  of  the  Prodigal  Son  (which  I  have  al- 
ready referred  to),  and  explain  as  far  as  I  know,  the  sig- 
nificance of  it,  and  then  I  will  take  the  three  means  of 
festivity,  or  wholesome  human  joy,  therein  stated — fine^ 
dress,  rich  food,  and  music; — (''bring  forth  the  fairest 
robe  for  him," — "  bring  forth  the  fatted  calf,  and  kill  it ;  " 
"  as  he  drew  nigh,  he  heard  music  and  dancing ;  ")  and  I 
will  show  you  how  all  these  three  things,  fine  dress,  rich 
food,  and  music  (including  ultimately  all  the  other  arts) 
are  meant  to  be  sources  of  life,  and  means  of  moral  disci- 
pline, to  all  men ;  and  how  they  have  all  three  been 
made,  by  the  Devil,  the  means  of  guilt,  dissoluteness,  and 
death.  But  first  I  must  return  to  my  original  plan  of 
these  letters,  and  endeavour  to  set  down  for  you  some  of 
the  laws  which  in  a  true  Working  Men's  Parliament 
must  be  ordained  in  defence  of  Honesty. 

Of  which  laws  (preliminary  to  all  others,  and  neces- 
sary above  all  others),  having  now  somewhat  got  my  rav- 
elled threads  together  again,  I  will  begin  to  talk  in  my 
next  letter. 


Crttcr  12. 

The  necessity  of  Imperative  Laxo  to  the  Prosperity  of 

States. 

« 

March  19,  1867. 
I  HAVE  your  most  interesting  letter,*  which  I  keep  for 
reference,  when  I  come  to  the  consideration  of  its  sub- 
ject in  its  proper  place,  under  the  head  of  the  abuse 
of  Food.  I  do  not  wonder  that  your  life  should  be  ren- 
dered unhappy  by  the  scenes  of  drunkenness  which  you 
are  so  often  compelled  to  witness  ;  nor  that  this  so  gigan- 
tic and  infectious  evil  should  seem  to  you  the  root  of  the 
greater  part  of  the  misery  of  our  lower  orders.  I  do  not 
wonder  that  Sir  Walter  Trevelyan  has  given  his  best 
energy  to  -its  repression;  nor  even  that  another  friend, 
George  Cruikshank,  has  warped  the  entire  current  of  his 
thoughts  and  life,  at  once  to  my  admiration  and  my  sor- 
row, from  their  natural  field  of  work,  that  he  might  spend 
them,  in  struggle,  for  the  poor  lowest  people  whom  he 
knows  so  well,  with  this  fiend  who  grasps  his  victims  by 
the  throat  first,  and  then  by  the  heart.  1  wholly  sympa- 
thise with  you  in  indignation  at  the  methods  of  tempta- 
♦  Appendix  4. 


LETTER   XII. DICTATORSHIP.  69 

tion  employed,  and  at  the  use  of  the  fortunes  made,  by  the 
vendors  of  death ;  and  whatever  immediately  apj)licable 
legal  means  there  might  be  of  restricting  the  causes  of 
drunkenness,  I  should  without  hesitation  desire  to  bring 
into  operation.  But  all  such  appliance  I  consider  tempo- 
rary and  provisionary ;  nor,  while  there  is  record  of  the 
miracle  at  Cana  (not  to  speak  of  the  sacrament)  can  I  con- 
ceive it  possible,  without  (logically)  the  denial  of  the 
entire  truth  of  the  New  Testament,  to  reprobate  the  use 
of  wine  as  a  stimulus  to  the  powers  of  life.  Supposing  we 
did  deny  the  words  and  deeds  ^f  the  Founder  of  Christian- 
ity, the  authority  of  the  wisest  heathens,  especially  that  of 
Plato  in  the  Laws,  is  wholly  against  abstinence  from 
wine ;  and  much  as  I  can  believe,  and  as  I  have  been  en- 
deavouring to  make  you  believe  also,  of  the  subtlety  of  the 
Devil,  I  do  not  suppose  the  vine  to  have  been  one  of  his 
inventions.  Of  this,  however,  more  in  another  place. 
By  the  way,  was  it  not  curious  that  in  the  Manchester 
Examiner,  in  which  that  letter  of  mine  on  the  abuse  of 
dancing  appeared,  there  chanced  to  be  in  the  next  column 
a  paragraph  giving  an  account  of  a  girl  stabbing  her 
betrayer  in  a  ball  room ;  and  another  paragraph  describ- 
ing a  Parisian  character,  which  gives  exactly  the  extreme 
type  I  wanted,  for  example  of  the  abuse  of  food  %  ^ 
*  Appendix  5. 


TO  TIME  AND  TIDE. 

I  return,  however,  now  to  the  examination  of  possible 
means  for  the  enforcement  of  justice,  in  temper  and  in 
act,  as  the  first  of  political  requirements.  And  as,  in 
stating  my  conviction  of  the  necessity  of  certain  stringent 
laws  on  this  matter,  I  shall  be  in  direct  opposition  to  Mr. 
Stuart  Mill ;  and  more  or  less  in  opposition  to  other  pro- 
fessors of  modern  political  economy,  as  well  as  to  many 
honest  and  active  promoters  of  the  privileges  of  working 
men  (as  if  privilege  only  were  wanted,  and  never  re- 
straint ! ),  I  will  give  you,  as  briefly  as  I  can,  the  grounds 
on  which  I  am  prepared  to  justify  such  opposition. 

"When  the  crew  of  a  wrecked  ship  escape  in  an  open 
boat,  and  the  boat  is  crowded,  the  provisions  scanty,  and 
the  prospect  of  making  land  distant,  laws  are  instantly 
established  and  enforced  which  no  one  thinks  of  disobey- 
ing. An  entire  equality  of  claim  to  the  provisions  is 
acknowledged  without  dispute ;  and  an  equal  liability  to 
necessary  labour.  No  man  who  can  row  is  allowed  to  re- 
fuse his  oar ;  no  man,  however  much  money  he  may  have 
saved  in  his  pocket,  is  allowed  so  much  as  half  a  biscuit 
beyond  his  proper  ration.  Any  riotous  person  who  en- 
dangered the  safety  of  the  rest  would  be  bound,  and 
laid  in  the  bottom  of  the  boat,  without  the  smallest  eom- 
punction  for  such  violation  of  the  principles  of  individual 
liberty ;  and  on  the  other  hand,  any  child)  or  woman,  or 


LETTER   XII. ^DICTATORSHIP.  71 

aged  person,  who  was  helpless,  and  exposed  to  greater 
danger  and  suffering  by  their  weakness,  would  receive 
more  than  ordinary  care  and  indulgence,  not  unaccom- 
panied with  unanimous  self-sacrifice,  on  the  part  of  the 
labouring  crew. 

There  is  never  any  question,  under  circumstances  like 
these,  of  what  is  right  and  wrong,  worthy  and  unworthy, 
wise  or  foolish.  If  there  he  any  question,  there  is  little 
hope  for  boat  or  crew.  The  right  man  is  put  at  the 
helm ;  every  available  hand  is  set  to  the  oars ;  the  sick 
are  tended,  and  the  vicious  restrained,  at  once,  and  de- 
cisively ;  or  if  not,  the  end  is  near. 

ISTow,  the  circumstances  of  every  associated  group  of 
human  society,  contending  bravely  for  national  honours, 
and  felicity  of  life,  differ  only  from  those  thus  supposed, 
in  the  greater,  instead  of  less,  necessity  for  the  establish- 
ment of  restraining  law.  There  is  no  point  of  difference 
in  the  difficulties  to  be  met,  nor  in  the  rights  reciprocally 
to  be  exercised.  Yice  and  indolence  are  not  less,  but 
more,'  injurious  in  a  nation  than  in  a  boat's  company ; 
the  modes  in  which  they  affect  the  interests  of  worthy 
persons  being  far  more  complex,  and  more  easily  con- 
cealed. The  right  of  restraint,  vested  in  those  who  la- 
bour, over  those  who  would  impede  their  labour,  is  as  ab- 
solute in   the   large  as  in  the  small  society;   the  equal 


72  TIME   AND   TIDE. 

claim  to  share  in  whatever  is  necessary  to  the  common 
life  (or  commonwealth)  is  as  indefeasible ;  the  claim  of 
the  sick  and  helpless  to  be  cared  for  by  the  strong  with 
earnest  self-sacrifice,  is  as  pitiful  and  as  imperative ;  the 
necessity  that  the  governing  authority  should  be  in  the 
hands  of  a  true  and  trained  pilot  is  as  clear,  and  as  con- 
stant. In  none  of  these  conditions  is  there  any  difference 
between  a  nation  and  a  boat's  company.  The  only  dif- 
ference is  in  this,  that  the  impossibility  of  discerning  the 
effects  of  individual  error  and  crime,  or  of  counteracting 
them  by  individual  efibrt,  in  the  affairs  of  a  great  nation, 
renders  it  tenfold  more  necessary  than  in  a  small  society 
that  direction  by  law  should  be  sternly  established.  As- 
sume that  your  boat's  crew  is  disorderly  and  licentious, 
and  will,  by  agreement,  submit  to  no  order ; — the  most 
troublesome  of  them  will  yet  be  e^ily  discerned ;  and 
the  chance  is  that  the  best  man  among  them  knocks  him 
down.  Common  instinct  of  self-preservation  will  make 
the  rioters  put  a  good  sailor  at  the  helm,  and  impulsive 
pity  and  occasional  help  will  be,  by  heart  and  hand,  here 
and  there  given  to  visible  distress.  Not  so  in  the  ship 
of  the  realm.  The  most  troublesome  persons  in  it  are 
usually  the  least  recognized  for  such,  and  the  most  active 
in  its  management ;  the  best  men  mind  their  own  busi- 
ness patiently,  and  are  never  thought  of ;  the  good  helms- 


LETTER   Xn. ^DICTATORSHIP.  73 

man  never  touches  the  tiller  but  in  the  last  extremity ; 
and  the  worst  forms  of  misery  are  hidden,  not  only  froir 
every  eye,  but  from  every  thought.  On  the  deck,  the 
aspect  is  of  Cleopatra's  galley — under  hatches,  there  is  a 
slave-hospital ;  while,  finally  (and  this  is  the  most  fatal 
difference  of  all),  even  the  few  persons  who  care  to  inter- 
fere energetically,  with  pm-pose  of  doing  good,  can,  in  a 
large  society,  discern  so  little  of  the  real  state  of  evil  to 
be  dealt  with,  and  judge  so  little  of  the  best  means  of 
dealing  with  it,  that  half  of  their  best  efforts  will  be  mis- 
directed, and  some  may  even  do  more  harm  than  good. 
Whereas  it  is  the  sorrowful  law  of  this  universe  that 
evil,  even  unconscious  and  unintended,  never  fails  of  its 
effect ;  and  in  a  state  where  the  evil  and  the  good,  under 
conditions  of  individual  "liberty,"  are  allowed  to  con- 
tend together,  not  only  every  stroke  on  the  Devil's  side 
tells — ^but  every  slip  (the  mistakes  of  wicked  men  being 
as  mischievous  as  their  successes) ;  while  on  the  side  of 
right,  there  will  be  much  direct  and  fatal  defeat,  and, 
even  of  its  measures  of  victory,  half  will  be  fruitless. 

It  is  true,  of  course,  that,  in  the  end  of  ends,  nothing 
but  the  right  conquers:  the  prevalent  thorns  of  wrong, 
at  last,  crackle  away  in  indiscriminate  flame :  and  of  the 
good  seed  sown,  one  grain  in  a  thousand,  at  last,  verily 
comes  up — and  somebody  lives  by  it;  but  most  of  our 


74  TIME    AND   TTOE. 

gi*eat  teachers,  not  excepting  Carlyle  and  Emerson  them- 
selves, are  a  little  too  encouraging  in  their  proclamation 
of  this  comfort,  not,  to  m^^  mind,  very  sufficient,  when 
for  the  present  our  fields  are  full  of  nothing  but  nettles 
and  thistles,  instead  of  wheat ;  and  none  of  them  seem  to 
me  yet  to  have  enough  insisted  on  the  inevitable  power 
and  infectiousness  of  all  evil,  and  the  easy  and  utter 
extinguishableness  of  good.  Medicine  often  fails  of  its 
effect — but  poison  never  :  and  while,  in  summing  the 
observation  of  past  life,  not  unwatclifully  spent,  I  can 
truly  say  that  I  have  a  thousand  times  seen  patience  dis- 
appointed of  her  hope,  and  wisdom  of  her  aim,  I  have 
never  yet  seen  folly  fruitless  of  mischief,  nor  vice  con- 
clude but  in  calamity. 

There  is,  however,  one  important  condition  in  national 
economy,  in  which  the  analogy  of  that  of  a  ship's  com- 
pany is  incomplete :  namely,  that  while  labour  at  oar  or 
sail  is  necessarily  united,  and  can  attain  no  independent 
good,  or  personal  profit,  the  labour  properly  undertaken 
by  the  several  members  of  a  political  community  is  neces- 
sarily, and  justly,  within  certain  limits,  independent ;  and 
obtains  for  them  independent  advantage,  of  which,  if  you 
will  glance  at  the  last  paragraph  of  the  first  essay  in 
Munera  PuVceris^  you  will  see  I  should  be  the  last 
*  Appendix  6. 


LETTER  XII. ^DICTATORSHIP.  76 

person  to  propose  depriving  them.  This  great  diiFerence 
in  final  condition  involves  necessarily  much  complexity  in 
the  system  and  application  of  general  laws ;  but  it  in  no 
wise  abrogates, — on  the  contrary,  it  renders  yet  more 
imperative, — the  necessity  for  the  firm  ordinance  of  such 
laws,  which,  marking  the  due  limits  of  independent 
agency,  may  enable  it  to  exist  in  full  energy,  not  only 
without  becoming  injurious,  but  so  as  more  variously  and 
perfectly  to  promote  the  entire  interests  of  the  common- 
wealth. 

I  will  address  myself,  therefore,  in  my  next  letter,  to 
the  statement  of  some  of  these  necessary  laws. 


Cctter  13. 

The    Proper    Offices    of  the    Bishoj>    and  Duke;    or, 
"  Overseer  "    and    "  Leader ^^ 

JfarcA21,1867. 
I  SEE,  by  your  last  letter,  for  which  I  heartily  thank 
you,  that  you  would  not  sympathise  with  me  in  my  sor- 
row for  the  desertion  of  his  own  work  by  George  Cruik- 
sliank,  that  he  may  fight  in  the  front  of  the  temperance 
ranks.  But  you  do  not  know  what  work  he  has  left  un- 
done, nor  how  much  richer  inheritance  you  might  have 
received  from  his  hand.  It  was  no  more  his  business  to 
etch  diagrams  of  drunkenness  than  it  is  mine  at  this 
moment  to  be  writing  these  letters  against  anarchy.  It  is 
"  the  first  mild  day  of  March  "  (high  time,  I  think,  that 
it  should  be !),  and  by  rights  I  ought  to  be  out  among  the 
budding  banks  and  hedges,  outlining  sprays  of  hawthorn, 
and  clusters  of  primrose.  This  is  my  right  work  ;  and  it 
is  not,  in  the  inner  gist  and  truth  of  it,  right  nor  good,  for 
you,  or  for  anybody  else,  that  Cruikshank  with  his  great 
gift,  and  I  with  my  weak,  but  yet  thoroughly  clear  and 
definite  one,  should  both  of  us  be  tormented  by  agony  of 


LETTER   XIII. — EPISCOPACY    AND   DUKEDOM.  77 


indignation  and  compassion,  till  we  are  forced  to  give  up 
our  peace,  and  pleasure,  and  power ;  and  rush  down  into 
the  streets  and  lanes  of  the  citj,  to  do  the  little  that  is  in 
the  strength  of  our  single  hands  against  their  uncleanli- 
ness  and  iniquity.  But,  as  in  a  sorely  besieged  town, 
every  man  must  to  the  ramparts,  whatsoever  business  he 
leaves,  so  neither  he  nor  I  have  had  any  choice  but  to 
leave  our  household  stuff,  and  go  on  crusade,  such  as  we 
are  called  to ;  not  that  I  mean,  if  Fate  may  be  anywise 
resisted,  to  give  up  the  strength  of  my  life,  as  he  has 
given  his ;  for  I  think  he  was  wrong  in  doing  so ;  and 
that  he  should  only  have  carried  the  fiery  cross  his  ap- 
pointed leagues,  and  then  given  it  to  another  hand :  and, 
for  my  own  part,  I  mean  these  very  letters  to  close  my 
political  work  for  many  a  day ;  and  I  write  them,  not 
in  any  hope  of  their  being  at  present  listened  to,  but  to 
disburden  my  heart  of  the  witness  I  have  to  bear,  that  1 
may  be  free  to  go  back  to  my  garden  lawns,  and  paint 
birds  and  flowers  there. 

For  these  same  statutes  which  we  are  to  consider  to- 
day, have  indeed  been  in  my  mind  now  these  fourteen 
years,  ever  since  I  wrote  the  last  volume  of  the  Stones  of 
Venice,  in  which  you  will  find,  in  the  long  note  on  Mod- 
ern Education  (p.  212),  most  of  what  I  have  been  now  in 
detail  writing  to  you,  hinted  in  abstract ;   and,  at  the 


78  TIME   AND  TIDE. 

close  of  it,  this  sentence,  of  which  I  solemnly  now  avouch 
(in  thankfulness  that  I  was  permitted  to  write  it),  every 
word : — "  Finally,  I  hold  it  for  indisputable,  that  the  first 
duty  of  a  state  is  to  see  that  every  child  born  therein 
shall  be  well  housed,  clothed,  fed,  and  educated,  till  it 
attain  years  of  discretion.  But  in  order  to  the  effecting 
this  the  Government  must  have  an  authority  over  the 
people  of  which  we  now  do  not  so  much  as  dream." 

That  authority  I  did  not  then  endeavour  to  define,  for  I 
knew  all  such  assertions  would  be  useless,  and  that  the 
necessarily  resultant  outcry  would  merely  diminish  my 
influence  in  other  directions.  But  now  I  do  not  care 
about  influence  any  more,  it  being  only  my  concern  to 
say  truly  that  which  I  know,  and,  if  it  may  be,  get  some 
quiet  life,  yet,  among  the  fields  in  the  evening  shadow. 

There  is,  I  suppose,  no  word  which  men  are  prouder  of 
the  right  to  attach  to  their  names,  or  more  envious  of 
others  who  bear  it,  when  they  themselves  may  not,  than 
the  word  "noble."  Do  you  know  what  it  originally 
meant,  and  always,  in  the  right  use  of  it,  means?  It 
means  a  "  known  "  person  ;  one  who  has  risen  far  enough 
above  others  to  draw  men's  eyes  to  hhn,  and  to  be  known 
(honorably)  for  such  and  such  an  one.  "  Ignoble,"  on  the 
other  hand,  is  derived  from  the  same  root  as  the  word 
"  ignorance."    It  means  an  unknown,  inglorious  person. 


LETTER   XTTT. EPISCOPACY   Am)   DUKEDOM.  79 

And  no  more  singular  follies  have  been  committed  by 
weak  human  creatures  than  those  which  have  been 
caused  by  the  instinct,  pure  and  simple,  of  escaping  from 
this  obscurity.  Instinct,  which,  corrupted,  will  hesitate 
at  no  means,  good  or  evil,  of  satisfying  itself  with  noto- 
riety— instinct,  nevertheless,  which,  like  all  other  natural 
ones,  has  a  true  and  pure  purpose,  and  ought  always  in  a 
worthy  way  to  be  satisfied. 

All  men  ought  to  be  in  this  sense  "  noble ; "  known  of 
each  other,  and  desiring  to  be  known.  And  the  first  law 
which  a  nation,  desiring  to  conquer  all  the  devices  of  the 
Father  of  Lies,  should  establish  among  its  people,  is  that 
they  shall  be  so  known. 

Will  you  please  now  read  the  forty-fifth  and  forty-sixth 
pages  of  Sesame  and  Lilies.*  The  reviewers  in  the  eccle- 
siastical journals  laughed  at  them,  as  a  rhapsody,  when 
the  book  came  out ;  none  having  the  slighest  notion  of 
what  I  meant  (nor,  indeed,  do  I  well  see  how  it  could 
be  otherwise !).  Nevertheless,  I  meant  precisely  and 
literally  what  is  there  said,  namely,  that  a  bishop's  duty 
being  to  watch  over  the  souls  of  his  people,  and  give 
account  of  every  one  of  them,  it  becomes  practically 
necessary  for  him  first  to  give  some  account  of  their  hodies. 
Which  he  was  wont  to  do  in  the  early  days  of  Christi- 
*  Appendix  7. 


80  TIME   A^D   TEDE. 

anity  by  help  of  a  person  called  "  deacon  "  or  "  minister- 
ing servant,"  whose  name  is  still  retained  among  pre- 
liminary ecclesiastical  dignities,  vainly  enough  !  Putting, 
however,  all  question  of  forms  and  names  aside,  the  thing 
actually  needing  to  be  done  is  this — that  over  every 
hundred  (or  some  not  much  greater  number)  of  the 
families  composing  a  Christian  State,  there  should  be  ap- 
pointed an  overseer,  or  bishop,  to  render  account,  to  the 
State,  of  the  life  of  every  individual  in  those  families ; 
and  to  have  care  both  of  their  interest  and  conduct  to 
such  an  extent  as  they  may  be  willing  to  admit,  or  as 
their,  faults  may  justify  ;  so  that  it  may  be  impossible  for 
any  person,  however  humble,  to  suffer  from  unknown 
want,  or  live  in  unrecognised  crime ; — such  help  and 
observance  being  rendered  without  officiousness  either 
of  interference  or  inquisition  (the  limits  of  both  being 
determined  by  national  law),  but  with  the  patient  and 
gentle  watchfulness  which  true  Christian  pastore  now 
exercise  over  their  flocks ;  only  with  a  higher  legal  au- 
thority, presently  to  be  defined,  of  interference  on  due 
occasion. 

And  with  this  farther  function,  that  such  overseers 
shall  be  not  only  the  pastors,  but  the  biographers,,  of  their 
people ;  a  written  statement  of  the  principal  events  in  the 
life  of  each  family  being  annually  required  to  be  rendered 


LETTEK   Xin. EPISCOPACY   AND   DUKEDOM.  81 

by  them  to  a  superior  State  officer.  These  records,  laid 
up  in  public  offices,  would  soon  furnish  indications  of  the 
families  whom  it  would  be  advantageous  to  the  nation  to 
advance  in  position,  or  distinguish  with  honour,  and  aid 
bv  such  reward  as  it  should  be  the  object  of  every  Gov- 
ernment to  distribute  no  less  punctually,  and  far  more 
frankly,  than  it  distributes  punishment  (compare  Mu- 
nera  Pulveris^  Essay  lY.,  in  paragraph  on  Critic  Law), 
while  the  mere  fact  of  permanent  record  being  kept  of 
every  event  of  importance,  whether  disgraceful  or  worthy 
of  praise,  in  each  family,  would  of  itself  be  a  deterrent 
from  crime,  and  a  stimulant  to  well-deserving  conduct,  far 
beyond  mere  punishment  or  reward. 

Nor  need  you  think  that  there  would  be  anything  in 
such  a  system  un-English,  or  tending  to  espionage.  Ko 
uninvited  visits  should  ever  be  made  in  any  house,  unless 
law  had  been  violated;  nothing  recorded,  against  its 
will,  of  any  family,  but  what  was  inevitably  known  of 
its  publicly  visible  conduct,  and  the  results  of  that  con- 
duct. What  else  was  written  should  be  only  by  the 
desire,  and  from  the  communications,  of  its  head.  And 
in  a  little  while  it  would  come  to  be  felt  that  the  true 
history  of  a  nation  was  indeed  not  of  its  wars,  but  of  its 
households;    and  the  desire  of  men  would  rather  be  to 

obtain    some    conspicuous    place    in    these    honourable 

4* 


82  TIME    AND   TTOE. 

annals,  than  to  shrink  behind  closed  shutters  from  pub- 
lic sight.  Until  at  last,  George  Herbert's  grand  word 
of  command  would  hold  not  only  on  the  conscience,  but 
the  actual  system  and  outer  economy  of  life, 

"Think  the  King  sees  thee  still,  for  his  King  does." 

Secondly,  above  these  bishops  or  pastors,  who  are  only 
to  be  occupied  in  offices  of  familiar  supervision  and  help, 
should  be  appointed  higher  officers  of  State,  having 
executive  authority  over  as  large  districts  as  might  be 
conveniently  (according  to  the  number  and  circumstances 
of  their  inliabitants)  committed  to  their  care;  officers, 
who,  according  to  the  reports  of  tlie  pastors,  should 
enforce  or  mitigate  the  operation  of  too  rigid  general 
law,  and  determine  measures  exceptionally  necessary 
for  public  advantage.  For  instance,  the  general  law 
being  that  all  children  of  the  operative  classes,  at  a  cer- 
tain age,  should  be  sent  to  public  schools,  these  superior 
officers  should  have  power,  on  the  report  of  the  pastors, 
to  dispense  with  the  attendance  of  children  who  had 
sick  parents  to  take  charge  of,  or  whose  home-life  seemed 
to  be  one  of  better  advantage  for  them  than  that  of  the 
common  schools ;  or  who  for  any  other  like  cause  might 
justifiably  claim  remission.  And  it  being  tlie  general 
law  that  the  entire  body  of  the  public  should  contribute 


LETTER   XIII. EPISCOPACY   AND    DUKEDOM.  83 

to  the  cost,  and  divide  the  profits,  of  all  necessary  public 
works  and  undertakings,  as  roads,  mines,  harbour  pro- 
tections, and  the  like,  and  that  nothing  of  this  kind 
should  be  permitted  to  be  in  the  hands  of  private  specu- 
lators, it  should  be  the  duty  of  the  district  officer  to  col- 
lect whatever  information  was  accessible  respecting  such 
sources  of  public  profit;  and  to  represent  the  circum- 
stances in  Parliament:  and  then,  with  parliamentary 
authority,  but  on  his  own  sole  personal  responsibility, 
to  see  that  such  enterprises  were  conducted  honestly, 
and  with  due  energy  and  order. 

The  appointment  to  both  these  offices  should  be  by 
election,  and  for  life ;  by  what  forms  of  election  shall  be 
matter  of  inquiry,  after  we  have  determined  some  others 
of  the  necessary  constitutional  laws. 
•  I  do  not  doubt  but  that  you  are  already  beginning  to 
think  it  was  with  good  reason  I  held  my  peace  these 
fourteen  years, — and  that,  for  any  good  likely  to  be  done 
by  speaking,  I  might  as  well  have  held  it  altogether ! 

It  may  be  so :  but  merely  to  complete  and  explain 
my  own  work,  it  is  necessary  that  I  should  say  these 
things  finally;  and  I  believe  that  the  imminent  danger 
to  which  we  are  now  in  England  exposed  by  the  gradu- 
ally accelerated  fall  of  our  aristocracy  (wholly  their  own 
fault),  and  the   substitution   of   money-power    for   their 


84  TIME   AND   TmE. 

martial  one ;  and  by  the  correspondently  imminent  prev- 
alence of  mob-violence  here,  as  in  America;  together 
with  the  continually  increasing  chances  of  insane  war, 
founded  on  popular  passion,  whether  of  pride,  fear,  or 
acquisitiveness, — all  these  dangers  being  further  dark- 
ened and  degraded  by  the  monstrous  forms  of  vice  and 
selfishness  w^lftch  the  appliances  of  recent  wealth,  and 
of  vulgar  mechanical  art,  make  possible  to  the  million, — 
will  soon  bring  us  into  a  condition  in  which  men  will  be 
glad  to  listen  to  almost  any  words  but  those  of  a  dema- 
gogue, and  to  seek  any  means  of  safety  rather  than  those 
in  which  they  have  lately  trusted.  So,  with  your  good 
leave,  I  will  say  my  say  to  the  end,  mock  at  it  who 
may. 

P.S. — I  take  due  note  of  the  regulations  of  trade  pro- 
posed in  your  letter  just  received  * — all  excellent.  I 
shall  come  to  them  presently,  ''Cash  payment"  above 
all.  You  may  write  that  on  your  trade-banners  in  let- 
ters  of  gold,  wherever   you    would    have   them    raised 

victoriously. 

♦  Appendix  8. 


Ccttcr  14. 

The  First  Group  of  Essential  Laws. — Against  Theft  hy 
False  Worh^  and  hy  Banhruptey. — Necessary  Public- 
ity of  Accounts. 

March  26, 1867. 
I  FEEL  much  inclined  to  pause  at  this  point,  to  answer 
the  kind  of  questions  and  objections  which  I  know  must 
be  rising  in  jour  mind,  respecting  the  authority  supposed 
to  be  lodged  in  the  persons  of  the  officers  just  specified. 
But  I  can  neither  define,  nor  justify  to  you,  the  powers  I 
v/ould  desire  to  see  given  to  them,  till  I  state  to  you  the 
kind  of  laws  they  would  have  to  enforce :  of  which  the 
first  group  should  be  directed  to  the  prevention  of  all 
kinds  of  thieving ;  but  chiefly  of  the  occult  and  polite 
methods  of  it ;  and,  of  all  occult  methods,  chiefly,  the 
making  and  selling  of  bad  goods.  No  form  of  theft  is  so 
criminal  as  this — none  so  deadly  to  the  State.  If  you 
break  into  a  man's  house  and  steal  a  hundred  pounds' 
worth  of  plate,  he  knows  his  loss,  and  there  is  an  end 
(besides  that  you  take  your  risk  of  punishment  for  your 


86  TIME   AKD   TIDE. 

gain,  like  a  man).  And  if  you  do  it  bravely  and  openly, 
and  habitually  live  by  Buch  inroad,  you  may  retain  nearly 
every  moral  and  manly  virtue,  and  become  a  heroic  rider 
and  reiver,  and  hero  of  song.  But  if  you  swindle  me  out 
of  twenty  shillings'-worth  of  quality,  on  each  of  a  hun- 
dred bargains,  I  lose  my  hundred  pounds  all  the  same, 
and  I  get  a  hundred  untrustworthy  articles  besides,  which 
will  fail  me  and  injure  me  in  all  manner  of  ways,  when 
I  least  expect  it ;  and  you,  having  '^ojie  your  thieving 
basely,  are  corrupted  by  the  guilt  of  it  to  the  very  heart's 
core. 

