Fors Clavigera E-Book

John Ruskin

• Herausgeber: Science & Technology Publishing
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 426

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

Fors Clavigera: Letters to the Workmen and Labourers of Great Britain (Volume 4 of 8) is a compelling continuation of John Ruskin’s influential series of open letters, originally published between 1871 and 1884. In this fourth volume, Ruskin deepens his passionate engagement with the social, economic, and moral issues facing Victorian Britain, addressing his words directly to the working class. Through a blend of personal reflection, incisive social critique, and philosophical discourse, Ruskin challenges the prevailing values of industrial capitalism, urging his readers to reconsider the true meaning of wealth, labor, and progress. This volume is marked by Ruskin’s characteristic eloquence and moral fervor as he explores themes such as the dignity of honest work, the responsibilities of employers and workers, the corrupting influence of unchecked commercialism, and the importance of education, art, and nature in human life. Ruskin’s writing is both poetic and polemical, weaving together references to history, literature, and contemporary events to illustrate his arguments. He calls for a return to craftsmanship, community, and ethical stewardship, warning against the dehumanizing effects of mechanization and materialism. Fors Clavigera Volume 4 stands as a testament to Ruskin’s enduring commitment to social justice and his belief in the transformative power of individual and collective action. It offers readers not only a vivid portrait of nineteenth-century Britain but also timeless insights into the challenges of modern society. This volume is essential reading for anyone interested in the intersections of art, labor, and social reform, and it continues to inspire debate and reflection on the values that shape our world.

Leseprobe

FORS CLAVIGERA.

LETTERS

TO THE WORKMEN AND LABOURERS OF GREAT BRITAIN.

BY JOHN RUSKIN, LL.D., HONORARY STUDENT OF CHRIST CHURCH, AND SLADE PROFESSOR OF FINE ART.

Vol. IV. GEORGE ALLEN, SUNNYSIDE, ORPINGTON, KENT. 1874.

[1]

FORS CLAVIGERA.

LETTER XXXVII.

1st January, 1874

“Selon la loy, et ly prophetes,

Qui a charité parfaicte

Il ayme Dieu sur toute rien

De cueur, de force, et d’ame nette;

Celui devons-nous tous de debte

Comme soy-mesmes, son prochain;

Qu’on dit qui in ayme, ayme mon chien.

De tel pierre, et de tel merrien

Est ès cieulx nostre maison faicte

Car nulz ne peut dire, ‘c’est mien,’

Fors ce qu’il a mis en ce bien;

Tout le remenant est retraicte.”

According to the Law and the Prophets,

He who has perfect charity,

Loves God above everything,

With heart, with flesh, and with spirit pure.

Him also, our neighbour, we are all in debt

To love as ourselves;

For one says, Who loves me, loves my dog.

Of such stone, and of such crossbeam, [2]

Is in the heavens our house made;

For no one can say, ‘It is mine,’

Beyond what he has put into that good,

All the rest is taken away.

One day last November, at Oxford, as I was going in at the private door of the University galleries, to give a lecture on the Fine Arts in Florence, I was hindered for a moment by a nice little girl, whipping a top on the pavement. She was a very nice little girl; and rejoiced wholly in her whip, and top; but could not inflict the reviving chastisement with all the activity that was in her, because she had on a large and dilapidated pair of woman’s shoes, which projected the full length of her own little foot behind it and before; and being securely fastened to her ancles in the manner of mocassins, admitted, indeed, of dextrous glissades, and other modes of progress quite sufficient for ordinary purposes; but not conveniently of all the evolutions proper to the pursuit of a whipping-top.

There were some worthy people at my lecture, and I think the lecture was one of my best. It gave some really trustworthy information about art in Florence six hundred years ago. But all the time I was speaking, I knew that nothing spoken about art, either by myself or other people, could be of the least use to anybody there. For their primary business, and mine, was with art in Oxford, now; not with art in Florence, then; and art in Oxford now was absolutely dependent on [3]our power of solving the question—which I knew that my audience would not even allow to be proposed for solution—“Why have our little girls large shoes?”

