Qui Judicatis Terram !

Essay III.

Qui Judicatis Terram

Some centuries before the Christian era, a Jew merchant largely engaged in business on the Gold Coast,

and reported to have made one of the largest fortunes of his time, (held also in repute for much practical

sagacity,) left among his ledgers some general maxims concerning wealth, which have been preserved,

strangely enough, even to our own days. They were held in considerable respect by the most active traders

of the middle ages, especially by the Venetians, who even went so far in their admiration as to place a statue

of the old Jew on the angle of one of their principal public buildings. Of late years these writings have fallen

into disrepute, being opposed in every particular to the spirit of modern commerce. Nevertheless I shall

reproduce a passage or two from them here, partly because they may interest the reader by their novelty; and

chiefly because they will show him that it is possible for a very practical and acquisitive tradesman to hold,

through a not unsuccessful career, that principle of distinction between well-gotten and ill-gotten wealth,

which, partially insisted on in my last paper, it must be our work more completely to examine in this.

He says, for instance, in one place: “The getting of treasures by a lying tongue is a vanity tossed to and

fro of them that see death: “adding in another, with the same meaning (he has a curious way of doubling

his sayings): “Treasures of wickedness profit nothing: but justice delivers from death.” Both these passages

are notable for their assertion of death as the only real issue and sum of attainment by any unjust scheme of

wealth. If we read, instead of “lying tongue,” “lying label, title, pretence, or advertisement,” we shall more

clearly perceive the bearing of the words on modern business. The seeking of death is a grand expression

of the true course of men’s toil in such business. We usually speak as if death pursued us, and we fled

from him; but that is only so in rare instances. Ordinarily he masks himself — makes himself beautiful —

all-glorious; not like the King’s daughter, all-glorious within, but outwardly: his clothing of wrought gold.

We pursue him frantically all our days, he flying or hiding from us. Our crowning success at three-score and

ten is utterly and perfectly to seize, and hold him in his eternal integrity — robes, ashes, and sting.

Again: the merchant says, “He that oppresseth the poor to increase his riches, shall surely come to

want.” And again, more strongly: “Rob not the poor because he is poor; neither oppress the afflicted in the

place of business. For God shall spoil the soul of those that spoiled them.”

This “robbing the poor because he is poor,” is especially the mercantile form of theft, consisting in

talking advantage of a man’s necessities in order to obtain his labour or property at a reduced price. The

ordinary highwayman’s opposite form of robbery — of the rich, because he is rich — does not appear to

occur so often to the old merchant’s mind; probably because, being less profitable and more dangerous than

the robbery of the poor, it is rarely practised by persons of discretion.

But the two most remarkable passages in their deep general significance are the following: —

“The rich and the poor have met. God is their maker.”

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“The rich and the poor have met. God is their light.”

They “have met:” more literally, have stood in each other’s way (obviaverunt). That is to say, as long

as the world lasts, the action and counteraction of wealth and poverty, the meeting, face to face, of rich and

poor, is just as appointed and necessary a law of that world as the flow of stream to sea, or the interchange

of power among the electric clouds: — “God is their maker.” But, also, this action may be either gentle and

just, or convulsive and destructive: it may be by rage of devouring flood, or by lapse of serviceable wave;

—in blackness of thunderstroke, or continual force of vital fire, soft, and shapeable into love-syllables from

far away. And which of these it shall be depends on both rich and poor knowing that God is their light;

that in the mystery of human life, there is no other light than this by which they can see each other’s faces,

and live; — light, which is called in another of the books among which the merchant’s maxims have been

preserved, the “sun of justice,”1 of which it is promised that it shall rise at last with “healing” (health-giving

or helping, making whole or setting at one) in its wings. For truly this healing is only possible by means

of justice; no love, no faith, no hope will do it; men will be unwisely fond-vainly faithful, unless primarily

they are just; and the mistake of the best men through generation after generation, has been that great one of

thinking to help the poor by almsgiving, and by preaching of patience or of hope, and by every other means,

emollient or consolatory, except the one thing which God orders for them, justice. But this justice, with its

accompanying holiness or helpfulness, being even by the best men denied in its trial time, is by the mass

of men hated wherever it appears: so that, when the choice was one day fairly put to them, they denied the

Helpful One and the Just2; and desired a murderer, sedition-raiser, and robber, to be gran ted to them; —

the murderer instead of the Lord of Life, the sedition-raiser instead of the Prince of Peace, and the robber

instead of the Just Judge of all the world.