This  is  the  first  thing,  therefore,  which  your  general 
laws  must  be  set  to  punish,  fiercely,  immitigably,  to  the 
utter  prevention  and  extinction  of  it,  or  there  is  no  hope 
for  you.  No  religion  that  ever  was  preached  on  this 
earth  of  God's  rounding,  ever  proclaimed  any  salvation 
to  sellers  of  bad  goods.  If  the  Ghost  that  is  in  j'ou, 
whatever  the  essence  of  it,  leaves  your  hand  a  juggler's, 
and  your  heart  a  cheat's,  it  is  not  a  Holy  Ghost,  be 
assured  of  that.  And  for  the  rest,  all  political  economy, 
as  well  as  all  higher  virtue,  depends  first  on  sound  work. 

Let  your  laws  then,  I  say,  in  the  beginning,  be  set  to 
secure  this.  You  cannot  make  punishment  too  stem  for 
subtle  knavery.  Keep  no  truce  with  this  enemy,  what- 
ever pardon  you  extend  to  more  generous  ones.      For 


LETTER   XrV. TRADE- WAKRAJSTT.  87 


light  weights  and  false  measures,  or  for  proved  adultera- 
tion or  dishonest  manufacture  of  article,  the  penalty 
should  be  simply  confiscation  of  goods  and  sending  out 
of  the  country.  The  kind  of  person  who  desires  prosper- 
ity by  such  practices,  could  not  be  made  to  "  emigrate  " 
too  speedily.  What  to  do  with  him  in  the  place  you  ap- 
pointed to  be  blessed  by  his  presence,  we  will  in  time 
consider. 

Under  such  penalty,  however,  and  yet  more  under  the 
pressm'e  of  such  a  right  public  opinion  as  could  pro- 
nounce and  enforce  such  penalty,  I  imagine  that  sham 
articles  would  become  speedily  as  rare  as  sound  ones  are 
now.  The  chief  difiiciilty  in  the  matter  would  be  to 
^x  your  standard.  This  w^ould  have  to  be  done  by  the 
guild  of  every  trade  in  its  own  manner,  and  within  cer- 
tain easily  recognizable  limits ;  and  this  fixing  of  standard 
would  necessitate  much  simplicity  in  the  forms  and  kinds 
of  articles  sold.  You  could  only  warrant  a  certain  kind 
of  glazing  or  painting  in  china,  a  certain  quality  of  leath- 
er or  cloth,  bricks  of  a  certain  clay,  loaves  of  a  defined 
mixture  of  meal.  Advisable  improvements  or  varieties 
in  manufacture  would  have  to  be  examined  and  accepted 
by  the  trade  guild :  when  so  accepted,  they  would  be  an- 
nounced in  public  reports ;  and  all  pufiery  and  self-procla- 
mation, on  the  part  of  tradesmen,  absolutely  forbidden, 


88  TIME   AND   TIDE. 

as  much  as  the  making  of  any  other  kind  of  noise  or  di? 
turbance. 

But  observe,  this  law  is  only  to  have  force  over  trade 
men  whom  I  suppose  to  have  joined  voluntarily  in  carry- 
ing out  a  better  system  of  commerce.  Outside  of  their 
guild,  they  would  have  to  leave  the  rogue  to  puff  and 
cheat  as  he  chose,  and  the  public  to  be  gulled  as  they 
chose.  All  that  is  necessary  is  that  the  said  public 
should  clearly  know  the  shops  in  which  they  could  get 
warranted  articles ;  and,  as  clearly,  those  in  which  they 
bought  at  their  own  risk. 

And  the  above-named  penalty  of  confiscation  of  goods 
should  of  course  be  enforced  only  against  dishonest  mem- 
bers of  the  trade  guild.  If  people  chose  to  buy  of  those 
who  had  openly  refused  to  join  an  honest  society,  they 
should  be  permitted  to  do  so  at  their  pleasure  and  peril : 
and  this  for  two  reasons;  the  first,  that  it  is  alway- 
necessary,  in  enacting  strict  law,  to  leave  some  safetv 
valve  for  outlet  of  irrepressible  vice  (nearly  all  the  stern 
lawgivers  of  old  time  erred  by  oversight  in  this ;  so  that 
the  morbid  elements  of  the  State,  wliich  it  should  be 
allowed  to  get  rid  of  in  a  cutaneous  and  openly  curable 
manner,  were  thrown  inwards,  and  corrupted  its  constitu- 
tion, and  broke  all  down) ;  the  second,  that  operations  of 
trade  and  manufacture  conducted  under  and  guarded  by 


LETTER   XTV. — TRADE-W ARRANT.  89 

severe  law,  ought  always  to  be  subject  to  the  stimulus  of 
such  eiTatic  external  ingenuity  as  cannot  be  tested  by 
law,  or  would  be  hindered  from  its  full  exercise  by  the 
dread  of  it ;  not  to  speak  of  the  farther  need  of  extending 
all  possible  indulgence  to  foreign  traders  who  might  wish 
to  exercise  their  industries  here  without  liability  to  the 
surveillance  of  our  trade  guilds. 

Farther,  while  for  all  articles  warranted  by  the  guild 
(as  above  supposed)  the  prices  should  be  annually  fixed 
for  the  trade  throughout  the  kingdom ;  and  the  producing 
workmen's  wages  fixed,  so  as  to  define  the  master's  profits 
within  limits  admitting  only  such  variation  as  the  nature 
of  the  given  article  of  sale  rendered  inevitable ; — yet,  in 
the  production  of  other  classes  of  articles,  whether  by 
skill  of  applied  handicraft,  or  fineness  of  material  above 
the  standard  of  the  guild,  attaining,  necessarily,  values 
above  its  assigned  prices,  every  firm  should  be  left  free  to 
make  its  own  independent  efforts  and  arrangements  with 
its  workmen,  subject  always  to  the  same  penalty,  if  it 
could  be  proved  to  have  consistently  described  or  offered 
anything  to  the  public  for  what  it  was  not :  and  finally, 
the  state  of  the  affairs  of  every  firm  should  be  annually 
reported  to  the  guild,  and  its  books  laid  open  to  inspec- 
tion, for  guidance  in  the  regulation  of  prices  in  the  subse- 
quent year ;  and  any  firm  whose  liabilities  exceeded  its 


90  TIME    AND  TTOE. 

assets  by  a  hundred  pounds  should  be  forthwith  declared 
bankrupt.  And  I  will  anticipate  what  I  have  to  say  in 
succeeding  letters  so  far  as  to  tell  you  that  I  would  have 
this  condition  extend  to  every  firm  in  the  country,  large 
or  small,  and  of  whatever  rank  in  business.  And  thus 
you  perceive,  my  friend,  I  shall  not  have  to  trouble  you 
or  myself  much  with  deliberations  respecting  commercial 
"  panics,"  nor  to  propose  legislative  cures  for  them,  by 
any  laxatives  or  purgatives  of  paper  currency,  or  any 
other  change  of  pecuniary  diet. 


J 


Cetter  15. 

The  Nature  of  Theft  hj  Unjust  Profits, —Crirne  ccm 
finally  he  a/rrested  only  hy  Education. 

29th  March. 

The  first  methods  of  polite  robbery,  by  dishonest 
manufacture,  and  by  debt,  of  which  we  have  been  hith- 
erto speaking,  are  easily  enough  to  be  dealt  with  and 
ended,  when  once  men  have  a  mind  to  end  them.  But 
the  third  method  of  polite  robbery,  by  dishonest  acquisi- 
tion, has  many  branches,  and  is  involved  among  honest 
arts  of  acquisition,  so  that  it  is  difficult  to  repress  the  one 
without  restraining  the  other. 

Observe,  first,  large  fortunes  cannot  honestly  be  made 
by  the  work  of  one  man's  hands  or  head.  If  his  work 
benefits  multitudes,  and  involves  position  of  high  trust, 
it  may  be  (I  do  not  say  that  it  is)  expedient  to  reward 
him  with  great  wealth  or  estate;  but  fortune  of  this  kind 
is  freely  given  in  gratitude  for  benefit,  not  as  repayment 
for  labour.  Also,  men  of  peculiar  genius  in  any  art,  if 
the  public  can  enjoy  the  product  of  their  genius,  may  set 


92  TIME   AND   TIDE. 

it  at  almost  any  price  they  choose ;  but  this,  I  will  show 
you  when  I  come  to  speak  of  art,  is  unlawful  on  their 
part,  and  ruinous  to  their  own  powere.  Genius  must  not 
be  sold ;  the  sale  of  it  involves,  in  a  transcendental,  but 
perfectly  true  sense,  the  guilt  both  of  simony  and  prosti- 
tution. Your  labour  only  may  be  sold ;  your  soul  must 
not. 

IS'ow,  by  fair  pay  for  fair  labour,  according  to  the  rank 
of  it,  a  man  can  obtain  means  of  comfortable,  or  if  he 
needs  it,  refined  life.  But  he  cannot  obtain  large  fortune. 
Such  fortunes  as  are  now  the  prizes  of  commerce  can  be 
made  only  in  one  of  three  ways : — 

1.  By  obtaining  command  over  the  labour  of  multi- 
tudes of  other  men,  and  taxing  it  for  our  own  vprofit. 

2.  By  treasure-trove, — as  of  mines,  useful  vegetable 
products,  and  the  like, — in  circumstances  putting  them 
under  our  own  exclusive  control. 

3.  By  speculation  (commercial  gambling). 

The  two  first  of  these  means  of  obtaining  riches  are, 
in  some  forms  and  within  certain  limits,  lawful,  and 
advantageous  to  the  State.  The  third  is  entirely  det- 
rimental to  it ;  for  in  all  cases  of  profit  derived  from 
speculation,  at  best,  what  one  man  gains  another  loses ; 
and  the  net  result  to  the  State  is  zero  (pecuniarily),  with 
the  loss  of  the  time  and  ingenuity  spent  in  the  transao- 


LETTEK   XV. PER-CENTAGE.  93 

tion;  besides  the  disadvantage  involved  in  the  discour- 
agement of  the  losing  party,  and  the  corrupted  moral 
natures  of  both.  This  is  the  result  of  speculation  at  its 
best.  At  its  worst,  not  only  B.  loses  what  A.  gains 
(having  taken  his  fair  risk  of  such  loss  for  his  fair  chance 
of  gain),  but  C.  and  D.,  who  never  had  any  chance  at 
all,  are  drawn  in  by  B.'s  fall,  and  the  final  result  is 
that  A.  sets  up  his  carriage  on  the  collected  sum  which 
was  once  the  means  of  living  to  a  dozen  families. 

Kor  is  this  all.  For  while  real  commerce  is  founded 
on  real  necessities  or  uses,  and  limited  by  these,  specula- 
tion, of  which  the  object  is  merely  gain,  seeks  to  excite 
imaginary  necessities  and  popular  desires,  in  order  to 
gather  its  temporary  profit  from  the  supply  of  them.  So 
that  not  only  the  persons  who  lend  their  money  to  it  will 
be  finally  robbed,  but  the  work  done  with  their  money 
will  be  for  the  most  part  useless,  and  thus  the  entire  body 
of  the  public  injured  as  well  as  the  persons  concerned  in 
the  transaction.  Take,  for  instance,  the  architectural 
decorations  of  railways  throughout  the  kingdom, — repre- 
senting many  millions  of  money  for  which  no  farthing  of 
dividend  can  ever  be  forthcoming.  The  public  will  not 
be  induced  to  pay  the  smallest  fraction  of  higher  fare  to 
Rochester  or  Dover  because  the  ironwork  of  the  bridge 
which  carries  them  over  the  Thames  is  covered  with  floral 


94  TIME   AND   TIDE. 

cockades,  and  the  piers  of  it  edged  with  ornamental 
cornices.  All  that  work  is  simply  put  there  by  the 
builders  that  they  may  put  the  per-centage  upon  it  into 
their  own  pockets ;  and,  the  rest  of  the  money  being 
thrown  into  that  floral  form,  there  is  an  end  of  it,  as  far 
as  the  shareholders  are  concerned.  Millions  upon  mil- 
lions have  thus  been  spent,  within  the  last  twenty  years, 
on  ornamental  arrangements  of  zigzag  bricks,  black  and 
blue  tiles,  cast-iron  foliage,  and  the  like ;  of  which  mil- 
lions, as  I  said,  not  a  penny  can  ever  return  into  the 
shareholders'  pockets,  nor  contribute  to  public  speed  or 
safety  on  the  line.  It  is  all  sunk  forever  in  ornamental 
architecture,  and  (trust  me  for  this  !)  aU  that  architecture 
is  had.  As  such,  it  had  incomparably  better  not  have 
been  built.  Its  only  result  will  be  to  corrupt  what 
capacity  of  taste  or  right  pleasure  in  such  work  we  have 
yet  left  to  us  !  And  consider  a  little,  what  other  kind  of 
result  than  that  might  have  been  attained  if  all  those 
millions  had  been  spent  usefully :  say,  in  buying  land  for 
tlie  people,  or  building  good  houses  for  them,  or  (if  it  had 
been  imperatively  required  to  be  spent  decoratively)  in 
laying  out  gardens  and  parks  for  tliem, — or  buying  noble 
works  of  art  for  their  permanent  possession, — or,  best  of 
all,  establishing  frequent  public  schools  and  libraries  I 
Count  what  those  lost  millions  would  have  bo  accom- 


LETTER   XV. PER-CENTAGE.  95 

plished  for  you !  But  you  left  the  affair  to  "  supply  and 
demand,"  and  the  British  public  had  not  brains  enough  to 
"demand"  land,  or  lodging,  or  books.  It  "demanded" 
cast-iron  cockades  and  zigzag  cornices,  and  is  "supplied" 
with  them,  to  its  beatitude  for  ever  more. 

^tsTow,  the  theft  we  first  spoke  of,  by  falsity  of  work- 
manship or  material,  is,  indeed,  so  far  worse  than  these 
thefts  by  dishonest  acquisition,  that  there  is  no  possible 
excuse  for  it  on  the  ground  of  self-deception ;  while  many 
speculative  thefts  are  committed  by  persons  who  really 
mean  to  do  no  Karm,  but  think  the  system  on  the  whole 
a  fair  one,  and  do  the  best  they  can  in  it  for  themselves. 
But  in  the  real  fact  of  the  crime,  when  consciously 
committed,  in  the  numbers  reached  by  its  injury,  in  the 
degree  of  suffering  it  causes  to  those  whom  it  ruins,  in 
the  baseness  of  its  calculated  betrayal  of  implicit  trust,in 
the  yet  more  perfect  vileness  of  the  obtaining  such  trust 
by  misrepresentation,  only  that  it  may  be  betrayed,  and 
in  the  impossibility  that  the  crime  should  be  at  all  com- 
mitted, except  by  persons  of  good  position  and  large 
knowledge  of  the  world, — what  manner  of  theft  is  so 
wholly  unpardonable,  so  inhuman,  so  contrary  to  every 
law  and  instinct  which  binds  or  animates  society  \ 

And  then  consider  farther,  how  many  of  the  carnages 
that  glitter  in  our  streets  are  driven,  and  how  many  of 


96 


TIME   AND   TIDE. 


the  stately  houses  that  gleam  among  om*  English  fields 
are  inhabited  by  this  kind  of  thief! 

I  happened  to  be  reading  this  morning  (29th  March) 
some  portions  of  the  Lent  sei*vices,  and  I  came  to  a  pause 
over  the  familiar  words,  "  And  with  Him  they  crucified 
two  thieves."  Have  you  ever  considered  (I  speak  to  you 
now  as  a  professing  Christian),  why,  iti  the  accomplish- 
ment of  the  "  numbering  among  transgressors,"  the  trans- 
gressors chosen  should  have  been  especially  thieves — not 
murderers,  nor,  as  far  as  we  know,  sinners  by  any  gross 
violence  ?  Do  you  observe  how  the  sin  of  theft  is  again 
and  again  indicated  as  the  chiefly  antagonistic  one  to  the 
law  of  Christ  ?  "  This  he  said,  not  that  he  cared  for 
the  poor,  but  because  he  was  a  thief,  and.  had  the 
bag"  (of  Judas).  And  again,  though  Barabbas  was  a 
leader  of  sedition,  and  a  murderer  besides — (tliat  the 
popular  election  might  be  in  all  respects  perfect) — yet  St. 
John,  in  curt  and  conclusive  account  of  him,  fastens  again 
on  the  theft.  "  Then  cried  they  all  again  saying,  Not  this 
man,  but  Barabbas.  Now  Barabbas  was  a  robber."  I 
believe  myself  the  reason  to  be  that  theft  is  indeed,  in  its 
subtle  forms,  the  most  complete  and  excuseless  of  human 
crimes.  Sins  of  violence  usually  have  passion  to  excuse 
them :  they  may  be  the  madness  of  moments ;  or  they 
may  be  apparently  the  only  means  of  extrication  from 


LETTER   XV. — PEB-CENTAGE.  97 

calamity.  In  other  cases,  they  are  the  diseased  habits  of 
lower  and  brutified  natures.  But  theft  involving  delibera- 
tive intellect,  and  absence  of  passion,  is  the  purest  type 
of  wilful  iniquity,  in  persons  capable  of  doing  right. 
Which  being  so,  it  seems  to  be  fast  becoming  the  practice 
of  modern  society  to  crucify  its  Christ  indeed,  as  will- 
ingly as  ever,  in  the  persons  of  His  poor;  but  by  no 
means  now  to  crucify  its  thieves  beside  Him!  It  ele- 
vates its  thieves  after  another  fashion ;  sets  them  upon  an 
hill,  that  their  light  may  shine  before  men,  and  tkat  all 
may  see  their  good  works,  and  glorify  their  Father,  in — 
the  Opposite  of  Heaven. 

I  think  your  trade  parliament  will  have  to  put  an  end 
to  this  kind  of  business  somehow!  But  it  cannot  be 
done  by  laws  merely,  where  the  interests  and  circum- 
stances are  so  extended  and  complex.  ]S"ay,  even  as 
regards  lower  and  more  defined  crimes,  the  assigned 
punishment  is  not  to  be  thought  of  as  a  preventive 
means ;  but  only  as  the  seal  of  opinion  set  by  society  on 
the  fact.  Crime  cannot  be  hindered  by  punislunent ;  it 
will  always  find  some  shape  and  outlet,  unpunishable  or 
unclosed.  Crime  can  only  be  truly  hindered  by  letting 
no  man  grow  up  a  criminal — by  taking  away  the  wiU 
to  commit  sin;  not  by  mere  punishment  of  its  com- 
mission.    Crime,  small  and  great,  can  only  be  truly  stayed 

5 


98  TIME   AND   TTOE. 

by  education — ^not  the  education  of  the  intellect  only, 
which  is,  on  some  men,  wasted,  and  for  others  mischie- 
vous ;  but  education  of  the  heart,  which  is  alike  good  and 
necessary  for  all.  So,  on  this  matter,  I  will  try  to  say 
one  or  two  things  of  which  the  silence  has  kept  my  own 
heart  heavy  this  many  a  day,  in  my  next  letter. 


Ccttcr  le. 

Of  Public  Education  irrespective  of  Class-distinction. — 
It  consists  essentially  in  giving  Habits  of  Mercy ^  amd 
Habits  of  Truth. 

March  30,  1867. 
Thank  you  for  sending  me  the  pamphlet  containing 
the  accomit  of  the  meeting  of  clergy  and  workmen, 
and  of  the  reasonings  which  there  took  place.  I  cannot 
promise  you  that  I  shall  read  much  of  them,  for  the 
question  to  my  mind  most  requiring  discussion  and 
explanation  is  not,  why  workmen  don't  go  to  church, 
but — why  other  people  do.  However,  this  I  know, 
that  if,  among  our  many  spiritual  teachers,  there  are 
indeed  any  who  heartily  and  literally  believe  that  the 
wisdom  they  have  to  teach,  "  is  more  precious  than 
rubies,  and  all  the  things  thou  canst  desire  are  not  to 
be  compared  unto  her,"  and  if,  so  believing,  they  will 
further  dare  to  affront  their  congregations  by  the  asser- 
tion ;  and  plainly  tell  them  they  are  not  to  hunt  for 
rubies  or  gold  any  more,  at  their  peril,  till  they  have 
gained  that  which  cannot  be  gotten  for  gold,  nor  silver 


100  TIME   AND   TIDE. 

weighed  for  the  price  thereof, — such  believers,  so  preach- 
ing, and  refusing  to  preach  otherwise  till  they  are  in 
that  attended  to,  will  never  want  congregations,  both  of 
working  men,  and  every  other  kind  of  men. 

Did  you  ever  hear  of  anything  else  so  ill-named  as 
the  phantom  called  the  "  Philosopher's "  Stone  ?  A 
talisman  that  shall  turn  base  metal  into  precious  metal, 
nature  acknowledges  not;  nor  would  any  but  fools 
seek  after  it.  But  a  talisman  to  turn  base  souls  into 
noble  souls,  nature  has  given  us !  and  that  is  a  "  Philo- 
sopher's" Stone  indeed,  but  it  is  a  stone  which  the 
builders  refuse. 

If  there  were  two  valleys  in  California  or  Australia, 
with  two  diiferent  kinds  of  gravel  in  the  bottom  of 
them ;  and  in  the  one  stream  bed  you  could  dig  up, 
occasionally  and  by  good  fortune,  nuggets  of  gold ;  and 
in  the  other  stream  bed,  certainly  and  without  hazard, 
you  could  dig  up  little  caskets,  containing  talismans 
which  gave  length  of  days  and  peace;  and  alabaster 
vases  of  precious  balms,  which  were  better  than  the 
Arabian  Dervish's  ointment,  and  made  not  only  the 
eyes  to  see,  but  the  mind  to  know,  whatever  it  would 
— I  wonder  in  which  of  the  stream  beds  there  would 
be  most  diggers? 

"  Time  is  money " — bo  say  your  practised  merchants 


LETTER   XVI. EDUCATION.  101 

and  economists.  JS^one  of  them,  however,  I  fancy,  as 
they  draw  towards  death,  find  that  the  reverse  is  true 
and  that  "  money  is  time  "  ?  Perhaps  it  might  be  better 
for  them  in  the  end  if  they  did  not  turn  so  much  of 
their  time  into  money,  as  no  re- transformation  is  possible ! 
There  are  other  things,  however,  which  in  the  same 
sense  are  money,  or  can  be  changed  into  it,  as  well 
as  time.  Health  is  money,  wit  is  money,  knowledge  is 
money;  and  all  your  health,  and  wit,  and  knowledge 
may  be  changed  for  gold ;  and  the  happy  goal  so  reached, 
of  a  sick,  insane,  and  blind,  auriferous  old  age ;  but 
the  gold  cannot  be  changed  in  its  turn  back  into  health 
and  wit. 

"  Time  is  money,"  the  words  tingle  in  my  ears  so  that 
I  can't  go  on  writing.  Is  it  nothing  better,  then  ?  If  we 
could  thoroughly  understand  that  time  was — itself^ — 
would  it  not  be  more  to  the  purpose  ?  A  thing  of  which 
loss  or  gain  was  absolute  loss,  and  perfect  gain.  And 
that  it  was  expedient  also  to  buy  health  and  knowledge 
with  money,  if  so  purchaseable ;  but  not  to  buy  money 
with  them  f 

And  purchaseable  they  are,  at  the  beginning  of  life, 
though  not  at  its  close.  Purchaseable,  always,  for  others, 
if  not  for  ourselves.  You  can  buy,  and  cheaply,  life, 
endless  life,  according  to  your  Christian's  creed — (there's 


102  TIME   AND   TIDE. 

a  bargain  for  you!)  but — long  years  of  knowledge,  and 
peace,  and  power,  and  happiness  of  love — these  assuredly, 
and  irrespectively  of  any  creed  or  question — for  all  those 
desolate  and  haggard  children  about  your  streets. 

"  That  is  not  political  economy,  however."  Pardon 
me ;  the  all-comfortable  saying,  "  What  he  layeth  out,  it 
shall  be  paid  him  again,"  is  quite  literally  true  in  matters 
of  education ;  no  money-seed  can  be  sown  with  so  sure 
and  large  return  at  harvest-time  as  that ;  only  of  this 
money-seed,  more  than  of  flesh-seed,  it  is  utterly  true, 
"  That  which  thou  sowest  is  not  quickened,  except  it  die^ 
You  must  forget  your  money,  and  every  other  material 
\  interest,  and  educate  for  education's  sake  only !  or  the 
very  good  you  try  to  bestow  will  become  venomous,  and 
that  and  your  money  will  be  lost  together. 

And  this  has  been  the  real  cause  of  failure  in  our  efforts 
for  education  hitherto — whether  from  above  or  below. 
There  is  no  honest  desire  for  the  thing  itself.  The  cry 
for  it  among  the  lower  orders  is  because  they  think  that, 
when  once  they  have  got  it,  they  must  become  upper 
ordere.  There  is  a  strange  notion  in  the  mob's  mind, 
now-a-days  (including  all  our  popular  economists  and 
educators,  as  we  most  justly  may,  under  thai  brief  term, 
"  mob  "),  that  everybody  can  be  uppermost ;  or  at  least, 
that  a  state  of  general  scramble,  in  which  everybody  in 


f 


LETTER   XVI. EDUCATION.  103 

his  turn  should  come  to  the  top,  is  a  proper  Utopian  con- 
stitution ;  and  that,  once  give  every  lad  a  good  education, 
and  he  cannot  but  come  to  ride  in  his  carriage  (the 
methods  of  supply  of  coachmen  and  footmen  not  being 
contemplated).  And  very  sternly  I  say  to  you — and 
say  from  sure  knowledge — that  a  man  had  better  not 
know  how  to  read  or  write,  than  receive  education  on 
such  terms. 

The  first  condition  under  which  it  can  be  given  use- 
fully is,  that  it  should  be  clearly  understood  to  be  no 
means  of  getting  on  in  the  world,  but  a  means  of  staying 
pleasantly  in  your  place  there.  And  the  first  elements 
of  State  education  should  be  calculated  equally  for  the 
advantage  of  every  order  of  person  composing  the  State. 
From  the  lowest  to  the  highest  class,  every  child  born  in 
this  island  should  be  required  by  law  to  receive  these  > 
general  elements  of  human  discipline,  and  to  be  baptized 
— not  with  a  drop  of  water  on  its  forehead — but  in  the  | 
cloud  and  sea  of  heavenly  wisdom  and  of  earthly  power. 

And  the  elements  of  this  general  State  education 
should  be  briefly  these  : 

First. — The  body  must  be  made  as  beautiful  and  per- 
fect in  its  youth  as  it  can  be,  wholly  irrespective  of 
ulterior  purpose.  If  you  mean  afterwards  to  set  the 
creature  to  business  which  will  degrade  its  body  and 


■ 


104  TIME   AND   TIDE. 

shorten  its  life,  first,  I  should  say,  simply, — ^you  had  bet- 
ter let  such  business  alone ;' — but  if  you  must  have  it 
done,  somehow,  yet  let  the  living  creature  whom  you 
mean  to  kill,  get  the  full  strength  of  its  body  first,  and 
taste  the  joy,  and  bear  the  beauty  of  youth.  After  that, 
poison  it,  if  you  will.  Economically,  the  arrangement  is 
a  wiser  one,  for  it  will  take  longer  in  the  killing  than  if 
you  began  with  it  younger ;  and  you  will  get  an  excess 
of  work  out  of  it  which  will  more  than  pay  for  its  train- 
ing. 

Therefore,  first  teach — as  I  said  in  the  preface  to  Unto 
this  Last — "  The  Laws  of  Health,  and  exercises  enjoined 
by  them ; "  and  to  this  end  your  schools  must  be  in  fresh 
country,  and  amidst  fresh  air,  and  have  great  extents  of 
land  attached  to  them  in  permanent  estate.  Eiding,  run- 
ning, all  the  honest  personal  exercises  of  oftence  and 
defence,  and  music,  should  be  the  primal  heads  of  this 
bodily  education. 

Next  to  these  bodily  accomplishments,  the  two  great 
mental  graces  should  be  taught,  Reverence  and  Compas- 
sion :  not  that  these  are  in  a  literal  sense  to  be  "  taught," 
for  they  are  innate  in  every  well-bom  human  creature, 
but  they  have  to  be  developed,  exactly  as  the  strength  of 
the  body  must  be,  by  deliberate  and  constant  exercise.  I 
never  understood  why  Goethe  (in  the  plan  of  education 


LETTER   X\^. — EDUCATION.  105 

in  Wilhelm  Meister)  says  that  reverence  is  not  innate, 
bnt  must  be  taught  from  without ;  it  seems  to  me  so 
fixedly  a  function  of  the  human  spirit,  that  if  men  can 
get  nothing  else  to  reverence  they  will  worship  a  fool,  or 
a  stone,  or  a  vegetable.*  But  to  teach  reverence  rightly 
is  to  attach  it  to  the  right  persons  and  things ;  first,  by 
setting  over  your  youth  masters  whom  they  cannot  but 
love  and  respect ;  next,  by  gathering  for  them,  out  of 
past  history,  whatever  has  been  most  worthy,  in  human 
deeds  and  human  passion  ;  and  leading  them  continually 
to  dwell  upon  such  instances,  making  this  the  principal 
element  of  emotional  excitement  to  them  ;  and,  lastly,  by 
letting  them  justly  feel,  as  far  as  may  be,  the  smallness 
of  their  own  powers  and  knowledge,  as  compared  with 
the  attainments  of  others. 