Indeed, my great difficulty, of late, whether in lecturing or writing, is in the intensely practical and matter-of-fact character of my own mind as opposed to the loquacious and speculative disposition, not only of the British public, but of all my quondam friends. I am left utterly stranded, and alone, in life, and thought. Life and knowledge, I ought to say; for I have done what thinking was needful for me long ago, and know enough to act upon, for the few days, or years, I may have yet to live. I find some of my friends greatly agitated in mind, for instance, about Responsibility, Free-will, and the like. I settled all those matters for myself, before I was ten years old, by jumping up and down an awkward turn of four steps in my nursery-stairs, and considering whether it was likely that God knew whether I should jump only three, or the whole four at a time. Having settled it in my mind that He knew quite well, though I didn’t, which I should do; and also whether I should fall or not in the course of the performance,—though I was altogether responsible for taking care not to,—I never troubled my head more on the matter, from that day to this. But my friends keep buzzing and puzzling about it, as if they had to order the course of the world themselves; and won’t attend to me for an instant, if I ask why little girls have large shoes. [4]

I don’t suppose any man, with a tongue in his head, and zeal to use it, was ever left so entirely unattended to, as he grew old, by his early friends; and it is doubly and trebly strange to me, because I have lost none of my power of sympathy with them. Some are chemists; and I am always glad to hear of the last new thing in elements; some are palæontologists, and I am no less happy to know of any lately unburied beast peculiar in his bones; the lawyers and clergymen can always interest me with any story out of their courts or parishes;—but not one of them ever asks what I am about myself. If they chance to meet me in the streets of Oxford, they ask whether I am staying there. When I say, yes, they ask how I like it; and when I tell them I don’t like it at all, and don’t think little girls should have large shoes, they tell me I ought to read the ‘Cours de Philosophie Positive.’ As if a man who had lived to be fifty-four, content with what philosophy was needful to assure him that salt was savoury, and pepper hot, could ever be made positive in his old age, in the impertinent manner of these youngsters. But positive in a pertinent and practical manner, I have been, and shall be, with such stern and steady wedge of fact and act as time may let me drive into the gnarled blockheadism of the British mob.

I am free to confess I did not quite know the sort of creature I had to deal with, when I began, fifteen years ago, nor the quantity of ingenious resistance to practical [5]reform which could be offered by theoretical reformers. Look, for instance, at this report of a speech of Mr. Bright’s in the Times, on the subject of adulteration of food.1

“The noble lord has taken great pains upon this question, and has brought before the House a great amount of detail in connection with it. As I listened to his observations I hoped and believed that there was, though unintentional, no little exaggeration in them. Although there may be particular cases in which great harm to health and great fraud may possibly be shown, yet I think that general statements of this kind, implicating to a large extent the traders of this country, are dangerous, and are almost certain to be unjust. Now, my hon. friend (Mr. Pochin) who has just addressed the House in a speech showing his entire mastery of the question, has confirmed my opinion, for he has shown—and I dare say he knows as much of the matter as any present—that there is a great deal of exaggeration in the opinions which have prevailed in many parts of the country, and which have even been found to prevail upon the matter in this House.… Now, I am prepared to show that the exaggeration of the noble lord—I do not say intentionally, of course; I am sure he is incapable of that—is just as great in the matter of weights and measures as in that of adulteration. Probably he is not aware that in the list of persons employing weights that are inaccurate—I do not say fraudulent—no distinction is drawn between those who are intentionally fraudulent and those who are accidentally inaccurate, and that the penalty is precisely the same, and the offence is just as eagerly detected, whether there be a fraud or merely an accident. Now, the noble lord will probably be surprised when I tell him that many persons [6]are fined annually, not because their weights are too small, but because they are too large. In fact, when the weights are inaccurate, but are in favour of the customer, still the owner and user of the weight is liable to the penalty, and is fined.… My own impression with regard to this adulteration is that it arises from the very great, and perhaps inevitable, competition in business; and that to a great extent it is promoted by the ignorance of customers. As the ignorance of customers generally is diminishing, we may hope that before long the adulteration of food may also diminish. The noble lord appears to ask that something much more extensive and stringent should be done by Parliament. The fact is, it is vain to attempt by the power of Parliament to penetrate into and to track out evils such as those on which the noble lord has dwelt at such length. It is quite impossible that you should have the oversight of the shops of the country by inspectors, and that you should have persons going into shops to buy sugar, pickles, and Cayenne pepper, to get them analyzed, and then raise complaints against shopkeepers, and bring them before the magistrates. If men in their private businesses were to be tracked by Government officers and inspectors every hour of the day, life would not be worth having, and I recommend them to remove to another country, where they would not be subject to such annoyance.”

Now, I neither know, nor does it matter to the public, what Mr. Bright actually said; but the report in the Times is the permanent and universally influential form of his sayings: and observe what the substance is, of these three or four hundred Parliamentary words, so reported.

First. That an evil which has been exaggerated ought not to be prevented. [7]

Secondly. That at present we punish honest men as much as rogues; and must always continue to do so if we punish anybody.

Thirdly. That life would not be worth having if one’s weights and measures were liable to inspection.