I have just spoken of the flowing of streams to the sea as a partial image of the action of wealth. In one

respect it is not a partial, but a perfect image. The popular economist thinks himself wise in having discovered

that wealth, or the forms of property in general, must go where they are required; that where demand is,

supply must follow. He farther declares that this course of demand and supply cannot be forbidden by human

laws. Precisely in the same sense, and with the same certainty, the waters of the world go where they are

required. Where the land falls, the water flows. The course neither of clouds nor rivers can be forbidden by

human will. But the disposition and administration of them can be altered by human forethought. Whether

the stream shall be a curse or a blessing, depends upon man’s labour, and administrating intelligence. For

centuries after centuries, great districts of the world, rich in soil, and favoured in climate, have lain desert

under the rage of their own rivers; nor only desert, but plague-struck. The stream which, rightly directed,

would have flowed in soft irrigation from field to field—would have purified the air, given food to man and

beast, and carried their burdens for them on its bosom — now overwhelms the plain, and poisons the wind;

its breath pestilence, and its work famine. In like manner this wealth “goes where it is required.” No human

laws can withstand its flow. They can only guide it: but this, the lending trench and limiting mound can do

so thoroughly, that it shall become water of life — the riches of the hand of wisdom3; or, on the contrary,

by leaving it to its own lawless flow, they may make it, what it has been too often, the last and deadliest of

national plagues: water of Marah — the water which feeds the roots of all evil.

The necessity of these laws of distribution or restraint is curiously over-looked in the ordinary political

1More accurately, Sun of Justness; but, instead of the harsh word “Justness,” the old English “Righteousness” being commonly

employed, has, by getting confused with “godliness,” or attracting about it various vague and broken meanings. prevented most

persons from receiving the force of the passages in which it occurs. The word “righteousness” properly refers to the justice of rule,

or right, as distinguished from “equity,” which refers to the justice of balance. More broadly, Righteousness is King’s justice; and

Equity, Judge’s justice; the King guiding or ruling all, the Judge dividing or discerning between opposites (therefore the double

question, “Man, who made me a ruler—dikastes—or a dividermeristes—over you?”) Thus, with respect to the Justice of Choice

(selection, the feebler and passive justice), we have from lego, — lex, legal, loi, and loyal; and with respect to the Justice of Rule

(direction, the stronger and active justice), we have from rego,— rex, regal, roi, and royal.

2In another place written with the same meaning, “Just, and having salvation.”

3“Length of days in her right hand; in her left, riches and honour.”

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economist’s definition of his own “science.” He calls it, shortly, the “science of getting rich.” But there are

many sciences, as well as many arts, of getting rich. Poisoning people of large estates, was one employed

largely in the middle ages; adulteration of food of people of small estates, is one employed largely now.

The ancient and honourable Highland method of blackmail; the more modern and less honourable system

of obtaining goods on credit, and the other variously improved methods of appropriation—which, in major

and minor scales of industry, down to the most artistic pocket-picking, we owe to recent genius,—all come

under the general head of sciences, or arts, of getting rich.