Compassion,  on  the  other  hand,  is  to  be  taught  chiefly 
by  making  it  a  point  of  honour,  collaterally  with  courage, 
and  in  the  same  rank  (as  indeed  the  complement  and 
evidence  of  courage),  so  that,  in  the  code  of  unwritten 
school  law,  it  shall  be  held  as  shameful  to  have  done  a 
cruel  thing  as  a  cowardly  one.  All  infliction  of  pain  on 
weaker  creatures  is  to  be  stigmatized  as  unmanly  crime ; 

*  By  steadily  preacMng   against  it,  one    may  quench    reverence, 
and  bring  insolence  to  its  height ;  but  the  instinct  cannot  be  wholly 

uprooted. 

5* 


h 


106  TIME   AND   TIDE. 

and  every  possible  opportunity  taken  to  exercise  the 
youths  in  offices  of  some  practical  help,  and  to  acquaint 
them  with  the  realities 'of  the  distress  which,  in  the  joy- 
fulness  of  entering  into  life,  it  is  so  difficult  for  those 
who  have  not  seen  home  suffering,  to  conceive. 

Keverence,  then,  and  compassion,  we  are  to  teach  pri- 
marily, and  with  these,  as  the  bond  and  guardian  of 
them,  truth  of  spirit  and  word,  of  thought  and  sight. 
Triifh,  earnest  and  passionate,  sought  for  like  a  treasure 
and  kept  like  a  crown. 

This  teaching  of  truth  as  a  habit  will  be  the  chief 
work  the  master  has  to  do ;  and  it  will  enter  into  all  parts 
of  education.  First,  you  must  accustom  the  children  to 
close  accuracy  of  statement ;  this  both  as  a  principle  of 
honour,  and  as  an  accomplishment  of  language,  making 
them  try  always  who  shall  speak  truest,  both  as  regards 
the  fact  he  has  to  relate  or  express  (not  concealing  or 
exaggerating),  and  as  regards  the  precision  of  the  words 
he  expresses  it  in,  thus  making  truth  (which,  indeed,  it 
is)  the  test  of  perfect  language,  and  giving  the  intensity 
of  a  moral  purpose  to  the  study  and  art  of  words :  then 
can'ying  this  accuracy  into  all  habits  of  thought  and 
observation  also,  so  as  always  to  think  of  things  as  they 
truly  are,  and  to  see  them  as  they  truly  are,  as  far  as  in 
us  rests.     And  it  does  rest  mu^li  in  our  power,  for  all 


LETTER    XVI. EDUCATION.  107 

false  thoughts  and  seeings  come  mainly  of  our  thinking 
of  what  we  have  no  business  with,  and  looking  for  things 
we  want  to  see,  instead  of  things  that  ought  to  be  seen. 

"  Do  not  talk  but  of  what  you  know ;  do  not  think 
but  of  what  you  have  materials  to  think  justly  upon ; 
and  do  not  look  for  things  only  that  you  like,  when  there 
are  others  to  be  seen  " — this  is  the  lesson  to  be  taught  to 
our  youth,  and  inbred  in  them ;  and  that  mainly  by  our 
own  example  and  continence.  I^ever  teach  a  child  any- 
thing of  which  you  are  not  yourself  sure ;  and,  above  all, 
if  you  feel  anxious  to  force  anything  into  its  mind  in 
tender  years,  that  the  virtue  of  youth  and  early  associa- 
tion may  fasten  it  there,  be  sure  it  is  no  lie  which  you 
thus  sanctify.  There  is  always  more  to  be  taught  of 
absolute,  incontrovertible  knowledge,  open  to  its  capacity, 
than  any  child  can  learn ;  there  is  no  need  to  teach  it 
anything  doubtful.  Better  that  it  should  be  ignorant  of 
a  thousand  truths,  than  have  consecrated  in  its  heart  a 
single  lie. 

And  for  this,  as  well  as  for  many  other  reasons,  the 
principal  subjects  of  education,  after  history,  ought  to  be 
natural  science  and  mathematics ;  but  with  fespect  to 
these  studies,  your  schools  will  require  to  be  divided  into 
three  groups ;  one  for  children  who  will  probably  have  to 
live  in  cities,  one  for  those  who  will  live  in  the  country, 


108  TIME   AND   TIDE. 

and  one  for  those  who  will  live  at  sea ;  the  schools  for 
these  last,  of  course,  being  always  placed  on  the  coast. 
"And  for  children  whose  life  is  to  be  in  cities,  the  subjects 
of  study  should  be,  as  far  as  their  disposition  will  allow 
of  it,  mathematics  and  the  arts ;  for  children  who  are  to 
live  in  the  country,  natural  history  of  birds,  insects,  and 
plants,  together  with  agriculture  taught  practically ;  and 
for  children  who  are  to  be  seamen,  physical  geography, 
astronomy,  and  the  natural  history  of  sea  fish  and  sea 
birds. 

This,  then,  being  the  general  course  and  material  of 
education  for  all  children,  observe  farther  that  in  the 
preface  to  Unto  this  Last  I  said  that  every  child,  besides 
passing  through  this  course,  was  at  school  to  le^arn  "  the 
calling  by  which  it  was  to  live."  And  it  may  perhaps 
appear  to  you  that  after,  or  even  in  the  early  stages  of 
education  such  as  this  above  described,  there  are  many 
callings  which,  however  much  called  to  them,  the  cliil- 
dren  might  not  willingly  determine  to  learn  or  live  by. 
"Probably,"  you  may  say,  "after  they  have  learned  to 
ride,  and  fence,  and  sing,  and  know  birds  and  flowers,  it 
will  be  little  to  their  liking  to  make  themselves  into  tai- 
lors, carpenters,  shoemakers,  blacksmiths,  and  the  like." 
And  I  cannot  but  agree  with  you  as  to  the  exceeding 
probability  of  some  such  reluctance  on  their  part,  which 


LETTER     XVI. EDUCATION.  109 

will  be  a  very  awkward  state  of  things  indeed  (since  we 
can  by  no  means  get  on  without  tailoring  and  shoemak- 
ing),  and  one  to  be  meditated  upon  very  seriously  in  next 
letter. 

P.S. — Thank  you  for  sending  me  your  friend's  letter 
about  Gustave  Dore ;  he  is  wrong,  however,  in  thinking 
there  is  any  good  in  those  illustrations  of  Elaine.  I  had 
intended  to  speak  of  them  afterwards,  for  it  is  to  my 
mind  quite  as  significant — almost  as  awful — a  sign  of 
what  is  going  on  in  the  midst  of  us,  that  our  great  Eng- 
lish poet  should  have  suffered  his  work  to  be  thus  con- 
taminated, as  that  the  lower  Evangelicals,  never  notable 
for  sense  in  the  arts,  should  have  got  their  Bibles  dishon- 
oured. Those  Elaine  illustrations  are  just  as  impure  as 
anything  else  that  Dore  has  done;  but  they  are  also 
vapid,  and  without  any  one  merit  whatever  in  point  of 
art.  The  illustrations  to  the  Contes  Drolatiques  are  full 
of  power  and  invention ;  but  those  to  Elaine  are  merely 
and  simply  stupid;  theatrical  betises,  with  the  taint  of 
the  charnel-house  on  them  besides. 


better  17. 

The  Relations  of  Education  to  Position  im,  Life. 

Apra  3, 1867. 
I  AM  not  quite  sure  that  you  will  feel  the  awkwardness 

of  the  dilemma  I  got  into  at  the  end  of  last  letter,  as 
much  as  I  do  myself.  You  working  men  have  been 
crowing  and  peacocking  at  such  a  rate  lately ;  and  set- 
ting yourselves  forth  so  confidently  for  the  cream  of 
society,  and  the  top  of  the  world,  that  perhaps  you  will 
not  anticipate  any  of  the  difficulties  which  suggest  them- 
selves to  a  thorough-bred  Tory  and  Conservative,  like  me. 
Perhaps  you  will  expect  a  youth  properly  educated — a 
good  rider — musician — and  well-grounded  scholar  in  nat- 
ural philosophy,  to  think  it  a  step  of  promotion  when  he 
has  to  go  and  be  made  a  tailor  of,  or  a  coalheaver  ?  If 
you  do,  I  should  very  willingly  admit  that  you  might  be 
right,  and  go  on  to  the  farther  development  of  my  notions 
without  pausing  at  this  stumbling-block,  were  it  not  that, 
unluckily,  all  the  wisest  men  whose  sayings  I  ever  heard 
or  read,  agree  in  expressing  (one  way  or  another)  just 


LETTER    XVII. DIFFICULTIES.  Ill 

such  contempt,  for  those  useful  occupations,  as  I  dread 
on  the  part  of  my  foolishly  refined  scholars.  Shakspeare 
and  Chaucer, — Dante  and  Yirgil, — Horace  and  Pindar, — 
Homer,  ^schylus,  and  Plato, — all  the  men  of  any  age  or 
country  who  seem  to  have  had  Heaven's  music  on  their 
lips,  agree  in  their  scorn  of  mechanic  life.  And  I  imagine 
that  the  feeling  of  prudent  Englishmen,  and  sensible  as 
well  as  sensitive  Englishwomen,  on  reading  my  last  letter 
— would  mostly  be — "  Is  the  man  mad,  or  laughing  at  us, 
to  propose  educating  the  working  classes  this  way  ?  He 
could  not,  if  his  wild  scheme  were  possible,  find  a  better 
method  of  making  them  acutely  wretched." 

It  may  be  so,  my  sensible  and  polite  friends ;  and  I  am 
heartily  willing,  as  well  as  curious,  to  hear  you  develope 
your  own  scheme  of  operative  education,  so  only  that 
it  be  universal,  orderly,  and  careful.  I  do  not  say  that  I 
shall  be  prepared  to  advocate  my  athletics  and  philos- 
ophies instead.  Only,  observe  what  you  admit,  or  imply, 
in  bringing  forward  your  possibly  wiser  system.  You  \ 
imply  that  a  certain  portion  of  mankind  must  be  em-  \ 
ployed  in  degrading  work ;  and  that,  to  fit  them  for  this 
work,  it  is  necessary  to  limit  their  knowledge,  their  active 
powers,  and  their  enjoyments,  from  childhood  upwards, 
so  that  they  may  not  be  able  to  conceive  of  any  state 
better  than  the  one  they  were  born  in,  nor  possess  any 


112  TIME   AND  TIDE. 

knowledge  or  acquirements  inconsistent  with  the  coarse- 
ness, or  disturbing  the  monotony,  of  their  vulgar  occupa- 
tion. And  by  their  labour  in  this  contracted  state  of  mind, 
we  superior  beings  are  to  be  maintained ;  and  always  to  be 
curtsied  to  by  the  properly  ignorant  little  girls,  and  capped 
by  the  properly  ignorant  little  boys,  whenever  we  pass  by. 
.  Mind,  I  do  not  say  that  this  is  not  the  right  state  of 
things.  Only,  if  it  be,  you  need  not  be  so  over-particular 
about  the  slave-trade,  it  seems  to  me.  What  is  the  use 
of  arguing  so  pertinaciously  that  a  black's  skull  will  hold 
as  much  as  a  white's,  when  you  are  declaring  in  the  same 
breath  that  a  white's  skull  must  not  hold  as  much  as  it 
can,  or  it  will  be  the  worse  for  him?  It  does  not  appear 
to  me  at  all  a  profound  state  of  slavery  to  be  whipped 
into  doing  a  piece  of  low  work  that  I  don't  like ;  but 
it  is  a  very  profound  state  of  slavery,  to  be  kept,  my- 
self, low  in  the  forehead,  that  I  may  not  dislike  low 
work. 

You  see,  my  friend,  the  dilemma  is  really  an  awkward 
one,  whichever  way  you  look  at  it.  But,  what  is  still 
worse,  I  am  not  puzzled  only,  at  this  part  of  my  scheme, 
about  the  boys  I  shall  have  to  make  workmen  of;  I  am 
just  as  much  puzzled  about  the  boys  I  shall  have  to  make 
nothing  of  I  Grant,  that  by  hook  or  crook,  by  reason  or 
rattan,  I  persuade  a  certain  number  of  the  roughest  ones 


OK 
LETTER    XVn. ^DIFFICtTLTIE 


\N.^       OF  THE  ' 


into  some  serviceable  business,  and  get  rmtn^RiTm  nhnff>fr  ^"^ 
made  for  the  rest, — what  is  the  business  of  "  the  rest "  to 
be  ?  Naturally,  according  to  the  existing  state  of  things, 
one  supposes  they  are  to  belong  to  some  of  the  gentle- 
manly professions ;  to  be  soldiers,  lawyers,  doctors,  or 
clergymen.  But  alas,  I  shall  not  want  any  soldiers,  of 
special  skill  or  pugnacity  ?  AU  my  boys  will  be  soldiers. 
So  far  from  wanting  any  lawyers,  of  the  kind  that  live  by 
talking,  I  shall  have  the  strongest  possible  objection  to 
their  appearance  in  the  country.  For  doctors,  I  shall 
always  entertain  a  profound  respect;  but  when  I  get 
my  athletic  education  fairly  established,  of  what  help  to 
them  will  my  respect  be  ?  They  will  all  starve !  And 
for  clergymen,  it  is  true,  I  shall  have  a  large  number 
of  episcopates — one  over  every  hundred  families — (and 
many  positions  of  civil  authority  also,  for  civil  officers, 
above  them  and  below),  but  all  these  places  will  involve 
much  hard  work,  and  be  anything  but  covetable ;  while, 
of  clergymen's  usual  work,  admonition,  theological  dem- 
onstration, and  the  like,  I  shall  want  very  little  done 
indeed,  and  that  little  done  for  nothing !  for  I  will  allow 
no  man  to  admonish  anybody,  until  he  has  previously 
earned  his  own  dinner  by  more  productive  work  than 
admonition. 

Well,  I  wish,  my  friend,  you  would  write  me  a  word  or 


114:  TIME   AND   TIDE. 

two  in  answer  to  this,  telling  me  your  own  ideas  as  to  the 
proper  issue  out  of  these  difficulties.  I  should  like  to 
know  what  you  think,  and  what  you  suppose  others  will 
think,  before  I  tell  you  my  own  notions  about  the  matter. 


Cettcr  IS. 

TJie  harmful  Effects  of  ServUe  Employments. — The  pos- 
sible Practice  and  Exhibition  of  sincere  SumUity  by 
Religious  Persons. 

AprU  7, 1867. 
I  HAVE  been  waiting  these  three  days  to  know  what 
you  would  say  to  my  last  questions ;  and  now  you  send 
me  two  pamphlets  of  Combe's  to  read!  I  never  read 
anything  in  spring-time  (except  the  Ai,  Ai,  on  the  "  san- 
guine flower  inscribed  with  woe  ") ;  and  besides  if,  as  I 
gather  from  your  letter,  Combe  thinks  that  among  well- 
educated  boys  there  would  be  a  per-centage  constitution- 
ally inclined  to  be  cobblers,  or  looking  forward  with 
unction  to  establishment  in  the  oil  and  tallow  line,  or 
fretting  themselves  for  a  flunkey's  uniform,  nothing  that 
he  could  say  would  make  me  agree  with  him.  I  know,  as 
well  as  he  does,  the  unconquerable  differences  in  the  clay 
of  the  human  creature  :  and  I  know  that,  in  the  outset, 
whatever  system  of  education  you  adopted,  a  large  num- 
ber of  children  could  be  made  nothing  of,  and  would 
necessarily  fall  out  of  the  ranks,  and  supply  candidates 


116  TIME   AND  TIDE. 

enough  for  degradation  to  common  mechanical  business : 
but  this  enormous  difierence  in  bodily  and  mental  capac- 
ity has  been  mainly  brought  about  by  difference  in  occu- 
pation, and  by  direct  mal-treatment  ;  and  in  a  few 
generations,  if  the  poor  were  cared  for,  their  marriages 
looked  after,  and  sanitarj^  law  enforced,  a  beautiful  type 
of  face  and  form,  and  a  high  intelligence,  would  become 
all  but  universal,  in  a  climate  like  this  of  England.  Even 
as  it  is,  the  marvel  is  always  to  me,  how  the  race  resists, 
at  least  in  its  childhood,  influences  of  ill-regulated  birth, 
poisoned  food,  poisoned  air,  and  soul,  neglect.  I  often 
see  faces  of  children,  as  I  walk  through  the  black  district 
of  St.  Giles's  (lying,  as  it  does,  just  between  my  own 
house  and  the  British  Museum),  which,  through  all  their 
pale  and  corrupt  misery,  recall  the  old  "  Non  Angli,"  and 
recall  it,  not  by  their  beauty,  but  by  their  sweetness  of 
expression,  even  though  signed  already  with  trace  and 
cloud  of  the  coming  life, — a  life  so  bitter  that  it  would 
make  the  curse  of  the  137th  Psalm  true  upon  our  modern 
Babylon,  though  we  were  to  read  it  thus,  '*  Happy  shall 
iliy  children  be,  if  one  taketh  and  dasheth  them  against 
the  stones." 

J     Yes,  very  solemnly  I  repeat  to  you  that  in  those  worst 
/  treated  children  of  the  English  race,  I  yet  see  the  mal^ 
ing  of  gentlemen  and  gentlewomen — not  the  making  of 


LETTER   XVnr. HUMTLITY.  117 

dog-stealers  and  gin-drinkers,  such  as  their  parents  were ; 
and  the  child  of  the  average  English  tradesman  or 
peasant,  even  at  this  day,  well  schooled,  will  show  no 
innate  disposition  such  as  must  fetter  him  for  ever  to 
the  clod  or  the  counter.  You  saj  that  many  a  boy 
runs  away,  or  would  run  away  if  he  could,  from  good 
positions  to  go  to  sea.  Of  course  he  does.  I  never 
said  I  should  have  any  difficulty  in  finding  sailors,  but 
I  shall  in  finding  fishmongers.  I  am  at  no  loss  for 
gardeners  neither,  but  what  am  I  to  do  for  greengrocers  ? 
The  fact  is,  a  great  number  of  quite  necessary  em- 
ployments are,  in  the  accuratest  sense,  "  servile,"  that 
is,  they  sink  a  man  to  the  condition  of  a  serf,  or  un- 
thinking worker,  the  proper  state  of  an  animal,  but 
more  or  less  unworthy  of  men;  nay,  unholy  in  some 
sense,  so  that  a  day  is  made  "  holy "  by  the  fact  of 
its  being  commanded,  "Thou  shalt  do  no  servile  work 
therein."  And  yet,  if  undertaken  in  a  certain  spirit, 
such  work  might  be  the  holiest  of  all.  If  there  were 
but  a  thread  or  two  of  sound  fibre  here  and  there  left  in 
our  modern  religion,  so  that  the  stuff  of  it  would  bear  a 
real  strain,  one  might  address  our  two  opposite  groups 
of  evangelicals  and  ritualists  somewhat  after  this  fashion : 
— "Good  friends,  these  differences  of  opinion  between 
you  cannot   but  be  painful   to  your   Christian   charity, 


118  TIME   AND  TTOE. 

and  they  are  .unseemly  to  us,  the  profane ;  and  prevent 
us  from  learning  from  you  what,  perhaps,  we  ought. 
But,  as  we  read  your  Book,  we,  for  our  part,  gather 
from  it  that  you  might,  without  danger  to  your  own 
souls,  set  an  undivided  example  to  us,  for  the  benefit 
of  ours.  You,  both  of  you,  as  far  as  we  understand, 
agree  in  the  necessity  of  humility  to  the  perfection  of 
your  character.  We  often  hear  you,  of  Calvinistic  per- 
suasion, speaking  of  yourselves  as  ^sinful  dust  and 
ashes,' — would  it  then  be  inconsistent  with  your  feelings 
to  make  yourselves  into  *  serviceable '  dust  and  ashes? 
We  observe  that  of  late  many  of  our  roads  have  been 
hardened  and  mended  with  cinders ;  now,  if,  in  a  higher 
sense,  you  could  allow  us  to  mend  the  roads  of  the  world 
with  you  a  little,  it  would  be  a  great  proof  to  us  of 
your  sincerity.  Suppose  only  for  a  little  while,  in  the 
present  difficulty  and  distress,  you  were  to  make  it  a 
test  of  conversion  that  a  man  should  regularly  give 
Zacheus's  portion,  half  his  goods,  to  the  poor,  and  at 
once  adopt  some  disagreeable  and  despised,  but  thoroughly 
useful,  trade  ?  You  cannot  think  that  tins  would  finally 
be  to  your  disadvantage;  you  doubtless  believe  the 
texts,  *  Ho  that  giveth  to  the  poor  lendeth  to  the  Lord/ 
and  *He  that  would  be  the  chief  among  you,  let  him 
be  your  servant.'    The  more  you  parted  with,  and  the 


LETTER   XVm. HUMILITY.  119 

lower  you  stooped,  the  greater  would  be  your  final  reward, 
and  final  exaltation.  You  profess  to  despise  human 
learning  and  worldly  riches;  leave  both  of  these  to 
fts  j  undertake  for  us  the  illiterate  and  ill-paid  employ- 
ments which  must  deprive  you  of  the  privileges  of 
society,  and  the  pleasures  of  luxury.  You  cannot  pos- 
sibly preach  your  faith  so  forcibly  to  the  world  by  any 
quantity  of  the  finest  words,  as  by  a  few  such  simple 
and  painful  acts ;  and  over  your  counters,  in  honest 
retail  business,  you  might  preach  a  gospel  that  would 
sound  in  more  ears  than  any  that  was  ever  proclaimed 
over  pulpit  cushions  or  tabernacle  rails.  And,  whatever 
may  be  your  gifts  of  utterance,  you -cannot  but  feel 
(studying  St.  Paul's  Epistles  as  carefully  as  you  do) 
that  you  might  more  easily  and  modestly  emulate  the 
practical  teaching  of  the  silent  Apostle  of  the  Gentiles 
than  the  speech  or  writing  of  his  companion.  Amidst 
the  present  discomforts  of  your  brethren  you  may  surely, 
with  greater  prospect  of  good  to  them,  seek  the  title 
of  Sons  of  Consolation,  than  of  Sons  of  Thunder,  and 
be  satisfied  with  Barnabas's  confession  of  faith  (if  you 
can  reach  no  farther),  who,  'having  land,  sold  it,  and 
brought  the  money  and  laid  it  at  the  Apostles'  feet.' 

"  To  you,  on  the  other  hand,  gentlemen  of  the  embroid- 
ered robe,  who  neither  despise  learning  nor  the  arts,  we 


120  TIME   AND  TIDE. 

know  that  sacrifices  such  as  these  would  be  truly  painful, 
and  might  at  first  appear  inexpedient.  But  the  doctrine 
of  self-mortification  is  not  a  new  one  to  you:  and  we 
should  be  sorry  to  think — we  would  not,  indeed,  for  a 
moment  dishonour  you  by  thinking — that  these  melodious 
chants,  and  prismatic  brightnesses  of  vitreous  pictures, 
and  floral  graces  of  deep- wrought  stone,  were  in  any  wise 
intended  for  your  own  poor  pleasures,  whatever  profane 
attraction  they  may  exercise  on  more  fleshly-minded  per- 
sons. And  as  you  have  certainly  received  no  definite 
order  for  the  painting,  carving,  or  lighting  up  of  churches, 
while  the  temple  of  the  body  of  so  many  poor  living 
Christians  is  so  pale,  so  mis-shapen,  and  so  ill-Hghted; 
but  have,  on  the  contrary,  received  very  definite  orders  for 
the  feeding  and  clothing  of  such  sad  humanity,  we  may 
surely  ask  you,  not  unreasonably,  to  humiliate  yourselvt^ 
in  the  most  complete  way — not  with  a  voluntary,  but 
a  sternly  ^voluntary  humility — not  with  a  show  of  wis- 
dom in  will- worship,  but  with  practical  wisdom,  in  all 
honour,  to  the  satisfying  of  the  flesh  ;  and  to  associate 
yourselves  in  monasteries  and  convents  for  the  better 
practice  of  useful  and  humble  trades.  Do  not  burn  any 
^  more  candles,  but  mould  some ;  do  not  paint  any  more 
windows,  but  mend  a  few,  where  the  wind  comes  in,  in 
winter  time,  with  substantial  clear  glass  and  putty.     Do 


LETTER   XVni. HUMILITY.  121 

not  vault  any  more  high  roofs,  but  thatch  some  low  ones  ; 
and  embroider  rather  on  backs  which  are  turned  to  the 
cold,  than  only  on  those  which  are  turned  to  congrega- 
tions. And  you  will  have  your  reward  afterwards,  and 
attain,  with  all  your  flocks  thus  tended,  to  a  place  where 
you  may  have  as  much  gold,  and  painted  glass,  and  sing- 
ing, as  you  like." 

Thus  much,  it  seems  to  me,  one  might  say,  with  some 
hope  of  acceptance,  to  any  very  earnest  member  of  either 
of  our  two  great  religious  parties,  if,  as  I  say,  their  faith 
could  stand  a  strain.  I  have  not,  however,  based  any  of 
my  imaginary  political  arrangements  on  the  probability 
of  its  doing  so ;  and  I  trust  only  to  such  general  good 
nature  and  willingness  to  help  each  other,  as  I  presume 
may  be  found  among  men  of  the  world;  to  whom  I 
should  have  to  make  quite  another  sort  of  speech,  which 
I  will  endeavour  to  set  down  the  heads  of,  for  you,  in 
next  letter. 


Ccttcr  19. 

The  General  Pressure  of  Excessive  and  Improper  Work^ 
'in  English  Life. 

Apra  10, 1867. 
I  CANNOT  go  on  to-day  with  the  part  of  my  subject  I 
had  proposed,  for  I  was  disturbed  by  receiving  a  letter 
last  night,  which  I  herewith  enclose  to  you,  and  of  which 
I  wish  you  to  print,  here  following,  the  parts  I  have  not 
underlined : — 

1,  Piraint-sTKEET,  CiiELSBA,  April  8, 1867. 

My  dear  R :   It  is  long  since  you  have  heard  of  me,  and 

now  I  ask  your  patience  with  me  for  a  little.  I  have  but  just  re- 
turned from  the  funeral  of  my  dear,  dear  friend  ,  the  first 

artist  friend  I  made  in  London — a  loved  and  prized  one.  For  years 
past  he  had  lived  in  the  very  humblest  way,  fighting  his  battle  of 
life  against  mean  appreciation  of  his  talents,  the  wants  of  a  rising 
family,  and  frequent  attacks  of  illness,  crippling  hira  for  months  at  a 
time,  the  wolf  at  the  door  meanwhile. 

But  about  two  years  since  his  prospects  brightened  *  ♦  *  and 
he  had  but  a  few  weeks  since  ventured  on  removal  to  a  larger  house. 
His  eldest  boy  of  seventeen  years,  a  very  intelligent  youth,  so 
strongly  desired  to  be  a  civil  engineer  that  Mr. ^  not  being 


LETTER  XIX. BROKEN  REEDS.  123 

able  to  pay  the  large  premium  required  for  his  apprenticeship,  had 
been  made  very  glad  by  the  consent  of  Mr.  Penn,  of  Milwall,  to  re- 
ceive him  without  a  premium  after  the  boy  should  have  spent  some 
time  at  King's  College  in  the  study  of  mechanics.     The  rest  is  a  sad 

story.     About  a  fortnight  ago  Mr.  was  taken  ill,  and  died 

last  week,  the  doctors  say,  of  sheer  physical  exhaustion,  not  thirty- 
nine  years  old,  leaving  eight  young  children,  and  his  poor  widow 
expecting  her  confinement,  and  so  weak  and  ill  as  to  be  incapable 
of  effort.  This  youth  is  the  eldest,  and  the  other  children  range 
downwards  to  a  babe  of  eighteen  months.  There  is  not  one  who 
knew  him,  I  believe,  that  will  not  give  cheerfully,  to  their  ability, 
for  his  widow  and  children ;  but  such  aid  will  go  but  a  little  way  in 
this  painful  case,  but  it  would  be  a  real  boon  to  this  poor  widow  if 
some  of  her  children  could  be  got  into  an  Orphan  Asylum.  *  *  * 
If  you  are  able  to  do  anything  I  would  send  particulars  of  the  age 
and  sex  of  the  children.     *     *     * 

I  remain,  dear  sir,  ever  obediently  yours, 

Fred.  J.  Shields. 

P.S. — I  ought  to  say  that  poor has   been  quite   unable  to 

save,  with  his  large  family ;  and  that  they  would  be  utterly  destitute 
now,  but  for  the  kindness  of  some  with  whom  he  was  professionally 
connected. 

I^ow  this  case,  of  which  jon  see  the  entire  authentic- 
ity, is,  out  of  the  many,  of  which  I  hear  continually,  a 
notcibly  sad  one  only  in  so  far  as  the  artist  in  question 
has  died  of  distress  while  he  was  catering  for  the  public 


124  TIME   AND   TIDE. 

amusement.  Hardly  a  week  now  passes  without  some 
such  misery  coming  to  my  knowledge ;  and  the  quantity 
of  pain,  and  anxiety  of  daily  effort,  through  the  best  part 
of  life,  ending  all  at  last  in  utter  grief,  which  the  lower 
middle  classes  in  England  are  now  suffering,  is  so  great 
that  I  feel  constantly  as  if  I  were  living  in  one  great 
churchyard,  with  people  all  round  me  clinging  feebly  to 
the  edges  of  the  open  graves,  and  calling  for  help,  as  they 
fall  back  into  them,  out  of  sight. 

