John Ruskin
Essays from the Cornhill
Magazine 1860,
reprinted as Unto This Last in
1862.
UNTO THIS LAST
“Friend, I do thee no wrong.
Didst not thou agree with me for a penny?
Take that thine is, and go thy way.
I will give unto this last even as unto thee.”
“If ye think good, give me my price;
And if not, forbear.
So they weighed for my price thirty pieces of
silver.”
Published with the help of LATEX2 on Debian
GNU/Linux.
2
Table of
Contents
Preface 5
I. The Roots of Honour 9
II. The Veins of Wealth 19
III.Qui Judicatis Terram 27
IV. Ad Valorem 37
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UNTO THIS LAST
4
Preface
The for following essays were published eighteen
months ago in the Corhill Magazine, and were reprobated
in a violent manner, as far as I could hear, by most
of the readers they met with.
Not a whit the less, I believe them to be the best,
that is to say, the truest, the rightest-worded, and
most
serviceable things I have ever written;
and the last of them, having had especial pains spent on it, is probably
the best I shall ever write.
“This,” the reader may reply, “it might be, yet not
therefore well written.” Which, in no mock humility,
admitting, I yet satisfied with the work, though
with nothing else that I have done ; and purposing shortly to
follow out the subjects opened in these papers, as I
may find leisure, I wish the introductory statements to
be within the reach of any one who may care to refer
to them. So I republish the essays as they appeared.
One word only is changed, correcting the estimate of
a weight; and no word is added.
Although, however, I find nothing to modify in these
papers, it is a matter of regret to me that the most
startling of all statements in them, — that
respecting the necessity of the organization of labour, with fixed
wages, — should have found its way into the first
essay; it being quite one of the least important, though
by no means the least certain, of the positions to
be defended. The real gist of these papers, their central
meaning and aim, is to give, as I believe for the
first time in plain English, — it has often been incidentally
given in good Greek by Plato and Xenophon, and good
Latin by Cicero and Horace, — a logical definition
of WEALTH:
such definition being absolutely needed for a basis of economical science. The
most reputed
essay on that subject which has appeared in modern
times, after opening with the statement that “writers on
political economy profess to teach, or to
investigate1, the nature of wealth,” thus
follows up the declaration
of its thesis — “Every one has a notion,
sufficiently correct for common purpose, of what is meant by
wealth.” . . . “It is no part of the design of this
treatise to aim at metaphysical nicety of definition.”
Metaphysicial nicety, we assuredly do not need; but
physical nicety, and logical accuracy, with respect
to a physical subject, we as assuredly do.
Suppose the subject of inquiry, instead of being
House-law (Oikonomia), has been Star-law (Astronomia),
and that, ignoring distinction between stars fixed
and wandering, as here between wealth radiant and
wealth reflective, the writer had begun thus: “Every
one has a notion, sufficiently correct for common purpose,
of what is meant by stars. Metaphysical nicety in
the definition of a star is not the object of this
treatise”; — the essay so opened might yet have been
far more true in its final statements, and a thousand
fold more serviceable to the navigator, than any
treatise on wealth, which founds its conclusion on the
popular conception of wealth, can ever become to the
economist.
It was, therefore, the first object of these
following papers to give an accurate and stable definition
of wealth. Their second object was to show that the
acquisition of wealth was finally possible only under
1Which? for
where investigation is necessary, teaching is impossible.
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UNTO THIS LAST
certain moral conditions of society, of which quite
the first was a belief in the existence, and even, for
practical purpose, in the attainability of honesty.
Without venturing to pronounce — since on such
matter human judgement is by no means conclusive
— what is, or is not, the noblest of God’s works, we
may yet admit so much of Pope’s assertion as that an
honest man is among His best works presently
visible, and, as things stand, a somewhat rare one; but not an
incredible or miraculous work; still less an
abnormal one. Honesty is not a disturbing force, which deranges
the orbits of economy; but a consistent and
commanding force, by obedience to which — and by no other
obedience— those orbits can continue clear of chaos.
It is true, I have sometimes heard Pope condemned
for the lowness, instead of the height, of his standard:
— “Honesty is indeed a respectable virtue; but how
much higher may men attain! Shall nothing more be
asked of us than that we be honest?”
For the present, good friends, nothing. It seems
that in our aspirations to be more than that, we have to
some extent lost sight of the propriety of being so
much as that. What else we may have lost faith in, there
shall be here no question; but assuredly we have
lost faith in common honesty, and in the working power
of it. And this faith, with the facts on which it
may rest, it is quite our first business to recover and keep:
not only believing, but even by experience assuring
ourselves, that there are yet in the world men who can
be restrained from fraud otherwise than by the fear
of losing employment2; nay, that it is even accurately
in
proportion to the number of such men in any State,
that the said State does or can prolong its existence.
To these two points, then, the following essays are
mainly directed. The subject of the organization
of labour is only casually touched upon; because, if
we once can get sufficient quantity of honesty in our
captains, the organization of labour is easy, and
will develop itself without quarrel or difficulty; but if we
cannot get honesty in our captains, the organization
of labour is for evermore impossible.