So that it is clear the popular economist, in calling his science the science par excellence of getting rich,

must attach some peculiar ideas of limitation to its character. I hope I do not misrepresent him, by assuming

that he means his science to be the science of “getting rich by legal or just means.” In this definition, is the

word “just,” or “legal,” finally to stand? For it is possible among certain nations, or under certain rulers, or

by help of certain advocates, that proceedings may be legal which are by no means just. If, therefore, we

leave at last only the word “just” in that place of our definition, the insertion of this solitary and small word

will make a notable difference in the grammar of our science. For then it will follow that, in order to grow

rich scientifically, we must grow rich justly; and, therefore, know what is just; so that our economy will

no longer depend merely on prudence, but on jurisprudence — and that of divine, not human law. Which

prudence is indeed of no mean order, holding itself, as it were, high in the air of heaven, and gazing for ever

on the light of the sun of justice; hence the souls which have excelled in it are represented by Dante as stars,

forming in heaven for ever the figure of the eye of an eagle: they having been in life the discerners of light

from darkness; or to the whole human race, as the light of the body, which is the eye; while those souls

which form the wings of the bird (giving power and dominion to justice, “healing in its wings”) trace also in

light the inscription in heaven: “DILIGITE JUSTITIAM QUI JUDICATIS TERRAM.” “Ye who judge the

earth, give” (not, observe, merely love, but) “diligent love to justice:” the love which seeks diligently, that

is to say, choosingly, and by preference, to all things else. Which judging or doing judgment in the earth is,

according to their capacity and position, required not of judges only, nor of rulers only, but of all men4: a

truth sorrowfully lost sight of even by those who are ready enough to apply to themselves passages in which

Christian men are spoken of as called to be “saints” (i.e. to helpful or healing functions); and “chosen to

be kings” (i.e. to knowing or directing functions); the true meaning of these titles having been long lost

through the pretences of unhelpful and unable persons to saintly and kingly character; also through the once

popular idea that both the sanctity and royalty are to consist in wearing long robes and high crowns, instead

of in mercy and judgment; whereas all true sanctity is saving power, as all true royalty is ruling power; and

injustice is part and parcel of the denial of such power, which “makes men as the creeping things, as the

fishes of the sea, that have no ruler over them.”5

Absolute justice is indeed no more attainable than absolute truth; but the righteous man is distinguished

from the unrighteous by his desire and hope of justice, as the true man from the false by his desire and hope

of truth. And though absolute justice be unattainable, as much justice as we need for all practical use is

attainable by all those who make it their aim.

We have to examine, then, in the subject before us, what are the laws of justice respecting payment of

labour — no small part, these, of the foundations of all jurisprudence.

I reduced, in my last paper, the idea of money payment to its simplest or radical terms. In those terms

4I hear that several of our lawyers have been greatly amused by the statement in the first of these papers that a lawyer’s function

was to do justice. I did not intend it for a jest; nevertheless it will be seen that in the above passage neither the determination nor

doing of justice are contemplated as functions wholly peculiar to the lawyer. Possibly, the more our standing armies, whether of

soldiers, pastors, or legislators (the generic term “pastor” including all teachers, and the generic term “lawyer” including makers as

well as interpreters of law), can be superseded by the force of national heroism, wisdom, and honesty, the better it may be for the

nation.

5It being the privilege of the fishes, as it is of rats and wolves, to live by the laws of demand and supply; but the distinction of

humanity, to live by those of right.

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its nature, and the conditions of justice respecting it, can be best ascertained.

Money payment, as there stated, consists radically in a promise to some person working for us, that for

the time and labour he spends in our service to-day we will give or procure equivalent time and labour in his

service at any future time when he may demand it.6

If we promise to give him less labour than he has given us, we under-pay him. If we promise to give

him more labour than he has given us, we over-pay him. In practice, according to the laws of demand and

supply, when two men are ready to do the work, and only one man wants to have it done, the two men

underbid each other for it; and the one who gets it to do, is under-paid. But when two men want the work

done, and there is only one man ready to do it, the two men who want it done over-bid each other, and the

workman is over-paid.

I will examine these two points of injustice in succession; but first I wish the reader to clearly understand

the central principle, lying between the two, of right or just payment.