[N^ow  I  want  you  to  observe  here,  in  a  definite  case,  the 
working  of  your  beautiful  modern  political  economy  of 
"  supply  and  demand."  Here  is  a  man  who  could  have 
"  supplied  "  you  with  good  and  entertaining  art — say  for 
,  fifty  good  years — if  you  had  paid  him  enough  for  his  day's 
Iwork  to  find  him  and  his  children  peacefully  in  bread. 
But  you  like  having  your  prints  as  cheap  as  possible — 
you  triumph  in  the  little  that  your  laugh  costs — ^you  take 
all  you  can  get  from  the  man,  give  the  least  you  can  give 
to  him — and  you  accordingly  kill  him  at  thirty-nine ;  and 
thereafter  have  his  children  to  take  care  of,  or  to  kill  also, 
whichever  you  choose :  but  now,  observe,  you  must  take 
care  of  them  for  nothing,  or  not  at  all ;  and  what  you 
might  have  had  good  value  for,  if  you  had  given  it  when 
it  would  have  cheered  the  father's  heart,  you  now  can 
have  no  return  for  at  all,  to  yourselves ;  and  what  you 


LEITER  XIX. BROKEN  REEDS.  125 

give  to  the  orphans,  if  it  does  not  degrade  them,  at  least 
afflicts,  coming,  not  through  their  father's  hand,  its  honest 
earnings,  but  from  strangers. 

Observe  farther,  whatever  help  the  orphans  may  re- 
ceive, will  not  be  from  the  public  at  all.  It  will  not  be 
from  those  who  profited  by  their  father's  labours ;  it  will 
be  chiefly  from  his  fellow-labourers ;  or  from  persons 
whose  money  would  have  been  beneficially  spent  in  other 
directions,  from  whence  it  is  drawn  away  to  this  need, 
which  ought  never  to  have  occurred — while  those  who 
waste  their  money  without  doing  any  service  to  the 
public,  will  never  contribute  one  farthing  to  this  distress. 

Now  it  is  this  double  fault  in  the  help — that  it  comes 
too  late,  and  that  the  burden  of  it  falls  wholly  on  those 
who  ought  least  to  be  charged  with  it,  which  would  be 
corrected  by  that  institution  of  overseers  of  which  I  spoke 
to  you  in  the  twelfth  of  these  letters,  saying,  you  re- 
member, that  they  were  to  have  farther  legal  powers, 
which  I  did  not  then  specify,  Jbut  which  would  belong  to 
them  chiefly  in  the  capacity  of  public  almoners,  or  help- 
givers,  aided  by  their  deacons,  the  reception  of  such  help, 
in  time  of  true  need,  being  not  held  disgraceful,  but 
honourable;  since  the  fact  of  its  reception  would  be  so 
entirely  public  that  no  impostor  or  idle  person  could  ever 
obtain  it  surreptitious^. 


126  rtME   AND   TIDE. 

(ll^A  AjmZ.)  1  was  inten*upted  yesterday,  and  I  am 
glad  of  it,  for  here  happens  just  an  instance  of  the  way  in 
which  the  unjust  distribution  of  the  burden  of  charity  is 
reflected  on  general  interests ;  I  cannot  help  what  taint 
of  ungracefulness  you  or  other  readers  of  these  letters 
may  feel  that  I  incur,  in  speaking,  in  this  instance,  of 
myself.  If  I  could  speak  with  the  same  accurate  knowl- 
edge of  any  one  else,  most  gladly  I  would ;  but  I  also 
'  think  it  right  that,  whether  people  accuse  me  of  boasting 
or  not,  they  should  know  that  I  practise  what  I  preach. 
I  had  not  intended  to  say  what  I  now  shall,  but  the 
coming  of  this  letter  last  night  just  turns  the  balance  of 
the  decision  with  me.  I  enclose  it  with  the  other ;  you 
see  it  is  one  from  my  bookseller,  Mr.  Quaritch,  offering 
me  Fischer's  work  on  the  Flora  of  Ja/va^  and  Latom-'s  on 
Indiom  Orchidacem^  bound  together,  for  twenty  guineas. 
Now,  I  am  writing  a  book  on  botany  just  now,  for  young 
people,  chiefly  on  wild  flowers,  and  I  want  these  two 
books  very  much;  but  I  simply  cannot  afford  to  buy 
them,  because  I  sent  my  last  spare  twenty  guineas  to 
Mr.  Shields  yesterday  for  this  widow.  And  though  you 
may  think  it  not  the  affair  of  the  public  that  I  have  not 
this  book  on  Indian  flowers,  it  is  their  affair  finally,  that 
what  I  write  for  them  should  be  founded  on  as  broad 
knowledge  as  possible;    whatever  value  my  own  book 


LETTER  XIX. BROKEN  REEDS.  127 

may  or  may  not  have,  it  will  just  be  in  a  given  degree 
worth  less  to  them,  because  of  my  want  of  this  knowl- 
edge. 

So  again — for  having  begun  to  speak  of  myself  I  will 
do  so  yet  more  frankly — I  suppose  that  when  people  see 
my  name  down  for  a  hundred  pounds  to  the  Cruikshank 
Memorial,  and  for  another  hundred  to  the  Eyre  Defence 
Fund,  they  think  only  that  I  have  more  money  than  I 
know  what  to  do  with.  Well,  the  giving  of  those  sub- 
scriptions simply  decides  the  question  whether  or  no  I 
shall  be  able  to  afford  a  journey  to  Switzerland  this  year, 
in  the  negative  ;  and  I  wanted  to  go,  not  only  for  health's 
sake,  but  to  examine  the  junctions  of  the  molasse  sand- 
stones and  nagelfluh  with  the  Alpine  limestone,  in  order 
to  complete  some  notes  I  meant  to  publish  next  spring  on 
the  geology  of  the  great  northern  Swiss  valley;  notes 
which  must  now  lie  by  me  at  least  for  another  year ;  and 
I  believe  this  delay  (though  I  say  it)  will  be  really  some- 
thing of  a  loss  to  the  travelling  public,  for  the  little  essay 
was  intended  to  explain  to  them,  in  a  familiar  way,  the 
real  wonderfulness  of  their  favom-ite  mountain,  the 
Righi ;  and  to  give  them  some  amusement  in  trying  to 
find  out  where  the  many-coloured  pebbles  of  it  had  come 
from.  But  it  is  more  important  that  I  should,  with  some 
stoutness,  assert  my  respect  for  the  genius  and  earnest 


128  TIME    AND   TroE. 

patriotism  of  Cruikshank,  and  my  much  more  than  dis- 
respect for  the  Jamaica  Committee,  than  that  I  should  see 
the  Alps  this  year,  or  get  my  essay  finished  next  spring ; 
but  I  tell  you  the  fact,  because  I  want  you  to  feel  how,  in 
thus  leaving  their  men  of  worth  to  be  assisted  or  defended 
only  by  those  who  deeply  care  for  them,  the  public  more 
or  less  cripple,  to  their  own  ultimate  disadvantage,  just 
the  people  who  could  serve  them  in  other  ways ;  while 
the  speculators  and  money-seekers,  who  are  only  making 
their  profit  out  of  the  said  public,  of  course  take  no  part 
in  the  help  of  anybody.  And  even  if  the  willing  bearers 
could  sustain  the  burden  anywise  adequately,  none  of  us 
would  complain;  but  I  am  certain  there  is  no  man, 
whatever  his  fortune,  who  is  now  engaged  in  any  earnest 
offices  of  kindness  to  these  sufferers,  especially  of  the 
middle  class,  among  his  acquaintance,  who  will  not  bear 
me  witness  that  for  one  we  can  relieve,  we  must  leave 
three  to  perish.  I  have  left  three,  myself,  in  the  first 
three  months  of  this  year.  One  was  the  artist  Paul  Gray, 
for  whom  an  appeal  was  made  to  me  for  funds  to  assist 
him  in  going  abroad  out  of  the  bitter  English  winter. 
I  had  not  the  means  by  me,  and  he  died  a  week  after- 
wards. Another  case  was  that  of  a  widow  whose  hus- 
band had  committed  suicide,  for  whom  application  was 
made  to  me  at  the  same  time ;  and  the  third  was  a  per- 


LETTER   :J^. ^BKOKEN   REEDS.  129 

sonal  friend,  to  whom  I  refused  a  sum  which  he  said 
would  have  saved  him  from  bankruptcy.  I  believe  six 
times  as  much  would  not  have  saved  him ;  however,  I 
refused,  and  he  is  ruined. 

And  observe,  also,  it  is  not  the  mere  crippling  of  my 
means  that  I  regret.  It  is  the  crippling  of  my  temper, 
and  waste  of  my  time.  The  knowledge  of  all  this  dis- 
tress, even  when  I  can  assist  it, — ^much  raore  when  I  can- 
not,— and  the  various  thoughts  of  what  I  can  and  cannot, 
or  ought  and  ought  not,  to  do,  are  a  far  greater  burden 
to  me  than  the  mere  loss  of  the  money.  It  is  perempto- 
rily not  my  business — it  is  not  my  gift,  bodily  or  men- 
tally, to  look  after  other  people's  sorrow.  I  have  enough 
of  my  own ;  and  even  if  I  had  not,  the  sight  of  pain  is 
not  good  for  me.  I  don't  want  to  be  a  bishop.  In  a 
most  literal  and  sincere  sense,  "  nolo  ej^scojpariP  I  don't 
want  to  be  an  almoner,  nor  a  counsellor,  nor  a  Member 
of  Parliament,  nor  a  voter  for  Members  of  Parliament. 
(What  would  Mr.  Holyoake  say  to  me  if  he  knew  that 
I  have  never  voted  for  anybody  in  my  life,  and  never 
mean  to  do  so  !)  I  am  essentially  a  painter  and  a  leaf 
dissector ;  and  my  powers  of  thought  are  all  purely  mathe- 
matical, seizing  ultimate  principles  only — ^never  accidents ; 
a  line  is  always,  to  me,  length  without  breadth ;  it  is 
not  a  cable  or  a  crowbar ;  and  though  I  can  almost  infab 


130  TIME  AND  TipE. 

libly  reason  out  the  final  law  of  anything,  if  within  reach 
of  my  industry,  I  neither  care  for,  nor  can  trace,  the 
minor  exigencies  of  its  daily  appliance.  So,  in  every 
way,  I  like  a  quiet  life ;  and  I  don't  like  seeing  people 
cry,  or  die ;  and  should  rejoice,  more  than  I  can  tell  you, 
in  giving  up  the  full  half  of  my  fortune  for  the  poor, 
provided  I  knew  that  the  public  would  make  Lord  Over- 
stone  also  give  the  half  of  his,  and  other  people  who  were 
independent  give  the  half  of  theirs ;  and  then  set  men 
who  were  really  fit  for  such  ofiice  to  administer  the  fund, 
and  answer  to  us  for  nobody's  perishing  innocently ;  and 
so  leave  us  all  to  do  what  we  chose  with  the  rest,  and 
with  our  days,  in  peace. 

Thus  far  of  the  public's  fault  in  the  matter.  Next,  I 
have  a  word  or  two  to  say  of  the  sufierers'  own  fault — ^for 
much  as  I  pity  them,  I  conceive  that  none  of  them  do 
perish  altogether  innocently.  But  this  must  be  for  next 
letter. 


V^       OF  THE  ^ 

■"airi  VERS  ITT 


Cctter  20. 

Of  Improvidence  in  Marriage  in  the  Middle  Classes  / 
and  of  the  advisable  Restrictions  of  it. 

April  12, 1867. 
It  is  quite  as  well,  whatever  irregularity  it  may  intro- 
duce in  the  arrangement  of  the  general  subject,  that 
yonder  sad  letter  warped  me  away  from'  the  broad  in- 
quiry, to  this  speciality,  respecting  the  present  distress 
of  the  middle  classes.  For  the  immediate  cause  of  that 
distress,  in  their  own  imprudence,  of  which  I  have  to 
speak  to  you  to-day,  is  only  to  be  finally  vanquished  by 
strict  laws,  which,  though  they  have  been  many  a  year 
in  my  mind,  I  was  glad  to  have  a  quiet  hour  of  sunshine 
for  the  thinking  over  again,  this  morning.  Sunshine 
which  happily  rose  cloudless ;  and  allowed  me  to  medi- 
tate my  tyrannies  before  breakfast,  under  the  just-opened 
blossoms  of  my  orchard,  and  assisted  by  much  melodious 
advice  from  the  birds ;  who  (my  gardener  having  positive 
orders  never  to  trouble  any  of  them  in  anything,  or  object 
to  their  eating  even  my  best  pease  if  they  like  their  fla- 
vour) rather  now  get  into  my  way,  than  out  of  it,  when 


132  TIME   AND   TIDE. 

they  see  me  about  the  walks ;  and  take  me  into  most  of 
their  counsels  in  nest-building. 

The  letter  from  Mr.  Shields,  which  interrupted  us, 
reached  me,  as  you  see,  on  the  evening  of  the  9th  instant. 
On  the  morning  of  the  10th,  I  received  another,  which  I 
herewith  forward  to  you,  for  verification.  It  is — character- 
istically enough — dateless,  so  you  must  take  the  time  of 
its  arrival  on  my  word.  And  substituting  M.  N.  for  the 
name  of  the  boy  referred  to,  and  withholding  only  the 
address  and  name  of  the  writer,  you  see  that  it  may  be 
printed  wordibr  word — as  follows: — 

Sm, — May  I  beg  for  the  favour  of  your  presentation  to  Christ's 
Hospital  for  my  youngest  son,  M.  N.  I  have  nine  children,  and  no 
means  to  educate  them.  I  ventured  to  address  you,  believing  that  my 
husband's  name  is  not  unknown  to  you  as  an  artist. 

Believe  me  to  remain  faithfully  yours, 

To  John  Ruskin,  Esq.  *        ♦        » 

.  Now  this  letter  is  only  a  typical  example  of  the  entire 
class  of  those  which,  being  a  governor  of  Christ's  Hospital, 
I  receive,  in  common  with  all  the  other  governors,  at 
a  rate  of  about  three  a  day,  for  a  month  or  six  weeks 
from  the  date  of  our  names  appearing  in  the  printed  list 
of  the  governors  who  have  presentations  for  the  current 
year.  Having  been  a  governor  now  some  twenty-five 
years,  I  have  documentary  evidence  enough    to  found 


LETTER   XX. ROSE-GAEDENS.  133 

some  general  statistics  upon :  from  which  there  have 
resulted  two  impressions  on  my  mind,  which  I  wish  here 
specially  to  note  to  yon,  and  I  do  not  doubt  but  that  all 
the  other  governors,  if  you  could  ask  them,  would  at  once 
confirm  what  I  say.  My  first  impression  is,  a  heavy  and 
sorrowful  sense  of  the  general  feebleness  of  intellect  of 
that  portion  of  the  British  public  which  stands  in  need  of 
presentations  to  Christ's  Hospital.  This  feebleness  of 
intellect  is  mainly  shown  in  the  nearly  total  unconscious- 
ness of  the  writers  that  anybody  else  may  want  a  present- 
ation, beside  themselves.  With  the  exception  here  and 
there,  of  a  soldier's  or  a  sailor's  widow,  hardly  one  of 
them  seems  to  have  perceived  the  existence  of  any  distress 
in  the  world  but  their  own ;  none  know  what  they  are 
asking  for,  or  imagine,  unless  as  a  remote  contingency,  the 
possibility  of  its  having  been  promised  at  a  prior  date. 
The  second  most  distinct  impression  on  my  mind  is,  that 
the  portion  of  the  British  public  which  is  in  need  ol 
presentations  to  Christ's  Hospital,  considers  it  a  merit 
to  have  large  families,  with  or  without  the  means  of 
supporting  them ! 

l^ow  it  happened  also  (and  remember,  all  this  is 
strictly  true,  nor  in  the  slightest  particular  represented 
otherwise  than  as  it  chanced ;  though  the  said  chance 
brought  thus  together  exactly  the  evidence  I  wanted  for 


134  TIME   AND   TroE. 

my  letter  to  you)  it  happened,  I  say,  that  on  this  same 
morning  of  the  10th  April,  I  became  accidentally  ac- 
quainted with  a  case  of  quite  a  different  kind :  that  of  a 
noble  girl,  who,  engaged  at  sixteen,  and  having  re- 
ceived several  advantageous  offers  since,  has  remained 
for  ten  years  faithful  to  her  equally  faithful  lover ;  while, 
their  circumstances  rendering  it,  as  they  rightly  con- 
sidered, unjustifiable  in  them  to  think  of  marriage,  each 
of  them  simply  and  happily,  aided  and  cheered  by  the 
other's  love,  discharged  the  duties  of  their  own  separate 
positions  in  life. 

In  the  nature  of  things,  instances  of  this  kind  of  noble 
life  remain  more  or  less  concealed  (while  imprudence  and 
error  proclaim  themselves  by  misfortune),  but  they  are  as- 
suredly not  unfrequent  in  our  English  homes.  Let  us 
next  observe  the  political  and  national  result  of  these 
arrangements.  You  leave  your  marriages  to  be  settled  by 
"  supply  and  demand,"  instead  of  wholesome  law.  And 
thus  among  your  youths  and  maidens,  the  improvident, 
incontinent,  selfish,  and  foolish  ones  marry  whether  you 
will  or  not ;  and  beget  families  of  children,  necessarily  in- 
heritors in  a  great  degree  of  these  parental  dispositions ; 
and  for  whom  supposing  they  had  the  best  dispositions  in 
the  world,  you  have  thus  provided,  by  way  of  educators, 
the  foolishest  fathers  and  mothers  you  could  find  (the  only 


LETTER   XX. EOSE-GAEDENS.  135 

rational  sentence  in  their  letters,  usually,  is  the  invari- 
able one,  in  which  they  declare  themselves  "  incapable  of 

providing  for  their  children's  education  ").     On  the  other 

« 

hand,  whosoever  is  wise,  patient,  unselfish,  and  pure, 
among  your  youth,  you  keep  maid  or  bachelor ;  wasting 
their  best  days  of  natural  life  in  painfu^  sacrifice,  forbid- 
ding them  their  best  help  and  best  reward,  and  carefully 
excluding  their  prudence  and  tenderness  from  any  offices 
of  parental  duty. 

Is  this  not  a  beatific  and  beautifully  sagacious  sys- 
tem for  a  Celestial  Empire,  such  as  that  of  these  British 
Isles  ? 

I  will  not  here  enter  into  any  statement  of  the  physical 
laws  which  it  is  the  province  of  our  physicians  to  explain  ; 
and  which  are  indeed  at  last  so  far  beginning  to  be  under- 
stood, that  there  is  hope  of  the  nation's  giving  some  of  the 
attention  to  the  conditions  affecting  the  race  of  man,  which 
it  has  hitherto  bestowed  only  on  those  which  may  better 
its  races  of  cattle. 

It  is  enough,  I  think,  to  say  here  that  the  beginning  of 
all  sanitary  and  moral  law  is  in  the  regulation  of  marriage, 
and  that,  ugly  and  fatal  as  is  every  form  and  agency  of 
license,  no  licentiousness  is  so  mortal  as  licentiousness  in 
marriage. 

Briefly,  then,  and  in  main  points,  subject  in  minor  ones 


136  TIMB   AND   TIDE. 

to  Buch  modifications  in  detail  as  local  circumstances  and 
characters  would  render  expedient,  these  following  are 
laws  such  as  a  prudent  nation  would  institute  respecting 
its  marriages,  permission  to  marry  should  be  the  reward 
held  in  sight  of  its  youth  during  the  entire  latter  part  of 
the  course  of  their  education ;  and  it  should  be  granted  as 
the  national  attestation  that  the  first  portion  of  their  lives 
had  been  rightfully  fulfilled.  It  should  not  be  attainable 
without  earnest  and  consistent  effort,  though  put  within 
the  reach  of  all  who  were  willing  to  make  such  effort ;  and 
the  granting  of  it  should  be  a  public  testimony  to  the  fact, 
that  the  youth  or  maid  to  whom  it  was  given  had  lived 
within  their  proper  sphere,  a  modest  and  virtuous  life,  and 
had  attained  such  skill  in  their  proper  handicraft,  and  in 
arts  of  household  economy,  as  might  give  well-founded 
expectations  of  their  being  able  honourably  to  maintain 
and  teach  their  children.) 

No  girl  should  receive  her  permission  to  marry  before 
her  ITth  birthday,  nor  any  youth  before  his  2l8t ;  and  it 
should  be  a  point  of  somewhat  distinguished  honour  with 
both  sexes  to  gain  their  permission  of  marriage  in  the  18th 
and  22d  year;  and  a  recognized  disgrace  not  to  have 
gained  it  at  least  before  the  close  of  their  2l8t  and  24th. 
I  do  not  mean  that  they  should  in  any  wise  hasten  actual 
marriage ;  but  only  that  they  should  iiold  it  a  point  of 


LETTER   XX. B08I>-aAJU)ENB.  137 

honour  to  have  the  right  to  marry.  In  every  year  there 
should  be  two  festivals,  one  on  the  first  of  May,  and  one 
at  the  feast  of  harvest  home  in  each  district,  at  which  fes- 
tivals their  permissions  to  marry  should  be  given  publicly 
to  the  maidens  and  youths  who  had  won  them  in  that  half 
year ;  and  they  should  be  crowned,  the  maids  by  the  old 
French  title  of  Eosi^res,  and  the  youths,  perhaps  by  some 
name  rightly  derived  from  one  supposed  signification  of 
the  word  '^  bachelor  "  "  laurel  fruit,"  and  so  led  in  joyful 
procession,  with  music  and  singing,  through  the  city  street 
or  village  lane,  and  the  day  ended  with  feasting  of  the 
poor :  but  not  with  feasting  theirs,  except  quietly,  at  their 
homes. 

/A.nd  every  bachelor  and  rosiere  should  be  entitled  to 
claim,  if  they  needed  it,  according  to  their  position  in  life, 
a  fixed  income  from  the  State,  for  seven  years  from  the 
day  of  their  marriage,  for  the  setting  up  of  their  homes  ; 
and  however  rich  they  might  be  by  inheritance,  their  in- 
come should  not  be  permitted  to  exceed  a  given  sum,  pro- 
portioned to  their  rank,  for  the  seven  years  following  that 
in  which  they  had  obtained  their  permission  to  marry,  but 
should  accumulate  in  the  trust  of  the  State,  until  that 
seventh  year,  in  which  they  should  be  put  (on  certain 
conditions)  finally  in  possession  of  their  property ;  and 
the  men,  thus  necessarily  not  before  their  twenty-eighth,- 


138  TIME   AND   TIDE. 

nor  usually  later  than  their  thirty-first  year,  become  eli- 
gible to  ofiices  of  State.  So  that  the  rich  and  poor  should 
not  be  sharply  separated  in  the  beginning  of  the  war  of 
life ;  but  the  one  supported  against  the  first  stress  of  it 
long  enough  to  enable  them  by  proper  forethought  and 
economy  to  secure  their  footing ;  and  the  other  trained 
somewhat  in  the  use  of  moderate  means,  before  they  were 
permitted  to  have  the  command  of  abundant  ones.  And 
of  the  sources  from  which  these  State  incomes  for  the 
married  poor  should  be  supplied,  or  of  the  treatment  of 
those  of  our  youth  whose  conduct  rendered  it  advisable  to 
refuse  them  permission  to  marry,  I  defer  what  I  have  to 
say  till  we  come  to  the  general  subjects  of  taxation  and 
criminal  discipline,  leaving  the  proposals  made  in  tliis 
letter  to  bear,  for  the  present,  whatever  aspect  of  mere 
romance  and  unrealiable  vision  they  probably  may,  and 
to  most  readers,  such  as  they  assuredly  will.  Nor  shall  I 
make  the  slightest  efibrt  to  redeem  them  from  these  im- 
putations; for  though  there  is  nothing  in  all  their  pur- 
port which  would  not  be  approved,  as  in  the  deepest  sense 
"practical" — by  the  "  Spirit  of  Paradise" — 

Which  gives  to  all  the  self-same  bent, 
Whose  lives  are  wise  and  innocent, 

'—and  though  I  know  that  national  justice  in  conduct. 


LETTEE    XX. ^ROSE-GARDENS.  139 

and  peace  in  heart,  could  by  no  other  laws  be  so  swiftly 
secured,  I  confess  with  much  disi^eace  of  heart,  that  both 
justice  and  happiness  have  at  this  day  become,  in  Eng- 
land, "romantic  impossibilities." 


Ccttcr  21. 

Of  the  Dignity  of  the  Four  Fine  Arts ;  and  of  the 
Proper  System  of  Retail  Trade. 

AprU  15,  1867. 

I  KETURN  now  to  the  part  of  the  subject  at  which 
I  was  interrupted — the  inquiry  as  to  the  proper  means 
of  finding  persons  willing  to  maintain  themselves  and 
others  by  degrading  occupations. 

That,  on  the  whole,  simply  manual  occupations  are 
degrading,  I  suppose  I  may  assume  you  to  admit;  at 
all  events,  the  fact  is  so,  and  I  suppose  few  general 
readers  will  have  any  doubt  of  it.* 

*  Many  of  my  working  readers  have  disputed  this  statement  eager- 
ly, feeling  the  good  effect  of  work  in  themselves  ;  but  observe,  I  only 
say,  simply  or  totaJdy  manual  work ;  and  that,  alone,  ia  degrading, 
though  often  in  measure  refreshing,  wholesome,  and  necessary. 
So  it  is  highly  necessary  and  wholesome  to  eat  sometimes ;  but  de- 
grading to  eat  all  day,  as  to  labour  with  the  hands  all  day.  But  it 
is  not  degrading  to  think  all  day — if  you  can.  A  highly  bred  court 
lady,  rightly  interested  in  politics  and  literature,  is  a  much  finer  type 
of  the  human  creature  than  a  servant  of  all  work,  however  olevtr 
and  honest. 


LETTER   XXI. GENTILLESSE.  141 

Granting  this,  it  follows  as  a  direct  consequence 
that  it  is  the  duty  of  all  persons  in  higher  stations  of 
life,  by  every  means  in  their  power,  to  diminish  their 
demand  for  work  of  such  kind,  and  to  Iwe  with  as 
little  aid  from  the  lower  trades  as  they  can  possibly 
contrive. 

I  suppose  you  see  that  this  conclusion  is  not  a  little 
at  variance  with  received  notions  on  political  economy  ? 
It  is  popularly  supposed  that  it  benefits  a  nation  to 
invent  a  w^ant.  But  the  fact  is,  that  the  true  benefit 
is  in  extinguishing  a  want — in  living  with  as  few 
wants  as  possible. 

I  cannot  tell  you  the  contempt  I  feel  for  the  common 
writers  on  political  economy,  in  their  stupefied  missing 
of  this  first  principle  of  all  human  economy — individual 
or  political — to  live,  namely,  with  as  few  wants  as  possi- 
ble, and  to  waste  nothing  of  what  is  given  you  to  sup- 
ply them. 

This  ought  to  be  the  first  lesson  of  every  rich  man's 
political  code.  "  Sir,"  his  tutor  should  early  say  to 
him,  "  you  are  so  placed  in  society — it  may  be  for  your 
misfortune,  it  inust  be  for  your  trial — that  you  are 
likely  to  be  maintained  all  your  life  by  the  labour  of 
other  men.  You  will  have  to  make  shoes  for  nobody, 
but  some  one  will  have  to  make  a  great  many  for  you. 


142  TIME   AND   TIDE. 

You  will  have  to  dig  ground  for  nobody,  but  some 
one  will  have  to  dig  through  every  summer's  hot  day 
for  you.  You  will  build  houses  and  make  clothes  for 
no  one,  but  many  a  rough  hand  must  knead  clay,  and 
many  an  elbow  be  crooked  to  the  stitch,  to  keep  that 
body  of  yours  warm  and  fine.  Kow  remember,  what- 
*ever  you  and  your  work  may  be  worth,  the  less  your 
keep  costs,  the  better.  It  does  not  cost  money  only. 
It  costs  degradation.  You  do  not  merely  employ  these 
people.  You  also  tread  upon  them.  It  cannot  be 
helped ; — ^you  have  your  place,  and  they  have  theirs ; 
but  see  that  you  tread  as  lightly  as  possible,  and  on  as 
few  as  possible.  Wliat  food,  and  clothes,  and  lodging, 
you  honestly  need,  for  your  health  and  peace,  you 
may  righteously  take.  See  that  you  take  the  plainest 
you  can  serve  yourself  with — that  you  waste  or  wear 
nothing  vainly; — and  that  you  employ  no  man  in  fur- 
nishing you  with  any  useless  luxury."  That  is  the  first 
lesson  of  Christian — or  human — economy;  and  depend 
upon  it,  my  friend,  it  is  a  sound  one,  and  lias  every 
voice  and  vote  of  the  spirits  of  Heaven  and  earth  to 
Ijack  it,  whatever  views  the  Mandiester  men,  or  any 
other  manner  of  men,  may  take  respecting  "  demand 
and  supply."  Demand  what  you  deserve,  and  you 
shall  be  supplied  with  it,  for  your  good.     Demand  wliat 


LETTER   XXI. GENTILLESSE.  143 

you  do  not  deserve,  and  you  shall  be  supplied  with 
something  which  you  have  not  demanded,  and  which 
I^ature  perceives  that  you  deserve,  quite  to  the  contrary 
of  your  good.  That  is  the  law  of  your  existence,  and 
if  you  do  not  make  it  the  law  of  your  resolved  acts — 
so  much,  precisely,  the  worse  for  you  and  all  connected 
with  you. 

Yet  observe,  though  it  is  out  of  its  proper  place 
said  here,  this  law  forbids  no  luxury  which  men  are^ 
not  degraded  in  providing.  You  may  have  Paul  Ver- 
onese to  paint  your  ceiling,  if  you  like,  or  Benvenuto 
Cellini  to  make  cups  for  you.  But  you  must  not 
employ  a  hundred  divers  to  find  beads  to  stitch  over 
your  sleeve.  (Did  you  see  the  account  of  the  sales 
of  the  Esterhazy  jewels  the  other  day  ?) 