I can assure Mr. Bright that people who know what life means, can sustain the calamity of the inspection of their weights and measures with fortitude. I myself keep a tea-and-sugar shop. I have had my scales and weights inspected more than once or twice, and am not in the least disposed to bid my native land good-night on that account. That I could bid it nothing but good-night—never good-morning, the smoke of it quenching the sun, and its parliamentary talk, of such quality as the above, having become darkness voluble, and some of it worse even than that, a mere watchman’s rattle, sprung by alarmed constituencies of rascals when an honest man comes in sight,—these are things indeed which should make any man’s life little worth having, unless he separate himself from the scandalous crowd; but it must not be in exile from his country.

I have not hitherto stated, except in general terms, the design to which these letters point, though it has been again and again defined, and it seems to me explicitly enough—the highest possible education, namely, of English men and women living by agriculture in their native land. Indeed, during these three past years I have not hoped to do more than make my readers feel what mischiefs [8]they have to conquer. It is time now to say more clearly what I want them to do.

The substantial wealth of man consists in the earth he cultivates, with its pleasant or serviceable animals and plants, and in the rightly produced work of his own hands. I mean to buy, for the St. George’s Company, the first pieces of ground offered to me at fair price, (when the subscriptions enable me to give any price),—to put them as rapidly as possible into order, and to settle upon them as many families as they can support, of young and healthy persons, on the condition that they do the best they can for their livelihood with their own hands, and submit themselves and their children to the rules written for them.

I do not care where the land is, nor of what quality. I would rather it should be poor, for I want space more than food. I will make the best of it that I can, at once, by wage-labour, under the best agricultural advice. It is easy now to obtain good counsel, and many of our landlords would willingly undertake such operations occasionally, but for the fixed notion that every improvement of land should at once pay, whereas the St. George’s Company is to be consistently monastic in its principles of labour, and to work for the redemption of any desert land, without other idea of gain than the certainty of future good to others. I should best like a bit of marsh land of small value, which I would trench into alternate ridge and canal, changing it all into solid [9]land, and deep water, to be farmed in fish. If, instead, I get a rocky piece, I shall first arrange reservoirs for rain, then put what earth is sprinkled on it into workable masses; and ascertaining, in either case, how many mouths the gained spaces of ground will easily feed, put upon them families chosen for me by old landlords, who know their people, and can send me cheerful and honest ones, accustomed to obey orders, and live in the fear of God. Whether the fear be Catholic, or Church-of-England, or Presbyterian, I do not in the least care, so that the family be capable of any kind of sincere devotion; and conscious of the sacredness of order. If any young couples of the higher classes choose to accept such rough life, I would rather have them for tenants than any others.

Tenants, I say, and at long lease, if they behave well: with power eventually to purchase the piece of land they live on for themselves, if they can save the price of it; the rent they pay, meanwhile, being the tithe of the annual produce, to St. George’s fund. The modes of the cultivation of the land are to be under the control of the overseer of the whole estate, appointed by the Trustees of the fund; but the tenants shall build their own houses to their own minds, under certain conditions as to materials and strength; and have for themselves the entire produce of the land, except the tithe aforesaid.

The children will be required to attend training schools [10]for bodily exercise, and music, with such other education as I have already described. Every household will have its library, given it from the fund, and consisting of a fixed number of volumes,—some constant, the others chosen by each family out of a list of permitted books, from which they afterwards may increase their library if they choose. The formation of this library for choice, by a republication of classical authors in standard forms, has long been a main object with me. No newspapers, nor any books but those named in the annually renewed lists, are to be allowed in any household. In time I hope to get a journal published, containing notice of any really important matters taking place in this or other countries, in the closely sifted truth of them.

The first essential point in the education given to the children will be the habit of instant, finely accurate, and totally unreasoning, obedience to their fathers, mothers, and tutors; the same precise and unquestioning submission being required from heads of families to the officers set over them. The second essential will be the understanding of the nature of honour, making the obedience solemn and constant; so that the slightest wilful violation of the laws of the society may be regarded as a grave breach of trust, and no less disgraceful than a soldier’s recoiling from his place in a battle.

In our present state of utter moral disorganization, it might indeed seem as if it would be impossible either to secure obedience, or explain the sensation of honour; [11]but the instincts of both are native in man, and the roots of them cannot wither, even under the dust-heap of modern liberal opinions. My settlers, you observe, are to be young people, bred on old estates; my commandants will be veteran soldiers; and it will be soon perceived that pride based on servitude to the will of another is far loftier and happier than pride based on servitude to humour of one’s own.

Each family will at first be put on its trial for a year, without any lease of the land: if they behave well, they shall have a lease for three years; if through that time they satisfy their officers, a life-long lease, with power to purchase.

I have already stated that no machines moved by artificial power are to be used on the estates of the society; wind, water, and animal force are to be the only motive powers employed, and there is to be as little trade or importation as possible; the utmost simplicity of life, and restriction of possession, being combined with the highest attainable refinement of temper and thought. Everything that the members of any household can sufficiently make for themselves, they are so to make, however clumsily; but the carpenter and smith, trained to perfectest work in wood and iron, are to be employed on the parts of houses and implements in which finish is essential to strength. The ploughshare and spade must be made by the smith, and the roof and floors by a carpenter; but the boys [12]of the house must be able to make either a horseshoe, or a table.