When we ask a service of any man, he may either give it us freely, or demand payment for it. Respecting

free gift of service, there is no question at present, that being a matter of affection — not of traffic. But if

he demand payment for it, and we wish to treat him with absolute equity, it is evident that this equity can

only consist in giving time for time, strength for strength, and skill for skill. If a man works an hour for

us, and we only promise to work half-an-hour for him in return, we obtain an unjust advantage. If, on the

contrary, we promise to work an hour and a half for him in return, he has an unjust advantage. The justice

consists in absolute exchange; or, if there be any respect to the stations of the parties, it will not be in favour

of the employer: there is certainly no equitable reason in a main’s being poor, that if he give me a pound of

bread to-day, I should return him less than a pound of bread to-morrow; or any equitable reason in a man’s

being uneducated, that if he uses a certain quantity of skill and knowledge in my service, I should use a

less quantity of skill and knowledge in his. Perhaps, ultimately, it may appear desirable, or, to say the least,

gracious, that I should give in return somewhat more than I received. But at present, we are concerned on

the law of justice only, which is that of perfect and accurate exchange;—one circumstance only interfering

with the simplicity of this radical idea of just payment — that inasmuch as labour (rightly directed) is

fruitful just as seed is, the fruit (or “interest,” as it is called) of the labour first given, or “advanced,” ought

to be taken into account, and balanced by an additional quantity of labour in the subsequent repayment.

Supposing the repayment to take place at the end of a year, or of any other given time, this calculation could

be approximately made; but as money (that is to say, cash) payment involves no reference to time (it being

optional with the person paid to spend what he receives at once or after any number of years), we can only

assume, generally, that some slight advantage must in equity be allowed to the person who advances the

labour, so that the typical form of bargain will be: If you give me an hour to-day, I will give you an hour

and five minutes on demand. If you give me a pound of bread to day, I will give you seventeen ounces on

demand, and so on. All that it is necessary for the reader to note is, that the amount returned is at least in

equity not to be less than the amount given.

The abstract idea, then, of just or due wages, as respects the labourer, is that they will consist in a sum of

money which will at any time procure for him at least as much labour as he has given, rather more than less.

And this equity or justice of payment is, observe, wholly independent of any reference to the number of men

who are willing to do the work. I want a horseshoe for my horse. Twenty smiths, or twenty thousand smiths,

may be ready to forge it; their number does not in one atom’s weight affect the question of the equitable

6It might appear at first that the market price of labour expressed such an exchange: but this is a fallacy, for the market price is

the momentary price of the kind of labour required, but the just price is its equivalent of the productive labour of mankind. This

difference will be analyzed in its place. It must be noted also that I speak here only of the exchangeable value of labour, not of that

of commodities. The exchangeable value of a commodity is that of the labour required to produce it, multiplied into the force of

the demand for it. If the value of the labour = x and the force of demand = y, the exchangeable value of the commodity is xy, in

which if either x = 0, or y = 0, xy = 0.

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payment of the one who does forge it. It costs him a quarter of an hour of his life, and so much skill and

strength of arm to make that horseshoe for me. Then at some future time I am bound in equity to give a

quarter of an hour, and some minutes more, of my life (or of some other person’s at my disposal), and also

as much strength of arm and skill, and a little more, in making or doing what the smith may have need of.

Such being the abstract theory of just remunerative payment, its application is practically modified by

the fact that the order for labour, given in payment, is general, while labour received is special. The current

coin or document is practically an order on the nation for so much work of any kind; and this universal

applicability to immediate need renders it so much more valuable than special labour can be, that an order

for a less quantity of this general toil will always be accepted as a just equivalent for a greater quantity of

special toil. Any given craftsman will always be willing to give an hour of his own work in order to receive

command over half-an-hour, or even much less, of national work. This source of uncertainty, together. with

the difficulty of determining the monetary value of skill7, renders the ascertainment (even approximate) of

the proper wages of any given labour in terms of a currency matter of considerable complexity. But they do

not affect the principle of exchange. The worth of the work may not be easily known; but it has a worth,

just as fixed and real as the specific gravity of a substance, though such specific gravity may not be easily

ascertainable when the substance is united with many others. Nor is there so much difficulty or chance in

determining it as in determining the ordinary maxima and minima of vulgar political economy. There are

few bargains in which the buyer can ascertain with anything like precision that the seller would have taken

no less;— or the seller acquire more than a comfortable faith that the purchaser would have given no more.