And  the  degree  in  which  you  recognize  the  difference 
between  these  two  kinds  of  services,  is  precisely  what 
makes  the  difference  between  your  being  a  civilized  per-, 
son  or  a  barbarian.  If  you  keep  slaves  to  furnish  forth 
your  dress — to  glut  your  stomach — sustain  your  indolence 
— or  deck  your  pride,  you  are  a  barbarian.  If  you  keep 
servants,  properly  cared  for,  to  furnish  you  with  what  you 
verily  want,  and  no  more  than  that — ^you  are  a  "  civil " 
person — a  person  capable  of  the  qualities  of  citizenship. 
(Just  look  to  the  note  on  Liebig's  idea  that  civilization 


144  TIME    AND  TTOE. 

means  the  consumption  of  coal,  page  200  to  201  of  the 
Crown  of  Wild  Olive,*  and  please  observe  the  sentence 
at  the  end  of  it,  which  signifies  a  good  deal  of  what  I 
have  to  expand  here, — "Civilization  is  the  making  of 
civil  persons.") 

Now,  farther,  observe  that  in  a  truly  civilized  and  dis- 
ciplined state,  no  man  would  be  allowed  to  meddle  with 
any  material  who  did  not  know  how  to  make  the  best  of 
it.  In  other  words,  the  arts  of  working  in  wood,  clay, 
stone,  and  metal,  would  all  be  fine  arts  (working  in  iron 
for  machinery  becoming  an  entirely  distinct  business). 
There  would  be  no  joiner's  work,  no  smith's,  no  pottery 
nor  stone-cutting,  so  debased  in  character  as  to  be  entirely 
unconnected  with  the  finer  branches  of  the  same  art; 
and  to  at  least  one  of  these  finer  branches  (generally  in 
metal  work)  every  painter  and  sculptor  would  be  neces- 
sarily apprenticed  during  some  years  of  his  education. 
There  would  be  room,  in  these  four  trades  alone,  for 
nearly  every  grade  of  practical  intelligence  and  produc- 
tive imagination. 

But  it  should  not  be  artists  alone  who  are  exercised 
early  in  these  crafts.  It  would  be  part  of  my  scheme  of 
physical  education  that  every  youth  in  the  State — from 
the  King's  son   downwards — should  learn  to  do  some- 

•  Appendix  9. 


LETTEE   XXI. GENTILLESSE.  145 

thing  finely  and  thoroughly  with  his  hand,  so  as  to  let 
him  know  what  touch  meant ;  and  what  stout  craftman- 
ship  meant ;  and  to  inform  him  of  many  things  besides, 
which  no  man  can  learn  but  by  some  severely  accurate 
discipline  in  doing.  Let  him  once  learn  to  take  a  straight 
shaving  off  a  plank,  or  draw  a  fine  curve  w^ithout  falter- 
ing, or  lay  a  brick  level  in  its  mortar ;  and  he  has  learned 
a  multitude  of  other  matters  which  no  lips  of  man  could 
ever  teach  him.  He  might  choose  his  craft,  but  whatever 
it  was,  he  should  learn  it  to  some  sufficient  degree  of  true 
dexterity :  and  the  result  would  be,  in  after  life,  that 
among  the  middle  classes  a  good  deal  of  their  house 
furniture  would  be  made,  and  a  good  deal  of  rough  work, 
more  or  less  clumsily,  but  not  ineffectively,  got  through, 
by  the  master  himself  and  his  sons,  with  much  further- 
ance of  their  general  health  and  peace  of  mind,  and 
increase  of  innocent  domestic  pride  and  pleasure,  and  to 
the  extinction  of  a  greal  deal  of  vulgar  upholstery  and 
other  mean  handicraft. 

Farther.  A  great  deal  of  the  vulgarity,  and  nearly  all 
the  vice,  of  retail  commerce,  involving  the  degradation  of 
persons  occupied  in  it,  depends  simply  on  the  fact  that 
their  minds  are  always  occupied  by  the  vital  (or  rather 
mortal)  question  of  profits.  I  should  at  once  put  an  end 
to  this  source  of  baseness  by  making  all  retail  dealers 


146  TIME   AND   TIDE. 

merely  salaried  officers  in  the  employ  of  the  trade  giiilds ; 
the  stewards,  that  is  to  say,  of  the  saleable  properties  of 
those  guilds,  and  purveyors  of  such  and  such  articles  to  a 
given  number  of  families.  A  perfectly  well-educated  per- 
son might  without  the  least  degradation  hold  such  an 
office  as  this,  however  poorly  paid ;  and  it  would  be  pre- 
cisely the  fact  of  his  being  well  educated  which  would 
enable  him  to  fulfil  his  duties  to  the  public  without  the 
stimulus  of  direct  profit.  Of  course  the  current  objection 
to  such  a  system  would  be  that  no  man,  for  a  regularly 
paid  salary,  would  take  pains  to  please  his  customers; 
and  the  answer  to  that  objection  is,  that  if  you  can  train 
a  man  to  so  much  unselfishness  as  to  ofier  himself  fear- 
lessly to  the  chance  of  being  shot,  in  the  course  of 
his  daily  duty,  you  can  most  assuredly,  if  you  make  it 
also  a  point  of  honour  with  him,  train  him  to  the 
amount  of  self-denial  involved  in  looking  you  out  with 
care  such  a  piece  of  cheese  or  bacon  as  you  have  Jisked 
for. 

You  see  that  I  have  already  much  diminished  the 
number  of  emplo;y'ment8  involving  degradation ;  and 
raised  the  character  of  many  of  tliose  that  are  left. 
There  remain  to  be  considered  the  necessarily  painful  or 
mechanical  works  of  mining,  forging,  and  the  like:  the 
unclean,  noisome,   or  paltry  manufactures — the  various 


LETTER   XXI.- 


^ENTILLESSE.  147 


kinds   of   transport — (by  merchant  shipping,  etc.) — and 
the  conditions  of  menial  service. 

It  will  facilitate  the  examination  of  these  if  we  put 
them  for  the  moment  aside,  and  pass  to  the  other  division 
of  our  dilemma,  the  question,  namely,  what  kind  of  lives 
our  gentlemen  and  ladies  are  to  live,  for  whom  all  this 
hard  work  is  to  be  done. 


Ccttcr  22. 

Of  the  normal  Position  and  Duties  of  the  TJjpjper  Classes, 
— General  Statement  of  the  Land  Question. 

A'prH  17,  1867. 

In  passing  now  to  the  statement  of  conditions  affecting 
the  interests  of  the  upper  classes,  I  would  rather  have 
addressed  these  closing  letters  to  one  of  themselves  than 
to  you,  for  it  is  with  their  own  faults  and  needs  that  each 
class  is  primarily  concerned.  As  however,  unless  I  kept 
the  letters  private,  this  change  of  their  address  would  be 
but  a  matter  of  courtesy  and  form,  not  of  any  true  pru- 
dential use ;  and  as  besides  I  am  now  no  more  inclined  to 
reticence — prudent  or  otherwise ;  but  desire  only  to  state 
the  facts  of  our  national  economy  as  clearly  and  com- 
pletely as  may  be,  I  pursue  the  subject  without  respect 
of  persons. 

Before  examining  what  the  occupation  and  estate  of 
the  upper  classes  ought,  as  far  as  may  reasonably  be  con- 
jectured, finally  to  become,  it  will  be  well  to  set  down  in 
brief  terms  what  they  actually  have  been  in  past  ages : 


LETTEE    XXn. ^THE   MASTER.  149 

for  this,  in  many  respects,  they  must  also  always  be. 
The  upper  classes,  broadly  speaking,  are  always  origi- 
nally composed  of  the  best-bred  (in  the  merely  animal 
sense  of  the  term),  the  most  energetic,  and  most  thought- 
ful, of  the  population,  who  either  by  strength  of  arm 
seize  the  land  from  the  rest,  and  make  slaves  of  them,  or 
bring  desert  land  into  cultivation,  over  which  they  have 
therefore,  within  certain  limits,  true  personal  right ;  or 
by  industry,  accumulate  other  property,  or  by  choice 
devote  themselves  to  intellectual  pursuits,  and,  though 
poor,  obtain  an  acknowledged  superiority  of  position, 
shown  by  benefits  conferred  in  discovery,  or  in  teaching, 
or  in  gifts  of  art.  This  is  all  in  the  simple  coui'se  of  the 
law  of  nature;  and  the  proper  ofiices  of  the  upper 
classes,  thus  distinguished  from  the  rest,  become,  there- 
fore, in  the  main  threefold : — 

(A)  Those  who  are  strongest  of  arm  have  for  their 
proper  function  the  restraint  and  punishment  of  vice,  and 
the  general  maintenance  of  law  and  order ;  releasing  only 
from  its  original  subjection  to  their  power  that  which 
truly  deserves  to  be  emancipated. 

(B)  Those  who  are  superior  by  forethought  and  indus- 
try, have  for  their  function  to  be  the  providences  of  the 
foolish,  the  weak,  and  the  idle ;  and  to  establish  such  sys- 
tems of  trade  and  distribution  of  goods  as  shall  preserve 


150  TIME   AND   TIDE. 

the  lower  orders  from  perishing  bv  famine,  or  any  other 
consequence  of  their  carelessness  or  folly,  and  to  bring 
them  all,  according  to  each  man's  capacity,  at  last  into 
some  harmonious  industry. 

(C)  The  thu'd  class,  of  scholars  and  artists,  of  course 
have  for  function  the  teaching  and  delighting  of  the  infe- 
rior multitude. 

The  office  of  the  upper  classes,  then,  as  a  body,  is  to 
keep  order  among  their  inferiors,  and  raise  them  always 
to  the  nearest  level  with  themselves  of  which  those  infe- 
riors are  capable.  So  far  as  tliey  are  thus  occupied,  they 
are  invariably  loved  and  reverenced  intensely  by  all  be- 
neath them,  and  reach,  themselves,  the  highest  types  of 
human  power  and  beauty. 

This,  then,  being  the  natural  ordinance  and  function 
of  aristocracy,  its  corruption,  like  that  of  all  other  beau- 
tiful things  under  the  Devil's  touch,  is  a  very  fearful  one. 
Its  corruption  is,  that  those  who  ought  to  be  the  rulers 
and  guides  of  the  people,  forsake  their  task  of  painful 
honourableness ;  seek  their  own  pleasure  and  pre-emi- 
nence only;  and  use  their  power,  subtlety,  conceded 
influence,  prestige  of  ancestry,  and  mechanical  instru- 
mentality of  martial  power,  to  make  the  lower  orders  toil 
for  them,  and  feed  and  clothe  them  for  nothing,  and  be- 
come in  various  ways  their  living  property,  goods,  and 


LETTER    XXn. THE   MASTER.  151 

chattels,  even  to  the  point  of  utter  regardlessness  of 
whatever  misery  these  serfs  may  suffer  through  such 
insolent  domination,  or  they  themselves,  their  masters, 
commit  of  crime  to  enforce  it. 

And  this  is  especially  likely  to  be  the  case  when  means 
of  various  and  tempting  pleasure  are  put  within  the 
reach  of  the  upper  classes  by  advanced  conditions  of 
national  commerce  and  knowledge :  and  it  is  certain  to 
be  the  case  as  soon  as  position  among  those  upper  classes 
becomes  any  way  purchaseable  with  money,  instead  of 
being  the  assured  measure  of  some  kind  of  worth  (either 
strength  of  hand,  or  true  wisdom  of  conduct,  or  imagina- 
tive gift).  It  has  been  becoming  more  and  more  the 
condition  of  the  aristocracy  of  Europe,  ever  since  the 
fifteenth  century;  and  is  gradually  bringing  about  its 
ruin,  and  in  that  ruin,  checked  only  by  the  power  which 
here  and  there  a  good  soldier  or  true  statesman  achieves 
over  the  putrid  chaos  of  its  vain  policy,  the  ruin  of  all 
beneath  it ;  which  can  be  arrested  only,  either  by  the 
repentance  of  that  old  aristocracy  (hardly  to  be  hoped), 
or  by  the  stern  substitution  of  other  aristocracy  worthier 
than  it.  Con-upt  as  it  may  be,  it  and  its  laws  together,  I 
would  at  this  moment,  if  I  could,  fasten  every  one  of  its 
institutions  down  with  bands  of  iron  and  trust  for  all 
progress    and  help   against   its   tyranny   simply   to   the 


152  TIME    AND   TIDE. 

patience  and  strength  of  private  conduct.  (And  if  I  had 
to  choose,  I  would  tenfold  rather  see  the  tyranny  of  old 
Austria  triumphant  in  the  old  and  new  worlds,  and  trust 
to  the  chance  (or  rather  the  distant  certainty)  of  some 
day  seeing  a  true  Emperor  born  to  its  throne,  than,  with 
every  privilege  of  thought  and  act,  run  the  most  distant 
risk  of  seeing  the  thoughts  of  the  people  of  Germany 
and  England  become  like  the  thoughts  of  the  people  of 
America.*) 

*  \Mj  American  friends,  of  whom  one,  Charles  Eliot  Norton,  of  Cam- 
bridge, is  the  best  I  have  in  the  world,  tell  me  I  know  nothing  about 
America.  It  may  be  so,  and  they  must  do  me  the  justice  to  observe 
that  I,  therefore,  usually  sap  nothing  about  America.  But  this  I  say, 
because  (^he  Americans  as  a  nation  set  their  trust  in  liberty  and  in 
equality,  of  which  I  detest  the  one,  and  deny  the  possibilily  of  the 
other  j  and  because,  also,  as  a  nation,  they  are  wholly  undesirous  of 
Rest,  and  incapable  of  it ;  irreverent  of  themselves,  both  in  the  pres- 
ent and  in  the  future ;  discontented  with  what  they  are,  yet  having  no 
ideal  of  anything  which  they  desire  to  become,  as  the  tide  of  the 
troubled  sea,  when  it  cannot  rest. 

Some  following  passages  in  this  letter,  containing  personal  references 
which  might,  in  permanence,  have  given  pain  or  offence,  are  now 
omitted — the  substance  of  them  being  also  irrelevant  to  my  main  pur- 
pose. These  few  words  about  the  American  war,  with  which  they  con- 
cluded, are,  I  think,  worth  retaining : — ' '  All  methods  of  right  Govom- 
ment  are  to  be  commimicated  to  foreign  nations  by  perfectness  of 
example  and  gentleness  of  patiently  expanded  power,  not  suddenly,  nor 


LETTER    XXn.— THE   MASTER.  153 

But,  however  corrupted,  tlip  aristocracy  of  any  nation 
may  thus  be  always  divided  inijo  three  great  classes.  First, 
the  landed  proprietors  and  soldiers,  essentially  one  politi- 
cal body  (for  the  possession  of  land  can  only  be  maintained 
by  military  power) ;  secondly,  the  monied  men  and  leaders 
of  commerce ;  thirdly,  the  professional  men  and  masters  in 
science,  art,  and  literatm^e. 

And  we  were  to  consider  the  proper  duties  of  all  these, 
and  the  laws  probably  expedient  respecting  them.  Where- 
upon, in  the  outset  we  are  at  once  brought  face  to  face 
with  the  great  land  question. 

Great  as  it  may  be,  it  is  wholly  subordinate  to  those  we 
have  hitherto  been  considering.  The  laws  you  make 
regarding  methods  of  labour,  or  to  secure  the  genuineness 
of  the  things  produced  by  it,  affect  the  entire  moral  state 
of  the  nation,  and  all  possibility  of  human  happiness  for 
them.  The  mode  of  distribution  of  the  land  only  affects 
their  numbers.     By  this  or  that  law  respecting  land,  you 

at  tlie  bayonet's  point.     And  thougli  it  is  the  duty  of  every  nation  to 

interfere,  at  bayonet  point,  if  tbey  have  the  strength  to  do  so,  to  save 

any  oppressed  multitude,  or  even  individual,  from  manifest  violence,  it 

it  is  wholly  unlawful  to  interfere  in  such  matter,  except  with  sacredly 

pledged  limitation  of  the  objects  to  be  accomplished  in  the  oppressed 

person's  favour,  and  with  absolute  refusal  of  all  selfish  advantage  and 

increase  of  territory  or  of  political  power  which  might  otherwise  accrue 

from  the  victory." 

7* 


154  TIME   AND   TTOE. 

decide  whether  the  nation  shall  consist  of  fifty  or  of  a  hun- 
dred millions.  But  bj  this  or  that  law  respecting  work, 
you  decide  whether  the  given  number  of  millions  shall  be 
rogues,  or  honest  men ; — shall  be  wretches,  or  happy  men. 
And  the  question  of  numbers  is  wholly  immaterial,  com- 
pared with  that  of  character ;  or  rather,  its  own  material- 
ness  depends  on  the  prior  determination  of  character. 
Make  your  nation  consist  of  knaves,  and,  as  Emerson  said 
long  ago,  it  is  but  the  cde  of  any  other  vermin — "  the 
more,  the  worse."  Or,  tb  put  the  matter  in  narrower 
limits,  it  is  a  matter  of  no  final  concern  to  any  pai'ent 
whether  he  shall  have  two  children,  or  four ;  but  matter 
of  quite  final  concern  /whether  those  he  has,  shall, 
or  shall  not,  deserve  to  be  hanged.  Tlie  great  difficulty  in 
dealing  witli  the  land  qilestion  at  all  arises  from  the  false, 
though  very  natural,  notion  on  the  part  of  many  reformers, 
and  of  large  bodies  of  the  poor,  that  the  division  of  the 
land  among  the  said  poor  would  be  an  immediate  and 
everlasting  relief  to  them.  An  immediate  relief  it  would 
be  to  the  extent  of  a  small  annual  sum  (you  may  easily 
calculate  how  little,  if  you  choose)  to  eacli  of  them ;  on  the 
strength  of  which  accession  to  their  finances,  tliey  would 
multiply  into  as  much  extra  personality  as  the  extra  pence 
would  sustain,  and  at  that  point  be  checked  by  starvation, 
exactly  as  they  are  now. 


LETTEK    XXn. THE   MASTER.  155 

Any  other  form  of  pillage  would  benefit  them  only 
in  like  manner ;  and  in  reality  the  difiicult  part  of  the 
question  respecting  numbers  is,  not  where  they  shall  be 
arrested,  but  what  shall  be  the  method   of   their   arrest. 

An  island  of  a  certain  size  has  standing  room  only  for 
so  many  people ;  feeding  ground  for  a  great  many  fewer 
than  could  stand  on  it.  Reach  the  limits  of  your  feeding 
ground,  and  you  must  cease  to  multiply,  must  emigrate, 
or  starve.  The  modes  in  which  the  pressure  is  gradually 
brought  to  bear  on  the  population  depend  on  the  justice 
of  your  laws ;  but  the  pressure  itself  must  come  at  last, 
whatever  the  distribution  of  the  land.  And  arithme- 
ticians seem  to  me  a  little  slow  to  remark  the  importance 
of  the  old  child's  puzzle  about  the  nails  in  the  horseshoe 
— when  it  is  populations  that  are  doubling  themselves, 
instead  of  farthings. 

The  essential  land  question  then  is  to  be  treated  quite 
separately  from  that  of  the  methods  of  restriction  of 
population.  The  land  question  is — At  what  point  will 
you  resolve  to  stop  ?  It  is  separate  matter  of  discussion 
how  you  are  to  stop  at  it. 

And  this  essential  land  question — "  At  what  point  wdll 
you  stop  ? " — is  itself  twofold.  You  have  to  consider 
first,  by  w^hat  methods  of  land  distribution  you  can 
maintain   the   greatest   number  of  healthy  persons ;  and 


166  TIME  'and  tide. 

secondly,  whether,  if  by  any  other  mode  of  distribution 
and  relative  ethical  laws,  you  can  raise  their  character, 
while  you  diminish  their  numbers,  such  sacrifice  should 
be  made,  and  to  what  extent  ?  I  think  it  will  be  better, 
for  clearness  sake,  to  end  this  letter  with  the  putting  of 
these  two  queries  in  their  decisive  form,  and  to  reserve 
suggestions  of  answer  for  my  next. 


Ccttcr  23. 

Of    the    Just    Tenure    of    Lands:    and    the  p7'oj>er 
Functions  of  high  Public    Officers. 

20ih  April,  1867. 

I  MUST  repeat  to  you,  once  more,  before  I  proceed, 
that  I  only  enter  on  this  part  of  our  inquiry  to  com- 
plete the  sequence  of  its  system  and  explain  fully  the 
bearing  of  former  conclusions,  and  not  for  any  imme- 
diately practicable  good  to  be  got  out  of  the  investiga- 
tion. Whatever  I  have  hitherto  urged  upon  you,  it 
is  in  the  power  of  all  men  quietly  to  promote,  and 
finally  to  secure,  by  the  patient  resolution  of  personal 
conduct;  but  no  action  could  be  taken  in  redistribu- 
tion of  land,  or  in  limitation  of  the  incomes  of  the 
upper  classes,  without  grave  and  prolonged  civil  dis- 
turbance. 

Such  disturbance,  however,  is  only  too  likely  to  take 
place,  if  the  existing  theories  of  political  economy  are 
allowed  credence  much  longer.  In  the  writings  of 
the  vulgar  economists,  nothing  more  excites  my  indig- 


158  TIME   AKD   TIDE. 

nation  than  the  subterfuges  by  which  they  endeavour  to 
accommodate  their  pseudo-science  to  the  existing  abuses 
of  wealth  by  disguising  the  true  nature  of  rent.  I 
will  not  waste  time  in  exposing  their  fallacies,  but 
will  j)ut  the  truth  for  you  into  as  clear  a  shape  as 
I  can.  * 

Kent,  of  whatever  kind,  is,  briefly,  the  price  continu- 
ously paid  for  the  loan  of  the  property  of  another  person. 
It  may  be  too  little,  or  it  may  be  just,  or  exorbitant, 
or  altogether  unjustifiable,  according  to  circumstances. 
Exorbitant  rents  can  only  be  exacted  from  ignorant 
or  necessitous  rent  payers ;  and  it  is  one  of  the  most 
necessary  conditions  of  state  economy  that  there  should 
be  clear  laws  to  prevent  such  exaction. 

I  may  interrupt  myself  for  a  moment  to  give  you 
an  instance  of  what  I  mean.  The  most  wretched 
houses  of  the  poor  in  London  often  pay  ten  or  fifteen 
per  cent,  to  the  landlord;,  and  I  have  known  an  instance 
of  sanitary  legislation  being  hindered,  to  the  loss  of  many 
hundreds  of  lives,  in  order  that  the  rents  of  a  noble- 
man, derived  from  the  necessities  of  the  poor,  might 
not  be  diminished.  And  it  is  a  curious  .thing  to  me  to 
see  Mr.  J.  S.  Mill  foaming  at  the  mouth,  and  really 
afflicted  conscientiously,  because  he  supposes  one  man 
to  have  been  unjustly  hanged,  while  by  hia  own  failure 


LETIEK   XXIII. LAND3IAKKS.  159 

(I  believe,  wilful  failure)  in  stating  clearly  to  the 
public  one  of  the  first  elementary  truths  of  the  science 
he  professes,  he  is  aiding  and  abetting  the  commission 
of  the  cruellest  possible  form  of  murder  on  many  thou- 
sands of  persons  yearly,  for  the  sake  simply  of  putting 
money  into  'the  pockets  of  the  landlords.  I  felt  this^ 
evil  so  strongly  that  I  bought,  in  the  worst  part  of 
London,  one  freehold  and  one  leasehold  property,  con- 
sisting of  houses  inhabited  by  the  lowest  poor ;  in  order 
to  try  what  change  in  their  comfort  and  habits  I  could 
effect  by  taking  only  a  just  rent,  but  that  firmly.  The 
houses  of  the  leasehold  pay  me  ^yq  per  cent. ;  the 
families  that  used  to  have  one  room  in  them  have  now 
two ;  and  are  more  orderly  and  hopeful  besides ;  and 
there  is  a  surplus  still  on  the  rents  they  pay,  after  'I 
have  taken  my  five  per  cent.,  with  which,  if  all  goes 
well,  they  will  eventually  be  able  to  buy  twelve  years 
of  the  lease  from  me.  The  freehold  pays  three  per  cent., 
with  similar  results  in  the  comfort  of  the  tenant.  This 
is  merely  an  example  of  what  might  be  done  by  firm 
State  action  in  such  matters. 

Next,  of  wholly  unjustifiable  rents.  These  are  for 
things  which  are  not,  and  which  it  is  criminal  to  consider 
as,  personal  or  exchangeable  property.  Bodies  of  men, 
land,  water,  and  air,  are  the  principal  of  these  things. 


160  TIME   AND  TIDE. 

Parenthetically,  may  I  ask  you  to  observe,  that  though 
a  fearless  defender  of  some  forms  of  slavery,  I  am  no 
defender  of  the  slave  invade.  It  is  by  a  blundering  con- 
fusion of  ideas  between  governing  men,  and  trading  in 
men,  and  by  consequent  interference  with  the  restraint, 
instead  of  only  with  the  sale,  that  most  of  the  great 
errors  in  action  have  been  caused  among  the  emancipa- 
tion men.  I  am  prepared,  ^if  the  need  be  clear  to  my 
own  mind,  and  if  the  power  is  in  my  hands,  to  throw 
men  into  prison,  or  any  other  captivity — to  bind  them 
or  to  beat  them — and  force  them  for  such  periods,  as 
I  may  judge  necessary,  to  any  kind  of  irksome  labour ; 
and  on  occasion  of  desperate  resistance,  to  hang  or  shoot 
them.     But  I  will  not  sell  them. 

•  Bodies  of  men,  or  women,  then  (and  much  more,  as  I 
said  before,  their  souls),  must  not  be  bought  or  sold. 
Neither  must  land,  nor  water,  nor  air. 

Yet  all  these  may  on  certain  terms  be  bound,  or  secured 
in  possession,  to  particular  persons  under  certain  condi- 
tions. For  instance,  it  may  be  proper  at  a  certain  time, 
to  give  a  man  permission  to  possess  land,  as  you  give 
him  permission  to  marry ;  and  farther,  if  he  wishes  it 
and  works  for  it,  to  secure  to  him  the  land  needful  for 
his  life,  as  you  secure  his  wife  to  him ;  and  make  both 
utterly  his  own,  without   in   the   least    admitting    his 


LETTER   XXni. — LANDMARKS.  161 

right  to  buy  other  people's  wives,  or  fields,  or  to  sell  his 
own. 

And  the  right  action  of  a  State  respecting  its  land  is, 
indeed,  to  secure  it  in  various  portions  to  those  of  its 
citizens  who  deserve  to  be  trusted  with  it,  according  to 
their  respective  desires,  and  proved  capacities  ;  and  after 
having  so  secured  it  to  each,  to  exercise  only  such  vig- 
ilance over  his  treatment  of  it  as  the  State  must  give 
also  to  his  treatment  of  his  wife  and  servants;  for  the 
most  part  leaving  him  free,  but  interfering  in  cases  of 
gross  mismanagement  or  abuse  of  power.  T  And  in  the 
case  of  great  old  families,  which  always  ought  to  be,  and 
in  some  measure,  however  decadent,  still  truly  are,  the 
noblest  monumental  architecture  of  the  kingdom,  living 
temples  of  sacred  tradition  and  hero's  religion,  so  much 
land  ought  to  be  granted  to  them  in  perpetuity  as 
may  enable  them  to  live  thereon  with  all  circumstances  of 
state  and  outward  nobleness  •)  hut  their  incmne  must  in 
no  wise  he  derived  from  the  rents  of  it,  nor  must  they 
be  occupied  (even  in  the  most  distant  or  subordinately 
administered  methods),  in  the  exaction  of  rents.  That 
is  not  noblemen's  work.  /  Their  income  must  be  fixed, 
and  paid  them  by  the  State,  as  the  Bang's  isX 

So  far  from  their  land  being  to  them  a  source  of  in- 
come, it  should  be  on  the  whole  costly  to  them,  being 


162  TIME   AND   TIDE. 

kept  over  great  part  of  it  in  conditions  of  natural  grace, 
which  return  no  rent  but  their  loveliness;  and  the  rest 
made,  at  whatever  cost,  exemplary  in  perfection  of  such 
agriculture  as  developes  the  happiest  peasant  life ;  agri- 
cultm-e  which,  as  I  w^ill  show  you  hereafter,  must  reject 
the  aid  of  all  mechanism  except  that  of  instruments 
guided  solely  by  the  human  hand,  or  by  animal,  or  di- 
rectly natm'al  forces ;  and  which,  therefore,  cannot  com- 
y^  pete  for  profitableness  with  agriculture  carried  on  by  aid 
of  machinery. 

And  now  for  the  occupation  of  this  body  of  men, 
maintained  at  fixed  perennial  cost  of  the  State. 

You  know  I  said  I  should  want  no  soldiere  of  special 
skill  or  pugnacity,  for  all  my  boys  would  be  soldiers. 
But  I  assuredly  want  captains  of  soldiers,  of  special  skill 
and  pugnacity.  And  also,  I  said  I  should  strongly  object 
to  the  appearance  of  any  lawyers  in  my  territory.  Mean- 
ing, however,  by  lawyers,  people  who  live  by  arguing  about 
law — not  people  appointed  to  administer  law ;  and  people 
who  live  by  eloquently  misrepresenting  facts — not  people 
appointed  to  discover  and  plainly  represent  them. 

