Essays on political economy : being a sequel to papers which appeared in the 'Cornhill Magazine' / by John Ruskin.

  • John Ruskin
Date:
1862[-1863]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Essays on political economy : being a sequel to papers which appeared in the 'Cornhill Magazine' / by John Ruskin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    Temperance in Hiches. 1803.] be put to the acquisitiveness of com- merce.* For as things stand, a man holds it liis duty to he temperate in liis food, and of his body, but for no duty to be temperate in his riches, and of liis mind. He sees that he ought not to waste liis youth and his flesh for luxury; but he will waste his age, and liis soul, for money, and think it no wrong, nor the de- lirium tremens of the intellect any evil. But the law of life is, that a man should fix the sum he desires to make annually, as the food ho desires to eat daily; and stay when he has reached the limit, refusing increase of business, and leaving it to others, so obtaining due freedom of time for better thoughts. How the gluttony of business is punished, a bill of health for the principals of the richest city houses, issued an- nually, would show in a sufficiently impressive manner. I know, of course, that these state- ments will be received by the modern merchant as an active border rider of the sixteenth century would have heard of its being proper for men of the Marches to get their living by the spade instead of the spur. But my business is only to state veracities and necessities; I neither look for the acceptance of the one, nor promise anything for the near- ness of the other. Near or distant, the day will assuredly come when the merchants of a state shall be its true * ministers of exchange/ its porters, in the double sense of carriers and gate-keepers, bringing all lands into frank and faithful communication, and knowing for their master of guild, Hermes the herald, instead of Mercury the gain-guarder. And now, finally, for immediate rule to all whom it concerns. The distress of any population means that they need food, house- room, clothes, and fuel. You can never, therefore, be wrong in employ- ing any labourer to produce food, house-room, clothes, or fuel: but you are always wrong if you employ him to produce nothing, (for then some other labourer must be worked double time to feed him); and you are generally wrong, at present, if you employ him (unless he can do no- thing else) to produce works of art, or luxuries; because modern art is mostly on a false basis, and modem luxury is criminally great, t The way to produce more food is mainly to bring in fresh ground, and increase facilities of carriage;—to break rock, exchange earth, drain the moist, and water the dry, to mend roads, and build harbours of refuge. Taxation thus spent will annihilate taxation, but spent in war, it anni- hilates revenue. * The fury of modern trade arises chiefly out of the possibility of making sudden fortune by largeness of transaction, and accident of discovery or contrivance. I have no doubt that the final interest of every nation is to check the action of these commercial lotteries ; and that all great accidental gains or losses should be national,—not indi- vidual. But speculation absolute, unconnected with commercial effort, is an unmitigated evil in a state, and the root of countless evils beside. f It is especially necessary that the reader should keep his mind fixed on the methods of consumption and destruction, as the true sources of national poverty. Men are apt to watch rather the exchanges in a state than its damages; but the exchanges are only of importance so far as they bring about these last. A large number of the purchases made by the richer classes are mere forms of interchange of unused property, wholly without effect on national prosperity. It matters nothing to the state whether, if a china pipkin be rated as worth a hundred pounds, A has the pipkin and B the pounds, or A the pounds and B the pipkin. But if the pipkin is pretty, and A or B breaks it, there is national loss, not otherwise. So again, when the loss has really taken place, no shifting of the shoulders that bear it will do away with the fact of it. .There is an intensely ludicrous notion in the public mind respecting the abolishment of debt by denyiug it. When a debt is denied, the lender loses instead of the borrower, that is.all; the loss is precisely, accurately, everlastingly the same. The Americans borrow money to spend in blowing up their own houses. They deny their debt; by one third already, gold being at fifty premium; and will probably deny it wholly. That merely means that the holders of the notes are to be the losers instead of the issuers. The quantity of loss is precisely equal, and irrevocable; it is the quantity of human industry spent in explosion, plus the quantity of goods exploded. Honour only decides u7io shall pay the sum lost, not whether it is to be paid or not, Baid it must be, and to the uttermost farthing.