This impossibility of precise knowledge prevents neither from striving to attain the desired point of greatest

vexation and injury to the other, nor from accepting it for a scientific principle that he is to buy for the least

and sell for the most possible, though what the real least or most may be he cannot tell. In like manner, a just

person lays it down for a scientific principle that he is to pay a just price, and, without being able precisely

to ascertain the limits of such a price, will nevertheless strive to attain the closest possible approximation

to them. A practically serviceable approximation he can obtain. It is easier to determine scientifically what

a man ought to have for his work, than what his necessities will compel him to take for it. His necessities

can only be ascertained by empirical, but his due by analytical, investigation. In the one case, you try your

answer to the sum like a puzzled schoolboy — till you find one that fits; in the other, you bring out your

result within certain limits, by process of calculation.

Supposing, then, the just wages of any quantity of given labour to have been ascertained, let us examine

the first results of just and unjust payment, when in favour of the purchaser or employer; i.e. when two men

are ready to do the work, and only one wants to have it done.

7Under the term “skill” I mean to include the united force of experience, intellect, and passion in their operation on manual

labour: and under the term “passion,” to include the entire range and agency of the moral feelings; from the simple patience and

gentleness of mind which will give continuity and fineness to the touch, or enable one person to work without fatigue, and with

good effect, twice as long as another, up to the qualities of character which renders science possible — (the retardation of science

by envy is one of the most tremendous losses in the economy of the present century) — and to the incommunicable emotion and

imagination which are the first and mightiest sources of all value in art.

It is highly singular that political economists should not yet have perceived, if not the moral, at least the passionate element, to be

an inextricable quantity in every calculation. I cannot conceive, for instance, how it was possible that Mr Mill should have followed

the true clue so far as to write, — “No limit can be set to the importance — even in a purely productive and material point of view

— of mere thought,” without seeing that it was logically necessary to add also, “and of mere feeling.” And this the more, because

in his first definition of labour he includes in the idea of it “all feelings of a disagreeable kind connected with the employment of

one’s thoughts in a particular occupation.” True; but why not also, “feelings of an agreeable kind?” It can hardly be supposed that

the feelings which retard labour are more essentially a part of the labour than those which accelerate it. The first are paid for as

pain, the second as power. The workman is merely indemified for the first; but the second both produce a part of the exchangeable

value of the work, and materially increase its actual quantity.

“Fritz is with us. He is worth fifty thousand men.” Truly, a large addition to the material force; — consisting, however, be it

observed, not more in operations carried on in Fritz’s head, than in operations carried on in his armies’ heart. “No limit can be set

to the importance of mere thought.” Perhaps not! Nay, suppose some day it should turn out that “mere” thought was in itself a

recommendable object of production, and that all Material production was only a step towards this more precious Immaterial one?

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The unjust purchaser forces the two to bid against each other till he has reduced their demand to its

lowest terms. Let us assume that the lowest bidder offers to do the work at half its just price.

The purchaser employs him, and does not employ the other. The first or apparent result is, therefore,

that one of the two men is left out of employ, or to starvation, just as definitely as by the just procedure of

giving fair price to the best workman. The various writers who endeavoured to invalidate the positions of

my first paper never saw this, and assumed that the unjust hirer employed both. He employs both no more

than the just hirer. The only difference (in the outset, is that the just man pays sufficiently, the unjust man

insufficiently, for the labour of the single person employed.