Therefore,  tlie  youth  of  this  landed  aristocracy  are  to 
be  trained  in  my  schools  to  these  two  great  callings,  not 
hy  which,  but  in  whicli,  they  are  to  livei 

They  are  to  be  trained,  all  of  them,  in  perfect  science 


LETTER  -XXni. LANDMARKS.  163 

of  war,  and  in  perfect  science  of  essential  law.  And 
from  their  body  are  to  be  chosen  the  captains  and  the 
judges  of  England,  its  advocates,  and  generally  its  State 
officers,  all  such  functions  being  held  for  fixed  pay  (as 
already  our  officers  of  the  Church  and  army  are  paid), 
and  no  function  connected  with  the  administration  of  law 
ever  paid  by  casual  fee.  And  the  head  of  such  family 
shoidd,  in  his  own  right,  having  passed  due  (and  high) 
examination  in  the  science  of  law,  and  not  otherwise,  be 
a  judge,  law -ward  or  Lord,  having  jurisdiction  both  in 
civil  and  criminal  cases,  such  as  our  present  judges  have, 
after  such  case  shall  have  been  fully  represented  before, 
and  received  verdict  from,  a  jury,  composed  exclusively 
of  the  middle  or  lower  orders,  and  in  which  no  member 
of  the  aristocracy  should  sit.  But  from  the  decision  of 
these  juries,  or  from  the  Lord's  sentence,  there  should  be 
a  final  appeal  to  a  tribunal,  the  highest  in  the  land,  held 
solely  in  the  King's  name,  and  over  which,  in  the  capital, 
the  King  himself  should  preside,  and  therein  give  judg- 
ment on  a  fixed  number  of  days  in  each  year ;  and  in 
other  places  and  at  other  times.  Judges  appointed  by  elec- 
tion (under  certain  conditions)  out  of  any  order  of  men 
in  the  State  (the  election  being  national,  not  provincial), 
and  all  causes  brought  before  these  judges  should  be 
decided,  without  appeal,  by  their  own  authority ;  not  by 


164  TIME   AND  TIDE. 

juries.     This,  then,  recasting  it  for  you  into  brief  view, 
would  be  the  entire  scheme  of  State  authorities : — 

1.  The  King :  exercising,  as  part  both  of  his  preroga- 
tive and  his  duty,  the  office  of  a  supreme  judge  at  stated 
times  in  the  central  court  of  appeal  of  his  kingdom. 

2.  Supreme  judges  appointed  by  national  election ; 
exercising  sole  authority  in  courts  of  final  appeal. 

3.  Ordinary  judges,  holding  the  office  hereditarily 
under  conditions ;  and  with  power  to  add  to  their  num- 
ber (and  liable  to  have  it  increased  if  necessary  by  the 
King's  appointment):  the  office  of  such  judges  being 
to  administer  the  national  laws  under  the  decision  of 
juries. 

4.  State  officei-s  charged  with  the  direction  of  public 
agency  in  matters  of  public  utility. 

5.  Bishops,  charged  with  offices  of  supervision  and  aid, 
to  family  by  family,  and  person  by  person. 

6.  The  officers  of  war,  of  various  ranks. 

7.  The  officers  of  public  instruction,  of  various  ranks. 
I  have  sketched  out  this  scheme  for  you  somewhat 

prematurely,  for  I  would  rather  have  conducted  you  to 
it  step  by  step,  and  as  I  brought  forward  the  reasons  fdr 
the  several  parts  of  it ;  but  it  is  on  other  grounds  de- 
sirable that  you  should  have  it  to  refer  to,  as  I  go  on. 
Without  depending  anywise  upon   nomenclature,  yet 


LETTER   XXin. LAl^^DMAItKS.  165 

holding  it  important  as  a  sign  and  record  of  the  mean- 
ings of  things,  I  may  tell  you  further  that  I  should  call 
the  elected  supreme  Judgesf^'  Princes ; "  the  hereditary 
Judges,  "Lords;"  and  the  officers  of  public  guidance, 
"  Dukes ; "  and  that  the  social  rank  of  these  persons 
would  be  very  closely  correspondent  to  that  implied  by 
such  titles  under  our  present  constitution ;  only  much 
more  real  and  useful.  And  in  conclusion  of  this  letter, 
I  will  but  add,  that  if  you,  or  other  readers,  think  it  idle 
of  me  to  write  or  dream  of  such  things ;  as  if  any  of 
them  were  in  our  power,  or  within  possibility  of  any 
near  realisation,  and  above  all,  vain  to  write  of  them  to 
a  workman  at  Sunderland :  you  are  to  remember  w^hat  I 
told  you  at  the  beginning,  that  I  go  on  with  this  part  of 
my  subject  in  some  fulfilment  of  my  long-conceived  plan, 
too  large  to  receive  at  present  any  deliberate  execution 
from  my  failing  strength  (being  the  body  of  the  work 
to  which  "  Munera  Pulveris "  was  intended  merely  for 
an  introduction) ;  and  that  I  address  it  to  you  be- 
cause I  know  that  the  working  men  of  England  must 
for  some  time  be  the  only  body  to  which  we  can  look 
for  resistance  to  the  deadly  influence  of  monied  power. 
I  intend,  however,  to  write  to  you  at  tliis  moment 
one  more  letter,  partly  explanatory  of  minor  details 
necessarily  omitted  in   this,   and   chiefly  of  the  proper 


166  TIME   AND   TIDE. 

office  of  the  soldier ;  and  then  I  must  delay  the  com- 
pletion of  even  this  poor  task  until  after  the  days  have 
turned,  for  I  have  quite  other  work  to  do  in  the  bright- 
ness of  the  full-opened  spring. 

P.S. — As  I  have  used  somewhat  strong  language,  both 
here  and  elsewhere,  of  the  equivocations  of  the  econo- 
mists on  the  subject  of  rent,  I  had  better  refer  you  to 
one  characteristic  example.  You  will  find  in  paragraph 
5th  and  6th  of  Book  II.,  chap.  2,  of  Mr.  Mill's  "  Princi- 
ples," that  the  right  to  tenure  of  land  is  based,  by  his 
admission,  only  on  the  proprietor's  being  its  improver. 

Without  pausing  to  dwell  on  the  objection  that  land 
cannot  be  improved  beyond  a  certain  point,  and  that, 
at  the  reaching  of  that  point,  farther  claim  to  tenure 
would  cease,  on  Mr.  Mill's  principle, — take  even  this 
admission,  with  its  proper  subsequent  conclusion,  that 
"in  no  sound  theory  of  private  property  was  it  ever 
contemplated  that  the  proprietor  of  land  should  be 
merely  a  sinecurist  quartered  on  it."  Now,  had  that 
conclusion  been  farther  followed,  it  would  have  com- 
pelled the  admission  that  all  rent  was  unjustifiable  which 
normally  maintained  any  person  in  idleness;  which  is 
indeed  the  whole  tnith  of  the  matter.  But  Mr.  Mill 
instantly  retreats  from  this  perilous  admission ;  and 
after  three  or  four  pages  of  discussion   (quite  accurate 


or  THE 
LETTER   XXIII. LAJSTDMAEl^T  •'  *    ^ 

for  its  part)  of  tlie  limits  of  power  in  ma! 
the  land  itself  (which  apply  just  as  strictly  to  the  peasant 
proprietor  as  to  the  cottier's  landlord),  he  begs  the  whole 
question  at  issue  in  one  brief  sentence,  slipped  cunningly 
into  the  middle  of  a  long  one  which  appears  to  be  tell- 
ing all  the  other  way,  and  in  which  the  fatal  assertion 
(of  the  right  to  rent)  nestles  itself,  as  if  it  had  been 
already  proved, — thus  I  italicise  the  unproved  assertion 
in  which  the  venom  of  the  entire  falsehood  is  con- 
centrated. 

"  Even  in  the  case  of  cultivated  land,  a  man  whom, 
though  only  one  among  millions,  the  law  permits  to 
hold  thousands  of  acres  as  his  single  share,  is  not  en- 
titled to  think  that  all  this  is  given  to  him  to  use  and 
abuse,  and  deal  with  it  as  if  it  concerned  nobody  but 
himself.  The  rents  or  profits  which  he  can  ohtain  from 
it  are  his,  and  his  only  ^  but  with  regard  to  the  land, 
in  everything  which  he  abstains  from  doing,  he  is  morally 
bound,  and  should,  whenever  the  case  admits,  be  legally 
compelled,  to  make  his  interest  and  pleasure  consistent 
with  the  public  good." 

I  say,  this  sentence  in  italics  is  slipped  cv/nningly 
into  the  long  sentence,  as  if  it  were  of  no  great  conse- 
quence ;  and  above  I  have  expressed  my  belief  that  Mr. 
Mill's  equivocations  on  this  subject   are  wilful.      It  is 


168  TIME   AND   TIDE. 

a  grave  accusation;  but  I  cannot,  by  any  stretch  of 
charity,  attribute  these  misrepresentations  to  absolute 
dulness  and  bluntness  of  brain,  either  in  Mr.  Mill  or 
his  follower,  Mr.  Fawcett.  Mr.  Mill  is  capable  of  im- 
mense involuntary  error;  but  his  involuntary  erroi-s 
are  usually  owing  to  his  seeing  only  one  or  two  of  the 
many  sides  of  a  thing :  not  to  obscure  sight  of  the  side 
he  does  see.  Thus,  his  "Essay  on  Liberty"  only  takes 
cognisance  of  facts  that  make  for  liberty,  and  of  none 
that  make  for  restraint.  But  in  its  statement  of  all 
that  can  be  said  for  liberty,  it  is  so  clear  and  keen  that 
I  have  myself  quoted  it  before  now  as  the  best  authority 
on  that  side.  And  if  arguing  in  favour  of  Rent,  abso- 
lutely, and  with  clear  explanation  of  what  it  was,  he 
had  then  defended  it  with  all  his  might,  I  should  have 
attributed  to  him  only  the  honest  shortsightedness  of 
partisanship;  but  when  I  find  his  defining  sentences 
full  of  subtle  entanglement  and  reserve — and  that  re- 
serve held  throughout  his  treatment  of  this  particular 
subject — I  cannot,  whether  I  utter  the  suspicion  or  not, 
keep  the  sense  of  wilfulness  in  the  misrepresentation 
from  remaining  in  my  mind.  And  if  there  be  indeed 
ground  for  this  blame,  and  Mr.  Mill,  for  fear  of  fostering 
political  agitation,*  has  disguised  what  he  knows  to  be 
♦With  at  last  the  natural  consoquonces  of  oowardioe, — nitroglyc- 


LETTER    XXm. ^LAJNDMARKS.  169 

facts  about  rent,  I  would  ask  him  as  one  of  the  leading 
members  of  the  Jamaica  Committee,  which  is  the  greater 
crime,  boldly  to  sign  warrant  for  the  sudden  death  of 
one  man,  known  to  be  an  agitator,  in  the  immediate 
outbreak  of  such  agitation,  or  by  equivocation  in  a 
scientific  work,  to  sign  warrants  for  the  deaths  of  thou- 
sands of  men  in  slow  misery,  for  fear  of  an  agitation 
which  has  not  begun;  and  if  begun,  would  be  carried 
on  by  debate,  not  by  the  sword  ? 

erine  and  fireballs !  Let  tlie  upper  classes  speak  the  truth  about 
themselves  boldly,  and  they  will  know  how  to  defend  themselves 
fearlessly.  It  is  equivocation  in  principle,  and  dereliction  from  duty, 
which  melt  at  last  into  tears  in  a  mob's  presence, — (Dec.  16th,  1867.) 

8 


Ccttcr  24. 

Tke  Office  of  the  Soldier. 

Ajml  23, 1867. 
I  MTJ8T  once  more  deprecate  your  probable  supposition 
that  I  bring  forward-  this  ideal  plan  of  State  government, 
either  with  any  idea  of  its  appearing,  to  our  present  pub- 
lic mind,  practicable  even  at  a  remote  period,  or  with  any 
positive  and  obstinate  adherence  to  the  particular  form 
suggested.  There  are  no  wiser  words  among  the  many 
wise  ones  of  the  most  rational  and  keen-sighted  of  old 
English  men  of  the  world,  than  these : — 

"  For  forms  of  government  let  fools  contest; 
That  which  is  best  administered  is  best" 

For,  indeed,  no  form  of  government  is  of  any  use  among 
bad  men ;  and  any  form  will  work  in  the  hands  of  the 
good;  but  the  essence  of  all  government  among  good 
men  is  this,  that  it  is  mainly  occupied  in  the  prodtLctian 
cmd  recognition  of  human  worth,  and  in  the  detection 
and  extinction  of  human  unworthiness ;  and  every  Gov- 
ernment which  produces  and  recognizes  worth,  will  also 
inevitably  use  the  worth  it  has  found  to  govern  with  ; 


LETTER   XXIV. THE    ROD   AND    HONEYCOMB.  lYl 

and  therefore  fall  into  some  approximation  to  such  a 
system  as  I  have  described.  And,  as  I  told  you,  I  do 
not  contend  for  names,  nor  particular  powers — though  I 
state  those  which  seem  to  me  most  advisable ;  on  the 
contrary,  I  know  that  the  precise  extent  of  authorities 
must  be  different  in  every  nation  at  different  times,  and 
ought  to  be  so,  according  to  their  circumstances  and 
character ;  and  all  that  I  assert  w^ith  confidence  is  the 
necessity,  within  afterwards  definable  limits,  of  some 
such  authorities  as  these ;  that  is  to  say, 

I.  An  observant  one : — by  which  all  men  shall  be 
looked  after  and  taken  note  of. 

II.  A  helpful  one,  from  which  those  who  need  help 
may  get  it. 

III.  A  prudential  one,  which  shall  not  let  people  dig 
in  wrong  places  for  coal,  nor  make  railroads  where  they 
are  not  wanted ;  and  which  shall  also,  with  true  provi- 
dence, insist  on  their  digging  in  right  places  for  coal,  in 
a  safe  manner,  and  making  railroads  where  they  are 
wanted. 

ly.  A  martial  one,  which  will  punish  knaves,  and 
make  idle  persons  work. 

Y.  An  instructive  one,  which  shall  tell  everybody 
what  it  is  their  duty  to  know,  and  be  ready  pleasantly 
to  answer  questions  if  anybody  asks  them. 


^ 


172  TIME   AND  TroE. 

YI.  A  deliberate  and  d'edsive  one,  which  shall  judge 
by  law,  and  amend  or  make  law ; 

YII.  An  exemplary  one,  which  shall  show  what  is 
loveliest  in  the  art  of  life. 

Yon  may  divide  or  name  those  several  oflSces  as  you 
will,  or  they  may  be  divided  in  practice  as  expediency 
may  recommend ;  the  plan  I  have  stated  merely  puts 
them  all  into  the  simplest  forms  and  relations. 

You  see  I  have  just  defined  the  martial  power  as  that 
"  which  punishes  knaves  and  makes  idle  persons  work." 
For  that  is  indeed  the  ultimate  and  perennial  soldiership ; 
that  is  the  essential  warrior's  office  to  the  end  of  time. 
"  There  is  no  discharge  in  that  war."  To  the  compel- 
ling of  sloth,  and  the  scourging  of  sin,  the  strong  hand 
will  have  to  address  itself  as  long  as  this  wretched  little 
dusty  and  volcanic  world  breeds  nettles,  and  spits  fire. 
/The  soldier's  office  at  present  is  indeed  supposed  to  be 
the  defence  of  his  country  against  other  countries ;  but 
that  is  an  office  which — Utopian  as  you  may  think  tlie 
saying — will  soon  now  be  extinct.  I  say  so  fearlessly, 
tliough  I  say  it  with  wide  war  threatened,  at  this  moment, 
in  the  East  and  "West.  For  observe  what  the  standing 
of  nations  on  tlieir  defence  really  means.  It  means  that, 
but  for  such  armed  attitude,  each  of  them  would  go  and 
rob  tlie  other ;  that  is  to  say,  that  the  majority  of  active 


LETTEK   XXIV. THE   ROD   AiO)    HONEYCOMB.  173 

persons  in  every  nation  are  at  present — thieves.  I  am  \ 
very  sorry  that  this  should  still  be  so ;  but  it  will  not  be 
.  so  long.  National  exhibitions,  indeed,  will  not  bring 
/  peace;  but  national  education  will,  and  that  is  soon 
/  coming.  I  can  judge  of  this  by  my  own  mind,  for  I  am 
"  myself  naturally  as  covetous  a  person  as  lives  in  this 
world,  and  am  as  eagerly-minded  to  go  and  steal  some 
things  the  French  have  got,  as  any  housebreaker  could 
be,  having  clue  to  attractive  spoons.  If  I  could  by  mili- 
tary incursion  carry  off  Paul  Yeronese's  "Marriage  in 
Cana,"  and  the  "Venus  Yictrix"  and  the  "Hours  of  St. 
Louis,"  it  would  give  me  the  profoundest  satisfaction  to 
accomplish  the  foray  successfully ;  nevertheless,  being  a 
comparatively  educated  person,  I  should  most  assuredly 
not  give  myself  that  satisfaction,  though  there  were  not 
an  ounce  of  gunpowder,  nor  a  bayonet,  in  all  France. 
I  have  not  the  least  mind  to  rob  anybody,  however  much 
I  may  covet  what  they  have  got ;  and  I  know  that  the 
French  and  British  public  may  and  will,  with  many  other 
publics,  be  at  last  brought  to  be  of  this  mind  also ;  and 
to  see  farther  that  a  nation's  real  strength  and  happiness 
do  not  depend  on  properties  and  territories,  nor  on  ma- 
chinery for  their  defence ;  but  on  their  getting  such  ter- 
ritory as  they  Tia'ce^  well  filled  with  none  but  respectable 
persons.     Which  is   a  way  of  infinitely  enlarging   one's 


174  TIME   AND   TIDE. 

territory,  feasible  to  every  potentate ;  and  dependent  no 
wise  on  getting  Trent  turned,  or  Khine-edge  reached. 

Not  but  that,  in  the  present  state  of  things,  it  may 
often  be  soldiers'  duty  to  seize  territory,  and  hold  it 
strongly ;  but  only  from  banditti,  or  savage  and  idle  per- 
sons. 

Thus,  both  Calabria  and  Greece  ought  to  have  been 
irresistibly  occupied  long  ago.  Instead  of  quarrellini;- 
with  Austria  about  Venice,  the  Italians  ought  to  have 
made  a  truce  with  her  for  ten  years,  on  condition  only 
of  her  destroying  no  monuments,  and  not  taxing  Italians 
more  than  Germans ;  and  then  thrown  the  whole  force 
of  their  army  on  Calabria,  shot  down  every  bandit  in  it 
in  a  week,  and  forced  the  peasantry  of  it  into  honest 
work  on  every  hill  side,  with  stout  and  immediate  hel}> 
from  the  soldiers  in  embanking  streams,  building  walls, 
and  the  like;  and  Italian  finance  would  have  been  a 
much  pleasanter  matter  for  the  King  to  take  account 
of  by  this  time;  and  a  fleet  might  have  been  floating 
under  Garganus  strong  enough  to  sweep  every  hostile 
Bail  out  of  the  Adriatic,  instead  of  a  disgraced  and  use- 
less remnant  of  one,  about  to  be  put  up  to  auction. 

And  similarly,  we  ought  to  have  occupied  Greece  in- 
stantly^ when  they  asked  us,  whether  Russia  liked  it  or 
not ;  given  them  an  English  king,  made  good  roads  for 


LETTEK   XXIV. THE   ROD   AND    HONEYCOMB.  175 

them,  and  stout  laws ;  and  kept  them,  and  their  hills  and 
seas,  with  righteous  shepherding  of  Arcadian  fields,  and 
righteous  ruling  of  Salaminian  wave,  until  they  could 
have  given  themselves  a  Greek  king  of  men  again ;  and 
obeyed  him,  like  men.  ^ 

April  24. 

It  is  strange  that  just  before  I  finish  work  for  this 
time,  there  comes  the  first  real  and  notable  sign  of  the 
victory  of  the  principles  I  have  been  fighting  for,  these 
seven  years.  It  is  only  a  newspaper  paragraph,  but  it 
means  much.  Look  at  the  second  column  of  the  11th 
page  of  yesterday's  Pall  Mall  Gazette.  The  paper  has 
taken  a  wonderful  fit  of  misprinting  lately  (unless  my 
friend  John  Simon  has  been  knighted  on  his  way  to 
Weimar,  which  would  be  much  too  right  and  good  a 
thing  to  be  a  likely  one)  ;  but  its  straws  of  talk  mark 
which  way  the  wind  blows  perhaps  more  early  than  those 
of  any  other  journal — and  look  at  the  question  it  puts 
in  that  page,  "  Whether  political  economy  be  the  sordid 
and  materialistic  science  some  account  it,  or  almost  the 
noblest  on  which  thought  can  be  employed  % "  Might 
not  you  as  well  have  determined  that  question  a  little 
while  ago,  friend  Public?  and  known  what  political 
economy  was^  before  you  talked  so  much  about  it? 


176  TIME    AND   TIDE. 

But,  hark,  again — "  Ostentation,  parental  pride,  and  a 
host  of  moral "  (immoral  ?)  "  qualities  must  be  recog- 
nized as  among  the  springs  of  industry ;  political  econ- 
omy should  not  ignore  these,  but,  to  discuss  them,  it 
must  ohcmdon  its  jyretensions  to  the  precision  of  a  pure 
science.'''' 

Well  done  the  Pall  MaU!  Had  it  written  "Pru- 
dence and  parental  affection,"  instead  of  "  Ostentation 
and  parental  pride,"  "  must  be  recognized  among  tlie 
springs  of  industry,"  it  would  have  been  still  better ;  and 
it  would  then  have  achieved  the  expression  of  a  part  of 
the  truth,  which  I  put  into  clear  terms  in  the  first  sen- 
tence of  "Unto  this  Last,"  in  the  year  1862 — which  it 
has  thus  taken  five  years  to  get  half  way  into  the  pub- 
lic's head. 

"  Among  the  delusions  which  at  different  periods  have 
possessed  themselves  of  the  minds  of  large  masses  of 
the  human  race,  perhaps  the  most  curious — certainly  the 
least  creditable — is  the  modem  soi-disomt  science  of  po- 
litical economy,  based  on  the  idea  that  an  advantageous 
code  of  social  action  may  be  determined,  irrespectively 
of  the  influence  of  social  affection." 

Look  also  at  the  definition  of  skill,  p.  87. 

"  Under  the  term  *  skill '  I  mean  to  include  the 
united  force  of  experience,  intellect,  and  passion,  in  their 


LETTER   XXIV. THE   ROD   AND    HONEYCOMB.  177 

operation  on  manual  labour,  and  under  the  term  ^pas- 
sion' to  include  the  entire  range  of  the  moral  feel- 
ings." 

I  saj  half  way  into  the  public's  head,  because  you  see, 
a  few  lines  further  on,  the  Pall  Mall  hopes  for  a  pause 
"half  way  between  the  rigidity  of  Ricardo  and  the  senti- 
mentality of  Kuskin." 

With  one  hand  on  their  pocket,  and  the  other  on  their 
heart !  Be  it  so  for  the  present ;  we  shall  see  how  long 
this  statuesque  attitude  can  be  maintained ;  meantime,  it 
chances  strangely — as  several  other  things  have  chanced 
while  I  was  writing  these  notes  to  you — that  they  should 
have  put  in  that  sneer  (two  lines  before)  at  my  note  on 
the  meaning  of  the  Homeric  and  Platonic  sirens,  at  the 
very  moment  when  I  was  doubting  whether  I  would  or 
would  not  tell  you  the  significance  of  the  last  song  of 
Ariel  in  the  Tempest. 

I  had  half  determined  not,  but  now  I  shall.  And 
this  was  what  brought  me  to  think  of  it — 

Yesterday  afternoon  I  called  on  Mr.  H.  C.  Sorby,  to 
see  some  of  the  results  of  an  inquiry  he  has  been  follow- 
ing all  last  year,  into  the  nature  of  the  colouring  matter 
of  leaves  and  flowers. 

You  most  probably  have  heard  (at  all  events,  may 
with  little  trouble  hear)  of  the  marvellous  power  which 


178  TIME    AND   TIDE. 

cliemical  analysis  has  received  in  recent  discoveries  re- 
specting the  laws  of  liglit. 

My  friend  showed  me  the  rainbow  of  the  rose,  and 
the  rainbow  of  the  violet,  and  the  rainbow  of  the  hya- 
cinth, and  the  rainbow  of  forest  leaves  being  born,  and 
the  rainbow  of  forest  leaves  dying. 

And,  last,  he  showed  me  the  rainbow  of  blood.  It 
was  but  the  three  hundreth  part  of  a  grain,  dissolved  in 
a  drop  of  water:  and  it  cast  its  measured  bars,  for 
ever  recognisable  now  to  human  sight,  on  the  chord 
of  the  seven  colours.  And  no  drop  of  that  red  rain 
can  now  be  shed,  so  small  as) that  the  stain  of  it  can- 
not be  known,  and  the  voice  of  it  heard  out  of  Ihe 
ground. 

But  the  seeing  these  flower  colours,  and  the  iris  of 
blood  together  with  them,  just  while  I  was  trying  to 
gather  into  brief  space  the  right  laws  of  war,  brought 
vividly  back  to  me  my  dreaming  fancy  of  long  ago,  that 
even  the  trees  of  the  earth  were  "  capable  of  a  kind  of 
sorrow,  as  they  opened  their  innocent  leaves  in  vain  for 
men;  and  along  the  dells  of  England  her  beeches  cast 
their  dappled  shades  only  where  the  outlaw  drew  his 
bow,  and  the  king  rode  his  careless  chase;  amidst  the 
fair  defiles  of  the  Apennines,  the  twisted  olive-trunks  hid 
the  ambushes  of  treachery,  and  on  their  meadows,  day 


LETTER  XXIV. THE  ROD  AND  HONEYCOMB.     179 

by  day,  the  lilies  which  were  white   at   the  dawn  were 
washed  with  crimson  at  sunset." 

And  so  also  now  this  chance  word  of  the  daily  jour- 
nal, about  the  sirens,  brought  to  my  mind  the  divine 
passage  in  the  Cratylus  of  Plato,  about  •the  place  of  the 
dead : — 

"  And  none  of  those  who  dwell  there  desire  to  depart 
thence, — no,  not  even  the  Sirens ;  but  even  they,  the  se- 
ducers, are  there  themselves  beguiled,  and  they  who 
lulled  all  men,  themselves  laid  to  rest — they,  and  all 
others — such  sweet  songs  doth  death  know  how  to  sing, 
to  them." 

So  also  the  Hebrew. 

"  And  desire  shall  fail,  because  man  goeth  to  his  long 
home."  For  you  know  I  told  you  the  Sirens  were  not 
pleasures,  but  desires ;  being  always  represented  in  old 
Greek  art  as  having  human  faces,  with  birds'  wings  and 
feet,  and  sometimes  with  eyes  upon  their  wings ;  and 
there  are  not  two  more  important  passages  in  all  litera- 
ture, respecting  the  laws  of  labour  and  of  life,  than 
those  two  great  descriptions  of  the  Sirens  in  Homer  and 
Plato, — the  Sirens  of  death,  and  Sirens  of  eternal  life, 
representing  severally  the  earthly  and  heavenly  desires 
of  men ;  the  heavenly  desires  singing  to  the  motion  of 
circles  of  the  spheres,  and  the  earthly  on  the  rocks  of 


180  TIME   AND   TIDE. 

fatallest  shipwreck.  A  fact  which  may  indeed  l)e  re- 
garded "sentimentally,"  but  it  is  also  a  profoundly  im- 
portant politico-economical  one. 

And  now  for  Shakespeare's  song. 

You  will  find  if  you  look  back  to  the  analysis  of  it, 
given  in  "  Munera  Pulveris,"  that  the  whole  play  of  the 
Tempest  is  an  allegorical  representation  of  the  powers  of 
true,  and  therefore  spiritual,  Liberty,  as  opposed  to  true, 
and  therefore  carnal  and  brutal  Slavery.  There  is  not  a 
sentence  nor  a  rhyme,  sung  or  uttered  by  Ariel  or  Cali- 
ban, throughout  the  play,  which  has  not  tliis  undermean- 
ing. 

Now  the  fulfilment  of  all  human  liberty  is  in  the 
peaceful  inheritance  of  the  earth,  with  its  "  herb  yield- 
ing seed,  and  fruit  tree  yielding  fruit "  after  his  kind ; 
the  pasture,  or  arable,  land,  and  the  blossoming,  or 
wooded  and  fruited,  land  uniting  the  final  elements  of 
life  and  peace,  for  body  and  soul.  Therefore,  we  have 
the  two  great  Hebrew  forms  of  benediction,  "  His  eyes 
shall  be  red  with  wine,  and  his  teeth  wliite  with  milk," 
and  again,  "  Butter  and  honey  shall  he  eat,  that  he  may 
know  to  refuse  the  evil  and  choose  the  good."  And  as 
the  work  of  war  and  sin  has  always  been  the  devasta- 
tion of  this  blossoming  earth,  whether  by  spoil  or  idleness, 
so  the  work  of  peace  and  virtue  is  also  that  of  the  first 


LETTER   XXIV. ^THE   ROD   AND    HONEYCOMB.  181 

day  of  Paradise,  to  "Dress  it  and  to  keep  it."  And 
that  will  always  be  the  song  of  perfectly  accomplished 
Liberty,  in  her  industry,  and  rest,  and  shelter  from 
troubled  thoughts  in  the  calm  of  the  fields,  and  gaining, 
by  migration,  the  long  summer's  day  from  the  shortening 
twilight : — 

Where  the  bee  sucks,  there  suck  I ; 
In  a  cowsHp's  bell  I  lie  ; 
There  I  couch  when  owls  do  cry. 
On  the  bat's  back  I  do  fly- 
After  summer  merrily; 
Merrily,  merrily,  shall  I  live  now 
Under  the  blossom  that  hangs  on  the  bough. 

And  the  security  of  this  treasure  to  all  the  poor,  and  not 
the  ravage  of  it  down  the  valleys  of  the  Shenandoah,  is 
indeed  the  true  warrior's  work.  But,  that  they  may  be 
able  to  restrain  vice  rightly,  soldiers  must  themselves  be 
first  in  virtue ;  and  that  they  may  be  able  to  compel 
labour  sternly,  they  must  themselves  be  first  in  toil,  and 
their  spears,  like  Jonathan's  at  Beth-aven,  enlighteners 
of  the  eyes. 


fetter  23. 