The several conditions of its possibility I purpose
to examine at length in the sequel. Yet, lest the reader
should be alarmed by the hints thrown out during the
following investigation of first principles, as if they
were leading him into unexpectedly dangerous ground,
I will, for his better assurance, state at once the worst
of the political creed at which I wish him to
arrive.
1. First, — that there should be training schools
for youth established, at Government cost3,
and under
Government discipline, over the whole country; that
every child born in the country should, at the
parent’s whish, be permitted (and, in certain cases,
be under penalty required) to pass through them;
and that, in these schools, the child should (with
other minor pieces of knowledge hereafter to be
considered) imperatively be taught, with the best
skill of teaching that the country could produce, the
2“The effectual discipline which is
exercised over a workman is not that of his corporation, but of his customers.
It is the fear of
losing their employment which
restrains his frauds, and corrects his negligence.’ (Wealth of Nations,
Book I, chap. 10.)
Note to Second
Edition. —The
only addition I will make to the words of this book shall be a very earnest
request to any Christian
reader to think within himself
what an entirely damned state of soul any human creature must have got into,
who could read with
acceptance such a sentence as
this; much more, write it; and to oppose to it, the first commercial words of
Venice, discovered by
me in her first church:
“Around this temple, let
the Merchant’s law be just, his weights true, and his contracts guileless
/honest/.”
If any of my present
readers think that my language in this note is either intemperate /severe/, or
unbecoming /unfitting/, I will beg them to read
with attention the
Eighteenth paragraph of Sesame and Lilies; and to be assured that I
never, myself, now use, in writing, any word
which is not, in my
deliberate judgement, the fittest for the occasion.
VENICE,
Sunday,
18th March, 1877.
3It will
probably be inquired by near-sighted persons, out of what funds such schools
could be supported. The expedient modes
of direct provision for
them I will examine hereafter; indirectly, they would be far more than
self-supporting. The economy in crime
alone, (quite one of the
most costly articles of luxury in the modern European market,) which such
schools would induce, would
suffice to support them
ten times over. Their economy of labour would be pure again, and that too large
to be presently calculable.
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UNTO THIS LAST
following three things: —
(a) The laws of health, and the exercices anjoined
by them;
(b) Habits of gentleness and justice; and
(c) The calling by which he is to live.
2. Secondly, —that, in connection with these
training schools, there should be established, also entirely
under Government regulation, manufactories and
workshops for the production and sale of every
necessary of life, and for the exercise of every
useful art. And that, interfering no whit with private
entreprise, nor setting any restraints or tax on
private trade, but leaving both to do their best, and
beat the Government if they could,—there should, at
these Government manufactories and shops, be
authoritatively good and examplary work done, and
pure and true substance sold; so that a man could
be sure, if he chose to pay the Government price,
that he got for his money bread that was bread, ale
that was ale, and work that was work.
3. Thirdly, — that any man, or woman, or boy, or
girl, out of employment, should be at once received at
the nearest Government school, and set to such work
as it appeared, on trial, they were fit for, at a fiwed
rate of wages determinable every year;—that, being
found incapable of work through ignorance, they
should be taught, or being found incapable of work
through sickness, should be tended; but that being
found objecting to work, they should be set, under
compulsion of the strictest nature, to the more
painful and degrading forms of necessary toil,
especially to that in mines and other places of danger
(such danger being, however, diminished to the
utmost by careful regulation and discipline), and the
due wages of such work be retained, cost of
compulsion first abstracted — to be at the workman’s
command, so soon as he has come to sounder mind
respecting the laws of employment.
4. Lastly,—that for the old and destitute, comfort
and home should be provided; which provision, when
misfortune had been by the working of such a system
sifted from guilt, would be honourable instead
of disgraceful to the receiver. For (I repaet this
passage out of my Political Economy of Art, to which
the reader is referred for farther detail) “a
labourer serves his country with his spade, just as a man in
the middle ranks of life serves it with sword, pen,
or lancet. If the service be less, and, therefore, the
wages during health less, then the reward when
health is broken may be less, but not less honourable;
and it ought to be quite as natural and
straightforward a matter for a labourer to take his pension from
his parish, because he has deserved well of his
parish, as for a man in higher rank to take his pension
from his country, because he has deserved well of
his country.”
To which statement, I will only add, for conclusion,
respecting the discipline and pay of life and death,
that, for both high and low, Livy’s last words
touching Valerius Publicola, “de publico est elatus”4, ought
not to be a dishonourable close of epitaph.
These things, then, I believe, and am about, as I
find power, to explain and illustrate in their various
bearings; following out also what belongs to them of
collateral inquiry. Here I state them only in brief, to
prevent the reader casting about in alarm for my
ultimate meaning; yet requesting him, for the present, to
remember, that in a science dealing with so subtle
elements as those of human nature, it is only possible
to answer for the final truth of principles, not for
the direct success of plans: and that in the best of these
last, what can ve immediately accomplished is always
questionable, and what can be finally accomplished,
inconceivable.
DENMARK HILL,
10th May, 1862.
4P. Valerius, omnium consensu
princeps belli pacisque artibus, anno post moritur; gloriâ ingenti, copiis,
familiaribus adeo
exiguis, ut funeri sumtus deesset:
de publico est elatus. Luxere matronae ut Brutum. —Lib. ii. c. xvi.
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