I say, “in the outset;” for this first or apparent, difference is not the actual difference. By the unjust

procedure, half the proper price of the work is left in the hands of the employer. This enables him to hire

another man at the same unjust rate, on some other kind of work; and the final result is that he has two men

working for him at half price, and two are out of employ.

By the just procedure, the whole price of the first piece of work goes in the hands of the man who does

it. No surplus being left in the employer’s hands, he cannot hire another man for another piece of labour.

But by precisely so much as his power is diminished, the hired workman’s power is increased; that is to say,

by the additional half of the price he has received; which additional half he has the power of using to employ

another man in his service. I will suppose, for the moment, the least favourable, though quite probable, case

— that, though justly treated himself, he yet will act unjustly to his subordinate; and hire at half-price, if he

can. The final result will then be, that one man works for the employer, at just price; one for the workman, at

half-price; and two, as in the first case, are still out of employ. These two, as I said before, are out of employ

in both cases. The difference between the just and unjust procedure does not lie in the number of men hired,

but in the price paid to them, and the persons by whom it is paid. The essential difference, that which I want

the reader to see clearly, is, that in the unjust case, two men work for one, the first hirer. In the just case, one

man works for the first hirer, one for the person hired, and so on, down or up through the various grades of

service; the influence being carried forward by justice, and arrested by injustice. The universal and constant

action of justice in this matter is therefore to diminish the power oF wealth, in the hands of one individual,

over masses of men, and to distribute it through a chain of men. The actual power exerted by the wealth

is the same in both cases; but by injustice it is put all into one man’s hands, so that he directs at once and

with equal force the labour of a circle of men about him; by the just procedure, he is permitted to touch the

nearest only, through whom, with diminished force, modified by new minds, the energy of the wealth passes

on to others, and so till it exhausts itself.

The immediate operation of justice in this respect is therefore to diminish the power of wealth, first in

acquisition of luxury, and, secondly, in exercise of moral influence. The employer cannot concentrate so

multitudinous labour on his own interests, nor can he subdue so multitudinous mind to his own will. But the

secondary operation of justice is not less important. The insufficient payment of the group of men working

for one, places each under a maximum of difficulty in rising above his position. The tendency of the system

is to check advancement. But the sufficient or just payment, distributed through a descending series oF

offices or grades or labour8, gives each subordinated person fair and sufficient means of rising in the social

8I am sorry to lose time by answering, however curtly, the equivocations of the writers who sought to obscure the instances

given of regulated labour in the first of these papers, by confusing kinds, ranks, and quantities of labour with its qualities. I never

said that a colonel should have the same pay as a private, nor a bishop the same pay as a curate. Neither did I say that more work

ought to be paid as less work (so that the curate of a parish of two thousand souls should have no more than the curate of a parish of

five hundred). But I said that, so far as you employ it at all, bad work should be paid no less than good work; as a bad clergyman yet

takes his tithes, a bad physician takes bis fee, and a bad lawyer his costs. And this, as will be farther shown in the conclusion, I said,

and say, partly because the best work never was, nor ever will be, done for money at all; but chiefly because, the moment people

know they have to pay the bad and good alike, they will try to discern the one from the other, and not use the bad. A sagacious writer

in the Scotsman asks me if I should like any common scribbler to be paid by Messrs Smith, Elder and Co. as their good authors are.

I should, if they employed him-but would seriously recommend them, for the scribbler’s sake, as well as their own, not to employ

him. The quantity of its money which the country at present invests in scribbling is not, in the outcome of it, economically spent;

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scale, if he chooses to use them; and thus not only diminishes the immediate power of wealth, but removes

the worst disabilities of poverty.