Of  inevitable  Distinction  of  Banh^  and  necessary  Submis- 
sion to  Authority. — The  Meaning  of  Pure-Hearted- 
ness. —  Conclusion. 

1  WAS  interrupted  yesterday,  just  as  I  was  going  to 
set  my  soldiers  to  work;  and  to-day,  here  comes  the 
pamphlet  you  promised  me,  containing  the  Debates  about 
Church-going,  in  which  I  find  so  interesting  a  text  for  my 
concluding  letter  that  I  must  still  let  my  soldiers  stand  at 
ease  for  a  little  while.  Look  at  its  twenty-fifth  page,  and 
you  will  find,  in  the  speech  of  Mr.  Thomas  (carpenter), 
this  beautiful  explanation  of  the  admitted  change  in  the 
general  public  mind,  of  which  Mr.  Thomas,  for  his  part, 
highly  approves  (the  getting  out  of  the  unreasonable 
habit  of  paying  respect  to  anybody).  There  were  many 
reasons  to  Mr.  Thomas's  mind  why  the  working  classes 
did  not  attend  places  of  worship;  one  was,  that  "the 
parson  was  regarded  as  an  object  of  reverence.  In  tlie 
little  town  he  came  from,  if  a  poor  man  did  not  make  a 
bow  to  the  parson  he  was  a  marked  man.  This  was  no 
doubt  wearing  away  to  a  great  extent "  (the  base  habit  of 


LETTEK   XXV. HYSSOP.  183 

making  bows),  "because,  the  poor  man  was   beginning 

to  get  education,  and   to  think  for  himself.     It  was  only 

while  the  priest  kept  the  press  from  him  that  he  was  kept 

ignorant,  and  was  compelled  to  bow,  as  it  were,  to  the 

parson.  ...  It  was  the  case  all  over  England.     The  clergy- 1 

man  seemed  to  think  himself  something  superior.     ISTow 

he  (Mr.  Thomas)  did  not  admit  there  was  any  inferiority  " 

(laughter,  audience  throughout  course  of  meeting  mainly 

in  the  right),  "  expect,  perhaps,  on  the  score  of  his  having  ^  %y^  tt^j^' 

received  a  classical  education,  which  the  poor  man  could 

not  get." 

'Now,  my  dear  friend,  here  is  the  element  which  is  the 
veriest  devil  of  all  that  have  got  into  modern  flesh ;  this 
infidelity  of  the  nineteenth-century  St.  Thomas  in  there 
being  anything  better  than  himself,  alive ;  coupled,  as  it 
always  is,  with  the  farther  resolution — if  unwillingly  con- 
vinced of  the  fact — to  seal  the  Better  living  thing  down 
again  out  of  his  way,  under  the  first  stone  handy.  I  had 
not  intended,  till  we  entered  on  the  second  section  of  our 
inquiry,  namely,  into  the  influence  of  gentleness  (liaving 
hitherto,  you  see,  been  wholly  concerned  with  that  of 
justice),  to  give  you  the  clue  out  of  our  dilemma  about 
equalities  produced  by  education ;  but  by  this  speech  of 
our  superior  carpenter's,  I  am  driven  into  it  at  once,  and 
it  is  perhaps  as  well. 


184  TIME   AND   TIDE. 

The  speech  is  not,  observe,  without  its  own  root  of 
truth  at  the  bottom  of  it,  nor  at  all,  as  I  think,  ill  intend- 
ed by  the  speaker ;  but  you  have  in  it  a  clear  instance  of 
what  I  was  saying  in  the  sixteenth  of  these  letters, — that 
feducation  was  dedred  hy  the  lower  orders  hecause  they 
thought  it  would  make  them  upper  orders^  and  be  a 
leveller  and  effacer  of  distinctions.  They  will  be  mightily 
astonished,  when  they  really  get  it,  to  find  that  it  is,  on 
the  contrary,  the  fatallest  of  all  discerners  and  enforcers 
of  distinctions ;  piercing,  even  to  the  division  of  the 
joints  and  marrow,  to  find  out  wherein  your  body  and  soul 
are  less,  or  greater,  than  other  bodies  and  souls,  and  to 
sign  deed  of  separation  with  unequivocal  seal/ 

Education  is,  indeed,  of  all  differences  not  divinely 
appointed,  an  instant  effacer  and  reconciler.  Whatever 
is  undivinely  poor,  it  will  make  rich ;  whatever  is  undi- 
vinely  maimed,  and  halt,  and  blind,  it  will  make  whole, 
and  equal,  and  seeing.  The  blind  and  the  lame  are  to 
it  as  to  David  at  the  siege  of  the  Tower  of  the  Kings, 
"hated  of  David's  soul."  But  there  are  other  divinely- 
appointed  differences,  eternal  as  the  ranks  of  the  everlast- 
ing hills,  and  as  the  strength  of  their  ceaseless  waters. 
And  these,  education  does  not  do  away  with;  but 
measures,  manifests,  and  employs. 

In  the  handful  of  shingle  which  you  gather  from  the 


LETTER   XXV. HYSSOP.  185 

sea-beach,  whicli  the  indiscriminate  sea,  with  equality  of 
fraternal  foam,  has  only  educated  to  be,  every  one,  round, 
you  will  see  little  difference  between  the  noble  and  mean 
stones.  But  the  jeweller's  trenchant  education  of  them 
will  tell  you  another  story.  Even  the  meanest  will  be 
better  for  it,  but  the  noblest  so  much  better  that  you  can 
class  the  two  together  no  more.  The  fair  veins  and 
colours  are  all  clear  now,  and  so  stern  is  ^N^ature's 
intent  regarding  this,  that  not  only  will  the  polish  show 
which  is  best,  but  the  best  will  take  the  most  polish. 
You  shall  not  merely  see  they  have  more  virtue  than  the 
others,  but  see  that  more  of  virtue  more  clearly ;  and  the 
less  virtue  there  is,  the  more  dimly  you  shall  see  what 
there  is  of  it. 

And  the  law  about  education,  which  is  sorrowfullest  to 
to  vulgar  pride,  is  this — that  all  its  gains  are  at  com- 
pound interest;. so  that,  as  our  work  proceeds,  every  hour 
throws  us  farther  behind  the  greater  men  with  whom  we 
began  on  equal  terms.  Two  children  go  to  school  hand 
in  hand,  and  spell  for  half  an  hour  over  the  same  page. 
Through  all  their  lives,  never  shall  they  spell  from  the 
same  page  more.  One  is  presently  a  page  ahead, — two 
pages,  ten  pages, — and  evermore,  though  each  toils  equally, 
the  interval  enlarges — at  birth  nothing,  at  death,  infinite. 

And  by  this  you  may  recognise  true  education  from 


186  TIME    ^VJs^D   TIDE. 

false.  False  education  is  a  delightful  thing,  and  warms 
you,  and  makes  you  every  day  think  more  of  yourself. 
And  true  education  is  a  deadly  cold  thing,  with  a  Gor- 
gon's head  on  her  shield,  and  makes  you  every  day  think 
worse  of  yourself. 

Worse  in  two  ways,  also,  more's  the  pity.  It  is  per- 
petually increasing  the  personal  sense  of  ignorance  and 
the  personal  sense  of  fault.  And  this  last  is  the  truth 
which  is  at  the  bottom  of  the  common  evaugelical  notions 
about  conversion,  and  w^hich  the  Devil  has  got  hold  of, 
and  hidden,  until,  instead  of  seeing  and  confessing  per- 
sonal ignorance  and  fault,  as  compared  with  the  sense 
and  virtue  of  others,  people  see  nothing  but  corruption  in 
human  nature,  and  shelter  their  own  sins  under  accusation 
of  their  race  (the  worst  of  all  assertions  of  equality  and 
fraternity).  And  so  they  avoid  the  blessed  and  strength- 
ening pain  of  finding  out  wherein  they  are  fools,  as 
compared  with  other  men,  by  calling  everybody  else  a  fool 
too;  and  avoid  the  pain  of  discerning  theu'  own  faults, 
by  vociferously  claiming  their  share  in  the  great  capital 
of  original  sin. 

1  must  also,  therefore,  tell  you  here  what  properly 
ought  to  have  begun  the  next  following  section  of  our 
subject — the  point  usually  unnoticed  in  the  parable  of 
the  Frodigal  Son. 


LETTER    XXV. HYSSOP.  187 

First,  have  you  observed  that  all  Christ's  main  teach- 
ings, by  direct  order,  by  earnest  parable,  and  by  his  own 
permanent  emotion,  regard  the  use  and  misuse  of  money  f 
We  might  have  thought,  if  we  had  been  asked  what  a 
divine  teacher  was  most  likely  to  teach,  that  he  would 
have  left  inferior  pei^ons  to  give  directions  about  money ; 
and  himself  spoken  only  concerning  faith  and  love,  and 
the  discipline  of  the  passions,  and  the  guilt  of  the  crimes 
of  soul  against  soul.  But  not  so.  He  speaks  in  general 
terms  of  these.  But  he  does  not  speak  parables  about 
them  for  all  men's  memory,  nor  permit  himself  fierce 
indignation  against  them,  in  all  men's  sight.  The  Phari- 
sees bring  Him  an  adulteress.  He  whites  her  forgiveness 
on  the  dust  of  which  He  had  formed  her.  Another,  de- 
spised of  all  for  known  sin.  He  recognized  as  a  giver  of 
unknow^n  love.  But  he  acknowledges  no  love  in  buyers 
and  sellers  in  His  house.  One  should  have  thought  there 
were  people  in  that  house  twenty  times  worse  than  they ; 
— Caiaphas  and  his  like — false  priests,  false  prayer- 
makers,  false  leaders  of  the  people — who  needed  putting 
to  silence,  or  to  flight,  wdth  darkest  wrath.  But  the 
scourge  is  only  against  the  traffickers  and  thieves.  The 
two  most  intense  of  all  the  parables :  the  two  which  lead  / 
the  rest  in  love  and  in  terror  (this  of  the  Prodigal,  and  of 
Dives)  relate,  both  of  them,  to   management  of  riches. 


188  .  TIME   AIJD   TIDE. 

The  practical  order  given  to  the  only  seeker  of  advice, 
of  whom  it  is  recorded  that  Christ  "  loved  him,"  is  briefly 
about  his  property.     "  Sell  that  thou  hast." 

And  the  arbitrament  of  the  day  of  Last  Judgment  is 
made  to  rest  wholly,  neither  on  belief  in  God,  nor  in  any 
spiritual  \drtue  in  man,  nor  on  freedom  from  stress  of 
stormy  crime,  but  on  this  only,  "  I  was  an  hungered  and 
ye  gave  me  drink  ;  naked,  and  ye  clothed  me ;  sick,  and 
ye  came  unto  me." 

Well,  then,  the  first  thing  I  want  you  to  notice  in  the 
parable  of  the  Prodigal  Son  (and  the  last  thing  which 
people  usually  do  notice  in  it),  is — that  it  is  about  a 
Prodigal !  He  begins  by  asking  for  his  share  of  his 
father's  goods ;  he  gets  it,  carries  it  ofi",  and  wastes  it. 
It  is  true  that  he  wastes  it  in  riotous  living,  but  you  are 
not  asked  to  notice  in  what  kind  of  riot :  He  spends  it 
witli  harlots — but  it  is  not  the  harlotry  which  his  elder 
brother  accuses  him  of  mainly,  but  of  having  devoured 
his  father's  living.  Nay,  it  is  not  the  sensual  life  which 
he  accuses  himself  of — or  which  the  manner  of  his 
punishment  accuses  him  of.  But  the  wasteful  life.  It  is 
not  said  that  he  had  become  debauched  in  soul,  or 
diseased  in  body,  by  his  vice ;  but  that  at  last  he  would 
fain  have  filled  his  belly  with  husks,  and  could  not.  It 
is  not  said  that  he  was  struck  with  remorse  for  the  conse- 


LETTER   XXV, — HYSSOP.  189 

quences  of  his  e\al  passions,  but  only  that  he  remembered 
there  was  bread  enough  and  to  spare,  even  for  the 
servants,  at  home. 

j^ow,  my  friend,  do  not  think  I  want  to  extenuate  sins 
of  passion  (though,  in  very  truth,  the  sin  of  Magdalene 
is  a  light  one  compared  to  that  of  Judas) ;  but  observe, 
sins  of  passion,  if  of  real  passion,  are  often  the  errors 
and  back-falls  of  noble  souls ;  but  prodigality  is  mere  and 
pure  selfishness,  and  essentially  the  sin  of  an  ignoble  or 
undeveloped  creature ;  and  I  would  rather,  ten  times 
rather,  hear  of  a  youth  that  (certain  degrees  of  temptation 
and* conditions  of  resistance  being  understood)  he  had 
fallen  into  any  sin  you  chose  to  name,  of  all  the  mortal 
ones,  than  that  he  was  in  the  habit  of  running  bills  which 
he  could  not  pay. 

Farther,  though  I  hold  that  the  two  crowning  and  most 
accursed  'sins  of  the  society  of  this  present  day  are  the 
carelessness  with  which  it  regards  the  betrayal  of  women, 
and  brutality  with  which  it  suffers  the  neglect  of  chil- 
dren, both  these  head  and  chief  crimes,  and  all  others,  are 
rooted  first  in  abuse  of  the  laws,  and  neglect  of  the  duties, 
concerning  wealth.  And  thus  the  love  of  money,  with  the 
parallel  (and,  observe,  Tnaihernatically  commensurate  loose- 
ness in  management  of  it),  the  "  mal  tener,"  followed  nec- 
essarily by  the  "  mal  dare,"  is,  indeed,  the  root  of  all  evil. 


9 


190  TIME   AND   TIDE. 

Then,  secondly,  I  want  you  to  note  that  when  the 
prodigal  comes  to  his  senses,  he  complains  of  nobody  but 
liimself,  and  speaks  of  no  unworthiness  but  his  own.  He 
says  nothing  against  any  of  the  women  who  tempted  him 
— nothing  against  the  citizen  who  left  him  to  feed  on 
husks — nothing  of  the  false  friends  of  whom  "no  man 
gave  unto  him  " — above  all,  nothing  of  the  "  corruption 
of  human  nature,"  or  the  corruption  of  things  in  general. 
He  says  that  he  himself  is  unworthy,  as  distinguished 
from  honourable  persons,  and  that  he  himself  has  sinned, 
as  distinguished  from  righteous  persons.  And  that  is  the 
hard  lesson  to  learn,  and  the  beginning  of  faithful  lessons. 
All  right  and  fruitful  humility,  and  purging  of  Heart,  and 
seeing  of  God,  is  in  that.  It  is  easy  to  call  yourself  the 
chief  of  sinners,  expecting  every  sinner  round  you  to 
decline — or  return — the  compliment;  but  learn  to 
measure  the  real  degrees  of  your  own  relative  'baseness, 
and  to  be  ashamed,  not  in  heaven's  sight,  but  in  man's 
sight;  and  redemption  is  indeed  begun.  Observe  the 
phrase,  I  have  sinned  "  against  heaven,"  against  the  great 
law  of  that,  and  "before  thee,  visibly  degraded  before  my 
human  sire  and  guide,  unworthy  any  more  of  being 
esteemed  of  his  blood,  and  desirous  only  of  taking  the 
l>lace  I  deserve  among  his  servants. 

Now,    I   do   not  doubt  but  that   I  shall  set  many  a 


LETTEE   XXV. HYSSOP.  191 

reader's  teeth  on  edge  by  what  he  will  think  my  carnal 
and  material  rendering  of  this  "  beautiful "  parable.  But 
I  am  just  as  ready  to  spiritualize  it  as  he  is,  provided  I 
am  sure  first  that  we  understand  it.  If  we  want  to 
understand  the  parable  of  the  sower,  we  must  first 
think  of  it  as  of  literal  husbandry;  if  we  want  to 
understand  the  parable  of  the  prodigal,  we  must  first 
undei-stand  it  as  of  literal  prodigality.  And  the  story 
has  also  for  us  a  precious  lesson  in  this  literal  sense  of 
it,  namely  this,  which  I  have  been  urging  upon  you 
throughout  these  letters,  that  all  redemption  must 
begin  in  subjection,  and  in  the  recovery  of  the  sense  of 
Fatherhood  and  authority,  as  all  ruin  and  desolation 
begin  in  the  loss  of  that  sense.  The  lost  son  began 
by  claiming  his  rights.  He  is  found  when  he  resigns 
them.  He  is  lost  by  flying  from  his  father,  when  his 
father's  authority  was  only  paternal.  He  is  found  by 
returning  to  his  father,  and  desiring  that  his  authority 
may  be  absolute,  as  over  a  hired  stranger. 

And  this  is  the  practical  lesson  I  want  to  leave  with 
you,  and  all  other  working  men. 

You  are  on  the  eve  of  a  great  political  crisis ;  and  every 
rascal  with  a  tongue  in  his  head  will  try  to  make  his  own 
stock  out  of  you.  Now  this  is  the  test  you  must  try  them 
with.      Those   that    say    to    you,   "  Stand    up    for   your 


192  ITME    AND   TIDE. 

rights — get  your  division  of  living — be  sure  that  you  are 
as  well  off  as  others,  and  have  what  they  have  ! — don't  let 
any  man  dictate  to  you — have  not  you  all  a  right  to  your 
opinion  ? — are  you  not  all  as  good  as  everybody  else  ? — let 
us  have  no  governors,  or  fathers — let  us  all  be  free  and 
alike."  Those,  I  say,  who  speak  thus  to  you,  take  Nel- 
son's rough  order  for — and  hate  them  as  you  do  the 
Devil,  for  they  are  his  ambassadors.  But  those,  the  few, 
who  have  the  courage  to  say  to  you,  "  My  friends,  you 
and  I,  and  all  of  us,  have  somehow  got  very  wrong ;  we've 
been  hardly  treated,  certainly ;  but  here  we  are  in  a  pig- 
gerry,  mainly  by  our  own  fault,  hungry  enough,  and  for 
ourselves,  anything  but  respectable ;  we  must  get  out  of 
this ;  there  are  certainly  laws  we  may  learn  to  live  by,  and 
there  are  wiser  people  than  we  in  the  world,  and  kindly 
ones,  if  we  can  find  om*  way  to  them ;  and  an  infinitely 
wise  and  kind  Father,  above  all  of  them  and  us,  if  we  can 
but  find  our  way  to  Him^  and  ask  Him  to  take  us  for  ser- 
vants, and  put  us  to  any  work  He  will,  so  that  we  may 
never  leave  Him  more."  The  people  who  will  say  that 
to  you,  and  (for  by  no  saying,  but  by  their  fruits,  only,  yon 
shall  finally  know  them)  who  are  themselves  orderly  and 
kindly,  and  do  their  own  business  well, — take  those  for 
your  guides,  and  trust  them ;  on  ice  and  rock  alike,  tie 
yom*8elves  well  together  with  them,  and  with  much  scru- 


LETTEK   XXV. HYSSOP.  193 

tinj,  and  cautious  walking  (jperliaps  nearly  as  much  back 
as  forward,  at  first),  you  will  verily  get  off  the  glacier, 
and  into  meadow  land,  in  God's  time. 

I  meant  to  have  written  much  to  you  respecting  the 
meaning  of  that  word  ''hired  servants,"  and  to  have  o-one 
on  to   the   duties  of  soldiers,  for  you   know  "Soldier" 
means  a  person  who  is  paid  to  fight  with  regular  pay—lit- 
erally with  "  soldi "  or  "  sous  "—the  "  penny  a  day  "  of  the 
vineyard  labourers:  but  I  can't  now:  only  just  this  much, 
that  our  whole  system  of  work   must  be  based  on   the 
nobleness  of  soldiership— so  that  we  shall  aU  be  soldiers 
of  either   ploughshare   or   sword;    and  literally,  all   our 
actual  and  professed  soldiers,  whether  professed  for  a  time 
only,  or  for  life,  must   be   kept  to  hard  work  of  hand, 
when  not  in  actual  war;  their  honour  consisting  in  being 
set  to  services  of  more  pain  and  danger  than  others ;  to 
lifeboat   service;   to   redeeming  of  ground  from  furious 
rivers  or  sea— or  mountain  ruin ;  to  subduing  wild  and 
unhealthy  land,  and  extending  the  confines  of  colonies  in 
the  front  of  miasm  and  famine,  and  savage  races. 

And  much  of  our  harder  home  work  must  be  done  in  a 
kind  of  soldiership,  by  bands  of  trained  workers  sent  from 
place  to  place  and  town  to  town ;  doing  with  strong  and 
sudden  hand  what  is  needed  for  help,  and  setting  all 
things  in  more  prosperous  courses  for  the  future. 


194  TIME   AND   TIDE. 

Of  all  which  I  hope  to  speak  in  its  proper  place,  after 
we  know  what  offices  the  higher  arts  of  gentleness  have 
among  the  lower  ones  of  force,  and  how  their  prevalence 
may  gradually  change  spear  to  pruning-hook,  over  the 
face  of  all  the  earth. 

And  now — but  one  word  more — either  for  you,  or  any 
other  readers  who  may  be  startled  at  what  1  have  been 
saying  as  to  the  peculiar  stress  laid  by  the  Founder  of  our 
religion  on  right  dealing  with  wealth.  Let  them  be  as- 
sured that  it  is  witli  no  fortuitous  choice  among  the  attri- 
bXites  or  powers  of  evil,  that  "  Mammon  "  is  assigned  for 
the  direct  advereary  of  the  Master  whom  they  are  bound 
to  serve.  You  cannot,  by  any  artifice  of  reconciliation, 
be  God's  soldier,  and  his.  Nor  while  the  desire  of  gain  is 
within  your  heart,  can  any  true  knowledge  of  the  King- 
dom of  God  come  there.  No  one  shall  enter  its  strong- 
hold,— no  one  receive  its  blessing,  except,  "he  that  hath 
clean  hands  and  a  pure  heart ; "  clean  hands,  that  have 
done  no  cruel  deed ; — pure  heart,  that  knows  no  base 
desire.  And,  therefore,  in  the  highest  spiritual  sense  that 
can  be  given  to  words,  be  assured,  not  respecting  the  lit- 
eral temple  of  stone  and  gold,  but  of  the  living  temple  o\' 
your  body  and  soul,  that  no  redemption,  nor  teaching,  nor 
hallowing,  will  be  anywise  possible  for  it,  until  these  two 
verses  have  been,  for  it  also,  fulfilled : — 


LETTER    XXV. HYSSOP.  195 

"  And  .He  went  into  the  temple,  and  began  to  cast 
out  them  that  sold  therein,  and  them  that  bought.  And 
He  taught  daily  in  tlie  temple." 


APPENDICES. 


APPENDIX     1. 

Page  18. — Expenditure  on  Science  and  Art. 

The  following  is  the  passage  referred  to.  The  fact  it  relates  is  so 
curious,  and  so  illustrative  of  our  national  interest  in  science,  that  I 
do  not  apologize  for  the  repetition  : — 

"  Two  years  ago  there  was  a  collection  of  the  fossils  of  Solenhofen 
to  be  sold  in  Bavaria ;  the  best  in  existence,  containing  many  speci- 
mens unique  for  perfectness,  and  one,  unique  as  an  example  of  a  species 
(a  whole  kingdom  of  unknown  living  creatures  being  announced  by 
that  fossil).  This  collection,  of  which  the  mere  market  wortli, 
among  private  buyers,  would  probably  have  been  some  thousand  or 
twelve  hundred  pounds,  was  offered  to  the  English  nation  for  seven 
hundred :  but  we  would  not  give  seven  hundred,  and  the  whole 
series  would  have  been  in  the  Munich  museum  at  this  moment,  if 
Professor  Owen  *  had  not,  with  loss  of  his  own  time,  and  patient 
tormenting  of  the  British  pubUc  in  the  person  of  its  representatives, 
got  leave  to  give  four  hundred  pounds  at  once,  and  himself  become 
answerable  for  the  other  three  ! — which  the  said  public  will  doubt- 
less pay  him  eventually,  but  sulkily,  and  caring  nothing  about  the 
matter  all  the  while ;  only  always  ready  to  cackle  if  any  credit  com- 
of  it.  Consider,  I  beg  of  you.  arithmetically,  what  this  fact  meai 
Your  annual  expenditure  for  public  purposes  (a  third  of  it  for  niili 

*  I  origlaally  stated  this  fact  without  ProfMSor  Owen's  permiaslon;  which,  of  courM, 
he  could  not  with  propriety  h«ve  granted  had  I  asked  it;  but  I  considered  it  so  impor- 
tant that  the  pnblic  should  be  aware  of  the  fact,  that  I  did  what  seemed  to  me  right, 
though  rude. 


i 


APPENDICES.  197 

tary  apparatus)  is  at  least  fifty  millions.  Now  seven  hundred  pounds 
is  to  fifty  million  pounds  roughly,  as  seven  pence  to  two  thousand 
pounds.  Suppose  then,  a  gentleman  of  unknown  income,  but  whose 
wealth  was  to  be  conjectured  from  the  fact  that  he  spent  two  thou- 
sand a  year  on  his  park  walls  and  footmen  only,  professes  himself 
fond  of  science ;  and  that  one  of  his  servants  comes  eagerly  to  tell 
him  that  an  unique  collection  of  fossils,  giving  clue  to  a  new  era  of 
creation,  is  to  be  had  for  the  sum  of  sevenpence  sterling ;  and  that 
the  gentleman,  who  is  fond  of  science,  and  spends  two  thousand  a 
year  on  his  park,  answers  after  keeping  his  servant  waiting  several 
months,  '  Well !  I'll  give  you  fourpence  for  them,  if  you  will  be  an- 
swerable for  the  extra  threepence  yourself  till  next  year  ! '  " 


APPENDIX    2. 

Page  29. — Legislation  of  Frederick  the  Great. 

The  following  are  the  portions  of  Mr.  Dixon's  letters  referred  to  : — 
"  Well,  I  am  now  busy  with  Frederick  the  Great ;  I  am  not  now 
astonished  that  Carlyle  calls  him  Great,  neither  that  this  work  of  his 
should  have  had  such  a  sad  effect  upon  him  in  producing  it,  when  I 
see  the  number  of  volumes  he  must  have  had  to  wade  through  to  pro- 
duce such  a  clear  terse  set  of  utterances  ;  and  yet  I  do  not  feel  the 
work  as  a  book  likely  to  do  a  reader  of  it  the  good  that  some  of  his 
other  books  will  do.  It  is  truly  awful  to  read  these  battles  after 
battles,  lies  after  hes,  called  Diplomacy  ;  it's  fearful  to  read  all  this,  and 
one  wonders  how  he  that  set  himself  to  this, — He,  of  all  men, — could 
have  the  rare  patience  to  produce  such  a  laboured,  heart-rending  piece 
of  work.  Again,  when  one  reads  of  the  stupidity,  the  shameful  waste 
of  our  monies  by  our  forefathers,  to  see  that  our  National  Debt  (the 
curse  to  our  labour  now,  the  millstone  to  our  commerce,  to  our  fair 
chance  of  competition  in  our  day)  thus  created,  and  for  what? 
Even  Carlyle  cannot  tell ;  then  how  are  we  to  tell  ?  Now,  who  will 
deliver  us  ?  that  is  the  question ;  who  will  help  us  in  those  days  of 
idle  or  no  workj  while  our  foreign  neighbours  have  plenty  and  are 


198  APPENDICES. 

actually  selling  their  produce  to  our  men  of  capital  cheaper  than  wc 
can  make  it  I  House-rent  getting  dearer,  taxes  getting  dearer,  rates, 
clothing,  food,  &c.  Sad  times,  my  master,  do  seem  to  have  fallen 
upon  us.  And  the  cause  of  nearly  all  this  lies  embedded  in  that 
Frederick ;  and  yet,  so  far  as  I  know  of  it,  no  critic  has  yet  given  an 
exposition  of  such  laying  there.  For  our  behoof,  is  there  no  one 
that  will  take  this,  that  there  lies  so  woven  in  with  much  other  stuflf 
so  sad  to  read,  to  any  man  that  does  not  beUeve  man  was  made  to 
fight  alone,  to  be  a  butcher  of  his  fellow  man  ?  Who  will  do  this 
work,  or  piece  of  work,  so  that  all  who  care  to  know  how  it  is  that  our 
debt  grew  so  large,  and  a  great  deal  more  that  we  ought  to  know  ? — 
that  clearly  is  one  great  reason  why  the  book  was  written  and  was 
printed.  Well,  I  hope  some  day  all  this  will  be  clear  to  our  people, 
and  some  man  or  men  will  arise  and  sweep  us  clear  of  these  hin- 
drances, these  sad  drawbacks  to  the  vitahty  of  our  work  in  thi.** 
world." 