It is on this vital problem that the entire destiny of the labourer is ultimately dependent. Many minor interests

may sometimes appear to interfere with it, but all branch from it. For instance, considerable agitation

is often caused in the minds of the lower classes when they discover the share which they nominally, and

to all appearance, actually, pay out of their wages in taxation (I believe thirty-five or forty per cent). This

sounds very grievous; but in reality the labourer does not pay it, but his employer. If the workman had not

to pay it, his wages would be less by just that sum: competition would still reduce them to the lowest rate at

which life was possible. Similarly the lower orders agitated for the repeal of the corn laws9, thinking they

would be better off if bread were cheaper; never perceiving that as soon as bread was permanently cheaper,

wages would permanently fall in precisely that proportion. The corn laws were rightly repealed; not, however,

because they directly oppressed the poor, but because they indirectly oppressed them in causing a

large quantity of their labour to be consumed unproductively. So also unnecessary taxation oppresses them,

through destruction of capital, but the destiny of the poor depends primarily always on this one question of

dueness of wages. Their distress (irrespectively of that caused by sloth, minor error, or crime) arises on the

grand scale from the two reacting forces of competition and oppression. There is not yet, nor will yet for

ages be, any real over-population in the world; but a local over-population, or, more accurately, a degree of

population locally unmanageable under existing circumstances for want of forethought and sufficient machinery,

necessarily shows itself by pressure of competition; and the taking advantage of this competition

by the purchaser to obtain their labour unjustly cheap, consummates at once their suffering and his own; for

in this (as I believe in every other kind of slavery) the oppressor suffers at last more than the oppressed, and

those magnificent lines of Pope, even in all their force, fall short of the truth—

“Yet, to be just to these poor men of pelf,

Each does but HATE HIS NEIGHBOUR AS HIMSELF:

Damned to the mines, an equal fate betides

The slave that digs it, and the slave that hides.”

The collateral and reversionary operations of justice in this matter I shall examine hereafter (it being

needful first to define the nature of value); proceeding then to consider within what practical terms a juster

and even the highly ingenious person to whom this question occurred, might perhaps have been more beneficially employed than

in printing it.

9I have to acknowledge an interesting communication on the subject of free trade from Paisley (for a short letter from “A Wellwisher”

at my thanks are yet more due). But the Scottish writer will, I fear, be disagreeably surprised to hear, that I am, and

always have been, an utterly fearless and unscrupulous free-trader. Seven years ago, speaking of the various signs of infancy in the

European mind (Stones of Venice, vol. iii. p. 168), I wrote: “The first principles of commerce were acknowledged by the English

parliament only a few months ago, in its free-trade measures, and are still so little understood by the million, that no nation dares to

abolish its custom-houses.”

It will be observed that I do not admit even the idea of reciprocity. Let other nations, if they like, keep their ports shut; every

wise nation will throw its own open. It is not the opening them, but a sudden, inconsiderate, and blunderingly experimental manner

of opening them, which does the harm. If you have been protecting a manufacture for a long series of years, you must not take the

protection off in a moment, so as to throw every one of its operatives at once out of employ, any more than you must take all its

wrappings off a feeble child at once in cold weather, though the cumber of them may have been radically injuring its health. Little

by little, you must restore it to freedom and to air.

Most people’s minds are in curious confusion on the subject of free trade, because they suppose it to imply enlarged competition.

On the contrary, free trade puts an end to all competition. “Protection” (among various other mischievous functions,) endeavours

to enable one country to compete with another in the production of an article at a disadvantage. When trade is entirely free, no

country can be competed with in the articles for the production of which it is naturally calculated; nor can it compete with any other,

in the production of articles for which it is not naturally calculated. Tuscany, for instance, cannot compete with England in steel,

nor England with Tuscany in oil. They must exchange their steel and oil. Which exchange should be as frank and free as honesty

and the sea-winds can make it. Competition, indeed, arises at first, and sharply, in order to prove which is strongest in any given

manufacture possible to both; this point once ascertained, competition is at an end.

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system may be established; and ultimately the vexed question of the destinies of the unemployed workmen10.