"67,  Nile  Street,  Sunderland,  Fib.  7,  18«7. 
"  Dear  Sir, — I  beg  to  acknowledge  the  receipt  of  two  letters  as 
additions  to  your  books,  which  I  have  read  with  deep  interest,  and 
shall  take  care  of  them,  and  read  them  over  again,  so  that  I  may 
thoroughly  comprehend  them,  and  be  able  to  think  of  them  for  future 
use.  I  myself  am  not  fully  satisfied  with  our  co-operation,  and  never 
have  been ;  it  is  too  much  tinged  with  the  very  elements  that  they 
complain  of  in  our  present  systems  of  trade — selfishness.  I  have  for 
years  been  trying  to  direct  the  attention  of  the  editor  of  the  Co- 
operator  to  such  evils  that  I  see  in  it.  Now,  further,  I  may  state  that 
I  find  you  and  Carlyle  seem  to  agree  quite  on  the  idea  of  the  Master- 
hood  qualification.  There,  again,  I  find  you  both  feel  and  write  as  all 
working  men  consider  just.  I  can  assure  you  there  is  not  an  honest, 
noble,  working  man  that  would  not  by  far  serve  under  such  master- 
hood,  than  be  the  employee  or  workman  of  a  co-operative  store. 
Working  men  do  not  as  a  rule  make  good  masters ;  neither  do  they 
treat  each  other  with  that  courtesy  as  a  noble  master  treats  his 
working  man.  George  Fox  shadows  forth  some  such  treatment  that 
Friends  ought  to  make  law  and  guidance  for  their  working  men  an<l 


APPENDICES.  199 

slaves,  such  as  you  speak  of  in  your  letters.  I  will  look  the  passage 
up,  as  it  is  quite  to  the  point,  so  far  as  I  now  remember  it.  In  Vol. 
VI.  of  Frederick  the  Great,  I  find  a  great  deal  there  that  I  feel  quite 
certain,  if  our  Queen  or  Government  could  make  law,  thousands  of 
English  working  men  would  hail  it  with  such  a  shout  of  joy  and  glad- 
ness as  would  astonish  the  Continental  world.  These  changes  sug- 
gested by  Carlyle,  and  placed  before  the  thinkers  of  England,  are  the 
noblest,  the  truest  utterances  on  real  kinghood,  that  I  have  ever 
read;  the  more  I  think  over  them,  the  more  I  feel  the  truth,  the 
justness,  and  also  the  fitness  of  them,  to  our  nation's  present  dire 
necessities;  yet  this  is  the  man,  and  these  are  the  thoughts  of  his, 
that  our  critics  seem  never  to  see,  or  if  seen,  don't  think  worth  print- 
ing or  in  any  way  wisely  directing  the  attention  of  the  public  thereto, 
alas !  All  this  and  much  more  fills  me  with  such  sadness  that  I  am 
driven  almost  to  despair.  I  see  from  the  newspapers,  Yorkshire, 
Lancashire,  and  other  places  are  sternly  endeavouring  to  carry  out 
the  short-time  movement  until  such  times  as  trade  revives,  and  I  find 
the  masters  and  men  seem  to  adopt  it  with  a  good  grace  and  friendly 
spirit.  I  also  beg  to  inform  you  I  see  a  Mr.  Morley,  a  large  manu- 
facturer at  Nottingham,  has  been  giving  pensions  to-  all  his  old  work- 
men. I  hope  such  a  noble  example  will  be  followed  by  other  wealthy 
masters.  It  would  do  more  to  make  a  master  loved,  honoured,  and 
cared  for,  than  thousands  of  pounds  expended  in  other  ways.  The 
Government  Savings  Bank  is  one  of  the  wisest  acts  of  late  years  done 
by  our  Government.  I,  myself,  often  wish  the  Government  held  all 
our  banks  instead  of  private  men ;  that  would  put  an  end  to  false 
speculations,  such  as  we  too  often  in  the  provinces  suffer  so  severely 
by,  so  I  hail  with  pleasure  and  delight  the  shadowing  forth  by  you 
of  these  noble  plans  for  the  future  :  I  feel  glad  and  uplifted  to  think 
of  the  good  that  such  teaching  will  do  for  us  ail. 

"Yours  truly, 

"Thomas  Dixon." 

"57,  Nile  Street,  Sunderland,  Feb.  24,  1867. 
"  Dear  Sir, — I  now  give  you  the  references  to  Frederick  the  Great, 
Vol.  VI. :  Land  Question,  365  page,  where  he  increases  the  number 


200  APPENDICES. 

of  small  farmers  to  4,000  (202,  204).  English  soldiers  and  T.  C.'s  re- 
marks on  our  system  of  purchase,  &c.  His  law  (620,  G23,  624),  State 
of  Poland  and  how  he  repaired  it  (487,  488,  489,  490).  I  especially 
value  the  way  he  introduced  all  kinds  of  industries  therein,  and  so 
soon  changed  the  chaos  into  order.  Again,  the  schoolmasters  aLso 
are  given  (not  yet  in  England,  says  T.  C).  Again,  the  use  he  made 
of  15,000Z.  surplus  in  Brandenburg ;  how  it  was  applied  to  better  his 
staff  of  masters.  To  me,  the  Vol.  YI.  is  one  of  the  wisest  pieces  of 
modern  thought  in  our  language.  I  only  wish  I  had  either  your 
power,  C.  Kingsley,  Maurice,  or  some  such  able  pen-generalship,  to 
illustrate  and  show  forth  all  the  wise  teaching  on  law,  government, 
and  social  life  I  see  in  it,  and  shining  like  a  star  through  all  its  pages. 
1  feel  also  the  truth  of  all  you  have  written,  and  will  do  all  I  can  to 
make  such  men  or  women  that  care  for  such  thoughts,  see  it^  or 
read  it.  I  am  copying  the  letters  as  fast  and  as  'well  as  I  can,  and 
vvill  use  my  utmost  endeavour  to  have  them  done  that  justice  to  they 

merit. 

"  Yours  truly, 

"Thomas  Dixon." 


APPENDIX  3. 
Page  32. — Effect  of  Modern  Entertainments  on  the  Mind  of  Youth. 

TnE  letter  of  the  Times  correspondent  referred  to  contained  an 
account  of  one  of  the  most  singular  cases  of  depravity  ever  brought 
before  a  criminal  court;  but  it  is  unnecessary  to  bring  any  of  its 
details  under  the  reader's  attention,  for  nearly  every  other  number 
of  our  journals  has  of  late  contained  some  instances  of  atrocities  be- 
fore unthought  of,  and,  it  might  have  seemed,  impossible  to  human- 
ity. The  connection  of  those  with  the  modern  love  of  excitement  in 
the  sensation  novel  and  drama  may  not  be  generally  understood, 
but  it  is  direct  and  constant;  all  furious  pursuit  of  pleasure  ending  in 
actual  desire  of  horror  and  delight  in  death.     I  entered  into  some 


APPENDICES.  201 

fuller  particulars  on  this  subject  in  a  lecture  given  in  the  spring  at 
the  Royal  Institution,  which  will  be  shortly  published  in  a  form 
accessible  to  the  readers  of  these  Letters,  and  I  therefore  give  no  ex- 
tracts from  it. 


APPENDIX  4. 
Page  68. — Drunkenness  as  the  Cause  of  Crime. 

The  following  portions  of  Mr.  Dixon's  letter  referred  to,  will  be 
found  interesting: — 

"  Dear  Sir, — Your  last  letters  I  think  will  arouse  the  attention 
of  thinkers  more  than  any  of  the  series,  it  being  on  topics  they 
in  general  feel  more  interested  in  than  the  others,  especially  as  in 
these  you  do  not  assail  their  pockets  so  much  as  in  the  former  ones. 
Since  you  seem  interested  with  the  notes  or  rough  sketches  on  gin, 
G  *  *  *  of  Dubhn  was  the  man  I  alluded  to  as  making  his  money  by 
drink,  and  then  giving  the  results  of  such  trafi&c  to  repair  the 
Cathedral  of  Duliiin.  It  was  thousands  of  pounds.  I  call  such 
charity  robbing  Peter  to  pay  Paul !  Immense  fortunes  are  made  in 
the  Liquor  Traffic,  and  I  will  tell  you  why ;  it  is  aU  paid  for  in  cash, 
at  least  such  as  the  poor  people  buy;  they  get  credit  for  clothes, 
butchers'  meat,  groceries,  &c.,  while  they  give  the  gin-palace  keeper 
cash ;  they  never  begrudge  the  price  of  a  glass  of  gin  or  beer,  they 
never-haggle  over  its  price,  never  once  think  of  doing  that;  but  in 
the  purchase  of  almost  every  other  article  they  haggle  and  begrudge 
its  price.  To  give  you  an  idea  of  its  profits — there  are  houses  here 
whose  average  weekly  takings  in  cash  at  their  bars,  is  50Z.,  60?.,  70Z., 
80?.,  90?.,  to  150?.  per  week !  Nearly  all  the  men  of  intelligence  in  it, 
say  it  is  the  curse  of  the  working  classes.  Men  whose  earnings  are, 
say  20s.  to  30s.  per  week,  spend  on  the  average  3s.  to  6s.  per  week 
(some  even  10s.).  It's  my  mode  of  Hving  to  supply  these  houses  with 
corks,  that  makes  me  see  so  much  of  the  drunkenness ;  and  that  is 
the  cause  why  I  never  really  cared  for  my  trade,  seeing  the  misery 
that  was  entailed  on  my  fellow  men  and  women  by  the  use  of  this 


202  APPENDICES. 

stuff.  Again,  a  house  with  a  licence  to  sell  spirit,  wine,  and  ale,  to 
be  consumed  on  the  premises,  is  worth  two  to  three  times  more 
money  than  any  other  class  of  property.  One  house  here  worth 
nominally  140?.  sold  the  other  day  for  520?. ;  another  one  worth  200?. 
sold  for  800?.  I  know  premises  with  a  licence  that  were  sold  for 
1,300?.,  and  then  sold  again  two  years  after  for  1,800?. ;  another  place 
was  rented  for  50?.  now  rents  at  100?. — this  last  is  a  house  used  by 
working  men  and  labourers  chiefly  1  No,  I  honour  men  hke  Sir  W. 
Trevelyn,  that  are  teetotallers,  or  total  abstainers,  as  an  example  to 
poor  men,  and  to  prevent  his  work  people  being  tempted,  will  not 
allow  any  public-house  on  his  estate.  If  our  land  had  a  few  such 
men  it  would  help  the  cause.  We  possess  one  such  a  man  here,  a 
banker.  I  feel  sorry  to  say  the  progress  of  temperance  is  not  so  great  as 
I  would  hke  to  see  it.  The  only  religious  body  that  approaches  to  your 
ideas  of  political  economy  is  Quakerism  as  taught  by  G-eorge  Fox.  Car- 
lyle  seems  deeply  tinged  with  their  teachings.  Silence  to  them  is  as  valu- 
able as  to  him.  Again,  why  should  people  howl  and  shriek  over  the  law 
that  the  Alliance  is  now  trying  to  carry  out  in  our  land,  called  the 
Permissive  Bill  ?  If  we  had  just  laws  we  then  w#uld  not  be  so  mis- 
erable or  so  much  annoyed  now  and  then  with  cries  of  Reform  and 
cries  of  Distress.  I  send  you  two  pamphlets ; — one  gives  the  work- 
ing man's  reasons  why  he  don't  go  to  church ;  in  it  you  will  see  a 
few  opinions  expressed  very  much  akin  to  those  you  have  written  to 
me.  The  other  gives  an  account  how  it  is  the  poor  Indians  have 
died  of  Famine,  simply  because  they  have  destroyed  the  very  system 
of  Political  Economy,  or  on*e  having  some  approach  to  it,  that  you 
are  now  endeavouring  to  direct  the  attention  of  thinkers  to  in  our 
country.  The  Sesame  and  Lilies  I  have  read  as  you  requested.  I 
feel  now  fully  the  aim  and  object  you  have  in  view  in  the  Letters, 
but  I  cannot  help  directing  yoirr  attention  to  that  portion  where  you 
mention  or  rather  exclaim  against  the  Florentines  pulling  down  their 
Ancient  Walls  to  build  a  Boulevard.  That  passage  is  one  that  would 
gladden  the  hearts  of  all  true  Italians,  especially  men  that  love  Italy 
and  Dante  I 


APPENDICES.  203 

APPENDIX  5. 

Page  69. — Abuse  of  Food. 

Paragraphs  cut  from  Manchester  Examiner  of  March  16,  1867  : — 
"  A  Parisian  Character. — A  celebrated  character  has  disappeared 
from  the  Palais  Eoyal.  Ren€  Lartique  was  a  Swiss,  and  a  man  of 
about  sixty.  He  actually  spent  the  last  fifteen  years  in  the  Palais 
Royal — that  is  to  say,  he  spent  the  third  of  his  life  at  dinner.  Every 
morning  at  ten  o'clock  he  was  to  be  seen  going  into  a  restaurant 
(usually  Tissat's),  and  in  a  few  moments  was  installed  in  a  corner, 
which  he  only  quitted  about  three  o'clock  in  the  afternoon,  after  hav- 
ing drunk  at  least  six  or  seven  bottles  of  different  kinds  of  wine.  He 
then  talked  up  and  down  the  garden  till  the  clock  struck  five,  when 
he  made  his  appearance  again  at  the  same  restaurant,  and  always  at 
the  same  place.  His  second  meal,  at  which  he  drank  quite  as  much 
as  at  the  first,  invariably  lasted  till  half-past  nine.  Therefore,  he 
devoted  nine  hours  a  day  to  eating  and  drinking.  His  dress  was 
most  wretched — his  shoes  broken,  liis  trousers  torn,  his  paletot  with- 
out any  lining,  and  patched,  his  waistcoat  without  buttons,  his  hat  a 
rusty  red  from  old  age,  and  the  whole  surmounted  by  a  dirty  white 
beard.  One  day  he  went  up  to  the  comptoir,  and  asked  the  presiding 
divinity  there  to  allow  him  to  run  in  debt  for  one  day's  dinner.  He 
perceived  some  hesitation  in  complying  with  the  request,  and  imme- 
diately called  one  of  the  waiters,  and  desired  him  to  follow  him.  He 
went  into  the  office,  unbuttoned  a  certain  indispensable  garment,  and, 
taking  off  a  broad  leather  belt,  somewhat  startled  the  waiter  by  dis- 
playing two  hundred  gold  pieces,  each  worth  one  hundred  francs. 
Taking  up  one  of  them,  he  tossed  it  to  the  waiter,  and  desired  him  to 
pay  whatever  he  owed.  He  never  again  appeared  at  that  restaurant, 
and  died  a  few  days  ago  of  indigestion." 

"Revenge  in  a  Ball-Room. —  A  distressing  event  lately  took 
place  at  Castellaz,  a  little  commune  of  the  Alpes-Maritimes,  near 
Mentone,     All  the  young  people  of  the  place  being  assembled  in  a 


204:  APPENDICES. 

dancing-room,  one  of  the  young  men  was  seen  to  fall  suddenly  to  the 
ground,  whilst  a  young  woman,  his  partner,  brandished  a  poniard, 
and  was  preparing  to  inflict  a  second  blow  on  him,  having  already 
desperately  wounded  him  in  the  stomach.     The  author  of  the  crime 

was  at  once  arrested.     She  declared  her  name  to  be  Maria  P , 

twenty-one  years  of  age,  and  added  that  she  had  acted  from  a  motive 
of  revenge,  the  young  man  having  led  her  astray  formerly  with  a 
promise  of  marriage,  which  he  had  never  fulfilled.  In  the  morning 
of  that  day  she  had  summoned  him  to  keep  his  word,  and,  upon  his 
refusal,  had  determined  on  making  the  dancing-room  the  scene  of  her 
revenge.  She  was  at  first  locked  up  in  the  pri.son  of  Mentone,  and 
afterwards  sent  on  to  Nice.  The  young  man  continues  in  an  alarm- 
ing state." 

• 

APPENDIX  6. 

Page  74. — Law  of  Property. 

The  following  is  the  paragraph  referred  to : — 

"  The  first  necessity  of  all  economical  government  is  to  secure  th^ 
unquestioned  and  unquestionable  working  of  the  great  law  of  prop- 
erty— that  a  man  who  works  for  a  thing  shall  be  allowed  to  get  It, 
keep  it,  and  consume  it,  in  peace ;  and  that  he  who  does  not  eat  his 
cake  to-day,  shall  be  seen,  without  grudging,  to  have  his  cake  to- 
morrow. This,  I  say,  is  the  first  point  to  be  secured  by  social  law ; 
without  this,  no  political  advance,  nay,  no  political  existence,  is  in 
any  sort  possible.  Whatever  evil,  luxury,  iniquity,  may  seem  to 
result  from  it,  this  is  nevertheless  the  first  of  all  equities :  and  to  the 
enforcement  of  this,  by  law  and  by  police-truncheon,  the  nation 
must  always  primarily  set  its  mind — that  the  cupboard-door  may 
have  a  firm  lock  to  it,  and  no  man's  dinner  be  carried  oflF  by  the  mob, 
on  its  way  home  from  the  baker's." 


APPENDICES.  205 

APPENDIX  7. 

Page  79. — Amhition  of  Bishops. 

"  Nearly  all  the  evils  in  the  Church  have  arisen  from  bishops  desir- 
ing power  more  than  light.  They  want  authority,  not  outlook. 
Whereas  their  real  office  is  not  to  rule,  though  it  may  be  vigorously 
to  exhort  and  rebuke ;  it  is  the  king's  office  to  rule ;  the  bishop's 
office  is  to  oversee  the  flock,  to  number  it,  sheep  by  sheep,  to  be 
ready  always  to  give  full  account  of  it.  Now  it  is  clear  he  cannot 
give  account  of  the  souls,  if  he  has  not  so  much  as  numbered  the 
bodies,  of  his  flock.  The  first  thing,  therefore,  that  a  bishop  has  to 
do  is  at  least  to  put  himself  in  a  position  in  which,  at  any  moment, 
he  can  obtain  the  history,  from  childhood,  of  every  Hving  soul  in  his 
diocese,  and  of  its  present  state.  Down  in  that  back  street,  Bill  and 
Nancy  knocking  each  other's  teeth  out ! — Does  the  bishop  know  all 
about  it  ?  Has  he  had  his  eye  upon  them  ?  Can  he  circumstantially 
explain  to  us  how  Bill  got  into  the  habit  of  beating  Nancy  about  the 
head  ?  If  he  cannot,  he  is  no  bishop,  though  he  had  a  mitre  as  high 
as^Salisbury  steeple ;  he  is  no  bishop — he  has  sought  to  be  at  the 
helm  instead  of  the  mast-head ;  he  has  no  sight  of  things.  '  Nay,' 
you  say,  '  it  is  not  his  duty  to  look  after  Bill  in  the  "  back  street."  * 
What !  the  fat  sheep  that  have  full  fleeces — you  think  it  is  only  those 
he  should  look  after,  while  (go  back  to  your  Milton)  '  the  hungry 
sheep  look  up,  and  are  not  fed,'  besides  what  the  grim  wolf,  '  with 
privy  paw '  (bishops  knowing  nothing  about  it)  '  daily  devours  apace, 
and  nothing  said  ?  '  '  But  that's  not  our  idea  of  a  bishop.'  Perhaps 
not ;  but  it  was  St.  Paul's,  and  it  was  Milton's.  They  may  be  right, 
or  we  may  be ;  but  we  must  not  think  we  are  reading  either  one  or 
the  other  by  putting  our  meaning  into  their  words." — Sesame  and 
Lilies,  p.  45. 


206  APPENDICES. 

APPENDIX  8. 

Page  84. — Regulations  of  Trade. 

I  PRINT  portions  of  two  letters  of  Mr.  Dixon's  in  this  place ;  one 
referring  to  our  former  discussion  respecting  the  sale  of  votes. 

"5T,  Nile  Street,  Sunderland,  March  21, 1S67. 

"  I  only  wish  I  could  write  in  some  tolerable  good  style,  so  that  I 
could  idealize,  or  ratlier  realize  to  folks,  the  life,  and  love,  and  mar- 
riage of  a  working  man  and  his  wife.  It  is  in  my  opinion  a  working 
man  that  really  does  know  what  a  true  wife  is,  for  his  every  want,  his 
every  comfort  in  life  depends  on  her;  and  his  children's  home,  their 
daily  lives  and  future  lives,  are  shaped  by  her.  Napoleon  wisely  said, 
'  France  needs  good  mothers  more  than  brave  men.  Good  mothers 
are  the  makers  or  shapers  of  good  and  brave  men.'  I  cannot  say  that 
these  are  the  words,  but  it  is  the  import  of  his  speech  on  the  topic. 
We  have  a  saying  amongst  us :  •  The  man  may  spend  and  money  lend, 
if  his  wife  be  ought,' — i.  e.,  good  wife ; —  *  but  he  may  work  and  try  to 
save,  but  will  have  nought,  if  his  wife  be  nought,' — i.  c,  bad  or  thrift- 
less wife. 

"  Now,  since  you  are  intending  to  treat  of  the  working  man's  par- 
liament and  its  duties,  I  will  just  throw  out  a  few  suggestions  of  what 
I  consider  should  be  the  questions  or  measures  that  demand  an  early 
inquiry  into  and  debate  on.  That  guilds  be  established  in  every  town, 
where  masters  and  men  may  meet,  so  as  to  avoid  the  temptations  of 
the  public-house  and  drink  And  then,  let  it  be  made  law  that  every 
lad  should  serve  an  apprenticeship  of  not  less  than  seven  yeara  to  a 
trade  or  art,  before  he  is  allowed  to  be  a  member  of  such  guild ;  also, 
that  all  wages  be  based  on  a  rate  of  so  much  per  hour,  and  not  day,  as 
at  present ;  and  let  every  man  prove  his  workmanship  before  such 
a  guild;  and  then  allow  to  him  such  payment  per  hour  as  his  craft 
merits.  Let  there  be  three  grades,  and  then  let  there  be  trials  of  skill 
in  workmanship  every  year ;  and  then,  if  the  workman  of  the  third 
grade  prove  that  he  has  made  progress  in  his  craft,  reward  him  accord- 


APPENDICES.  207 

inglj.  Then,  before  a  lad  is  put  to  any  trade,  why  not  see  what  he  is 
naturally  fitted  for?  Combe's  book,  entitled  The  Constitution  of  Man, 
throws  a  good  deal  of  truth  on  to  these  matters,  Now,  here  are  two 
branches  of  the  science  of  life  that,  so  far,  have  never  once  been  given 
trial  of  in  this  way.  We  certainly  use  them  after  a  crime  has  been 
committed,  but  not  till  then. 

("Next  to  that,  cash  paymer^t  for  all  and  everything  needed  in  life. 
Credit  is  a  curse  to  him  that  gives  it,  and  he  that  takes  it.     He  that 
lives  by  credit  Uves  in  general  carelessly.     If  there  was  no  credit, 
people  then  would  have  to  live  on  what  they  earned !     Then,  after 
^   that,  the  Statute  of  Limitations  of  Fortune  you  propose.      By  the 
hour  system,  not  a  single  man  need  he  idle  ;  it  would  give  employment 
/   to  all,  and  even  two  hours  per  day  would  realize  more  to  a  man  than 
breaking  stones.     Thus  you  would  make  every  one  self-dependent — 
also  no  fear  of  being  out  of  work  altogether.     Then  let  there  be  a 
/   Grovernment  fund  for  all  the  savings  of  the  working  man.     I  am  afraid 
you  will  think  this  a  wild,  discursive  sort  of  a  letter. 

"  Yours  truly, 

"Thomas  Dixon." 

"  I  have  read  your  references  to  the  Times  on  '  Bribery.'  Well,  that 
has  long  been  my  own  opinion ;  they  simply  have  a  vote  to  sell,  and 
sell  it  the  same  way  as  they  sell  potatoes,  or  a  coat,  or  any  other  sale- 
able article.  Voters  generally  say,  '  What  does  this  gentleman  want  in 
Parliament  ?  Why,  to  help  himself  and  his  family  or  friends ;  he  does 
not  spend  all  the  money  he  spends  over  his  election  for  pure  good  of 
his  country  I  No :  it's  to  benefit  his  pocket,  to  be  sure.'  '  Why 
should  I  not  make  a  penny  with  my  vote,  as  well  as  he  does  with  his 
in  Parliament  ? '  I  think  that  if  the  system  of  canvassing  or  election 
agents  were  done  away  with,  and  all  personal  canvassing  for  votes 
entirely  abolished,  it  would  help  to  put  down  bribery.  Let  eacli 
gentleman  send  to  the  electors  his  political  opinions  in  a  circular,  and 
then  let  papers  be  sent,  or  cards,  to  each  elector,  and  then  let  them 
go  and  record  their  votes  in  the  same  way  they  do  for  a  councillor  in 
the  Corporation.     It  would  save  a  great  deal  of  expense,  and  prevent 


208  APPENDICES. 

those  scenes  of  drunkenness  so  common  in  our  towns  during  elections. 
Bewick's  opinions  of  these  matters  are  quite  to  the  purpose,  I  think 
{see  page201  of  Memoir).  Again,  respecting  the  Paris  matter  referred 
to  in  your  last  letter,  I  have  read  it.  Does  it  not  manifest  plainly 
enough  that  Europeans  are  also  in  a  measure  possessed  with  that 
same  demoniacal  spirit  like  the  Japanese  f  " 


APPENDIX  9. 

Page  144. —  Greatness  Coal-begottSn. 

"Here  is  a  bit  of  paper  in  my  hand,*  a  good  one  too,  and  an 
honest  one  ;  quite  representative  of  the  best  common  public  thought 
of  England  at  this  moment ;  and  it  is  holding  forth  in  one  of  its  lead- 
ers upon  our  '  social  welfare,' — upon  our  '  vivid  life,' — upon  the 
'  political  supremacy  of  Q-reat  Britain.'  And  what  do  you  think  all 
these  are  owing  to  ?  To  what  our  English  sires  have  done  for  us, 
and  taught  us,  age  after  age  ?  No :  not  to  that.  To  our  honesty  of 
heart,  or  coolness  of  head,  or  steadiness  of  will  ?  No :  not  to  these. 
To  our  thinkers,  or  our  statesmen,  or  our  poets,  or  our  captains,  or 
our  martyrs,  or  the  patient  labour  of  our  poor  ?  No :  not  to  these ; 
or  at  least  not  to  these  in  any  chief  measure.  Nay,  says  the  journal, 
*  more  than  any  agency,  it  is  the  cheapness  and  abundance  of  our 
coal  which  have  made  us  what  we  are.'  If  it  be  so,  then  *  ashes  to 
ashes '  be  our  epitaph !  and  the  sooner  the  better.  I  tell  you,  gen- 
tlemen of  England,  if  ever  you  would  have  your  country  breathe  the 
pure  breath  of  heaven  again,  and  receive  again  a  soul  into  her  body, 

*  A  saying  of  Baron  Licbig'a,  quoted  at  the  head  of  a  loader  on  the  same  sutject  in  the 
Daily  Telegraph  of  January  11,  1866,  summarily  digests  and  presents  the  maximum  folly 
of  modern  thought  in  this  respect.  "  Civilization,"  says  the  Baron,  "  is  the  economy  of 
power,  and  English  power  is  coul.^'  Not  altogether  so,  my  chemical  friend.  Civiliiatioa 
is  the  making  of  civil  persons,  which  is  a  kind  of  distillation  of  which  alembics  are  in- 
capable, and  does  not  at  all  imply  the  turning  of  a  Buiall  company  of  gentlemen  into  a 
large  company  of  ironmongers.  And  English  pow<T  (what  little  of  it  may  be  loft)  is  by 
no  means  coal,  but  indeed,  of  that  whioh,  "  when  the  whole  world  tonu  to  ooal,  then 
chiefly  lives." 


APPENDICES.  209 


instead  of  rotting  into  a  carcase,  blown  up  in  the  belly  with  carbonic 
acid  (and  great  that  way),  you  must  think,  and  feel,  for  your  Eng- 
land, as  well  as  fight  for  her:  you  must  teach  her  that  all  the  true 
[greatness  she  ever  had,  or  ever  can  have,  she  won  while  her  fields 
were  green  and  her  faces  ruddy, --that  greatness  is  still  possible  for 
Enghshmen,  even  though  the  ground  be  not  hollow  under  their  feet, 
nor  the  sky  black  over  their  heads.''— Crown  of  Wild  Olw%  p.  200. 


APPENDIX   10. 


The  following  letter  did  not  form  part  of  the  series  written  to  Mr 
Dixon;  but  is  perhaps  worth  reprinting.  I  have  not  the  date  of 
the  number  of  the  GazeUe  in  which  it  appeared,  but  it  was  during  the 
tailors'  strike  in  London. 

"7b  the  Editor  of  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette: 
I        "  SiR,-In  your  yesterday's  article  on  strikes  you  have  very  neatly 
and  tersely  expressed  the  primal  fallacy  of  modern  political  economy 
-to  wit,  that  '  the  value  of  any  piece  of  labour  cannot  be  defined  '- 
and  that  'all  that  can  be  ascertained  is  simply  whether  any  man  can 
be  got  to  do  It  for  a  certain  sum.'     Now,  sir,  the  '  value '  of  any  piece 
of  labour,  that  is  to  say,  the  quantity  of  food  and  air  which  will 
enable  a  man  to  perform  it  without  losing  actually  any  of  his  flesh  or 
his  nervous  energy,  is  as  absolutely  fixed  a  quantity  as  the  weight 
of  powder  necessary  to  carry  a  given  ball  a  given  distance      And 
within  limits  varying  by  exceedingly  minor  and  unimportant  circum- 
stances. It  IS  an  ascertainable  quantity.     I  told  the  public  this  five 
years  ago-and  under  pardon  of  your  politico-economical  contributors 
—It  IS  not  a  'sentimental,'  but  a  chemical,  fact. 

»  "  Let  any  half-dozen  of  recognized  London  physicians  state  in  pre- 
^cise  terms  the  quantity  and  kind  of  food,  and  space  of  lodging  they 
/  consider  approximately  necessary  for  the  healthy  life  of  a  labourer  in 
I  any  given  manufacture,  and  the  number  of  hours  he  may  without 
I  shortening  his  life,  work  at  such  business  daily  if  so  sustained. 


210  APPENDICES. 

"And  let  all  masters  be  bound  to  give  their  men  a  choice  between 
an  order  for  that  quantity  of  food  and  lodging,  or  such  wages  as  the 
market  may  offer  for  that  number  of  hours'  work. 

"  Proper  laws  for  the  maintenance  of  families  would  require  further 
concession — but,  in  the  outset,  let  but  this  law  of  wages  be  estab- 
lished, and  if  then  we  have  any  more  strikes  you  may  denounce  them 
without  one  word  of  remonstrance  either  from  sense  or  sensibility. 
"  I  am.  Sir, 

"  Your  faithful  servant, 

'•John  Ruskin." 


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