Lest, however, the reader should be alarmed at some of the issues to which our investigations seem to be

tending, as if in their bearing against the power of wealth they had something in common with those of

socialism, I wish him to know in accurate terms, one or two of the main points which I have in view.

Whether socialism has made more progress among the army and navy (where payment is made on my

principles), or among the manufacturing operatives (who are paid on my opponents’ principles), I leave

it to those opponents to ascertain and declare. Whatever their conclusion may be, I think it necessary to

answer for myself only this: that if there be any one point insisted on throughout my works more frequently

than another, that one point is the impossibility of Equality. My continual aim has been to show the eternal

superiority of some men to others, sometimes even of one man to all others; and to show also the advisability

of appointing such persons or person to guide, to lead, or on occasion even to compel and subdue, their

inferiors, according to their own better knowledge and wiser will. My principles of Political Economy were

all involved in a single phrase spoken three years ago at Manchester. “Soldiers of the Ploughshare as well as

soldiers of the Sword:” and they were all summed in a single sentence in the last volume of Modern Painters

— “Government and co-operation are in all things the Laws of Life; Anarchy and competition the Laws of

Death.”

And with respect to the mode in which these general principles affect the secure possession of property,

so far am I from invalidating such security, that the whole gist of these papers will be found ultimately to

aim at an extension in its range; and whereas it has long been known and declared that the poor have no right

to the property of the rich, I wish it also to be known and declared that the rich have no right to the property

of the poor.

But that the working of the system which I have undertaken to develope would in many ways shorten

the apparent and direct, though not the unseen and collateral, power, both of wealth, as the Lady of Pleasure,

and of capital as the Lord of Toil, I do not deny on the contrary, I affirm it in all joyfulness; knowing that

the attraction of riches is already too strong, as their authority is already too weighty, for the reason of

mankind. I said in my last paper that nothing in history had ever been so disgraceful to human intellect as

the acceptance among us of the common doctrines of political economy as a science. I have many grounds

for saying this, but one of the chief may be given in few words. I know no previous instance in history of a

nation’s establishing a systematic disobedience to the first principles of its professed religion. The writings

which we (verbally) esteem as divine, not only denounce the love of money as the source of all evil, and

as an idolatry abhorred of the Deity, but declare mammon service to be the accurate and irreconcileable

opposite of God’s service: and, whenever they speak of riches absolute, and poverty absolute, declare woe

to the rich, and blessing to the poor. Where upon we forthwith investigate a science of becoming rich as the

shortest road to national prosperity.

“Tai Cristian dannera l’ Etiope,

Quando si partiranno i due collegi,

10I should be glad if the reader would first clear the ground for himself so far as to determine whether the difficulty lies in getting

the work or getting the pay for it. Does he consider occupation itself to be an expensive luxury, difficult of attainment, of which too

little is to be found in the world? or is it rather that, while in the enjoyment even of the most athletic delight, men must nevertheless

be maintained, and this maintenance is not always forthcoming? We must be clear on this head before going farther, as most people

are loosely in the habit of talking of the difficulty of “finding employment.” Is it employment that we want to find, or support during

employment? Is it idleness we wish to put an end to, or hunger? We have to take up both questions in succession, only not both at

the same time. No doubt that work is a luxury, and a very great one. It is, indeed, at once a luxury and a necessity; no man can retain

either health of mind or body without it. So profoundly do I feel this, that, as will be seen in the sequel, one of the principal objects

I would recommend to benevolent and practical persons, is to induce rich people to seek for a larger quantity of this luxury than

they at present possess. Nevertheless, it appears by experience that even this healthiest of pleasures may be indulged in to excess,

and that human beings are just as liable to surfeit of labour as to surfeit of meat; so that, as on the one hand, it may be charitable to

provide, for some people, lighter dinner, and more work, for others, it may be equally expedient to provide lighter work, and more

dinner.

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L’UNO IN ETERNO RICCO, E L’ALTRO INOPE.”