Simplicity of life without coarseness, and delight in life without lasciviousness, are, under such conditions, not only possible to human creatures, but natural to them. I do not pretend to tell you straightforwardly all laws of nature respecting the conduct of men; but some of those laws I know, and will endeavour to get obeyed; others, as they are needful, will be in the sequel of such obedience ascertained. What final relations may take place between masters and servants, labourers and employers, old people and young, useful people and useless, in such a society, only experience can conclude; nor is there any reason to anticipate the conclusion. Some few things the most obstinate will admit, and the least credulous believe: that washed faces are healthier than dirty ones, whole clothes decenter than ragged ones, kind behaviour more serviceable than malicious, and pure air pleasanter than foul. Upon that much of ‘philosophie positive’ I mean to act; and, little by little, to define in these letters the processes of action. That it should be left to me to begin such a work, with only one man in England—Thomas Carlyle—to whom I can look for steady guidance, is alike wonderful and sorrowful to me; but as the thing is so, I can only do what seems to me necessary, none else coming forward to do it. For my own part, I entirely hate the whole business: I dislike having either power or responsibility; am ashamed [13]to ask for money, and plagued in spending it. I don’t want to talk, nor to write, nor to advise or direct anybody. I am far more provoked at being thought foolish by foolish people, than pleased at being thought sensible by sensible people; and the average proportion of the numbers of each is not to my advantage. If I could find any one able to carry on the plan instead of me, I never should trouble myself about it more; and even now, it is only with extreme effort and chastisement of my indolence that I go on: but, unless I am struck with palsy, I do not seriously doubt my perseverance, until I find somebody able to take up the matter in the same mind, and with a better heart.

The laws required to be obeyed by the families living on the land will be,—with some relaxation and modification, so as to fit them for English people,—those of Florence in the fourteenth century. In what additional rules may be adopted, I shall follow, for the most part, Bacon, or Sir Thomas More, under sanction always of the higher authority which of late the English nation has wholly set its strength to defy—that of the Founder of its Religion; nor without due acceptance of what teaching was given to the children of God by their Father, before the day of Christ, of which, for present ending, read and attend to these following quiet words.2[14]

“ ‘In what point of view, then, and on what ground shall a man be profited by injustice or intemperance or other baseness, even though he acquire money or power?’

‘There is no ground on which this can be maintained.’

‘What shall he profit if his injustice be undetected? for he who is undetected only gets worse, whereas he who is detected and punished has the brutal part of his nature silenced and humanized; the greater element in him is liberated, and his whole soul is perfected and ennobled by the acquirement of justice and temperance and wisdom, more than the body ever is by receiving gifts of beauty, strength, and health, in proportion as the soul is more honourable than the body.’

‘Certainly,’ he said.

‘Will not, then, the man of understanding, gather all that is in him, and stretch himself like a bent bow to this aim of life; and, in the first place, honour studies which thus chastise and deliver his soul in perfection; and despise others?’

‘Clearly,’ he said.

‘In the next place, he will keep under his body, and so far will he be from yielding to brutal and irrational pleasure,3 that he will not even first look to bodily health as his main object, nor desire to be fair, or strong, or well, unless he is likely thereby to gain temperance; [15]but he will be always desirous of preserving the harmony of the body for the sake of the concord of the soul?’

‘Certainly,’ he replied, ‘that he will, if he is indeed taught by the Muses.’

‘And he will also observe the principle of classing and concord in the acquisition of wealth; and will not, because the mob beatify him, increase his endless load of wealth to his own infinite harm?’

‘I think not,’ he said.

‘He will look at the city which is within him, and take care to avoid any change of his own institutions, such as might arise either from abundance or from want; and he will duly regulate his acquisition and expense, in so far as he is able?’

‘Very true.’

‘And, for the same reason, he will accept such honours as he deems likely to make him a better man; but those which are likely to loosen his possessed habit, whether private or public honours, he will avoid?’

‘Then, if this be his chief care, he will not be a politician?’

‘By the dog of Egypt, he will! in the city which is his own, though in his native country perhaps not, unless some providential accident should occur.’

‘I understand; you speak of that city of which we are the founders, and which exists in idea only, for I do not think there is such an one anywhere on earth?’ [16]

‘In heaven,’ I replied, ‘there is laid up a pattern of such a city; and he who desires may behold this, and, beholding, govern himself accordingly. But whether there really is, or ever will be, such an one, is of no importance to him, for he will act accordingly to the laws of that city and of no other?’

‘True,’ he said.” [17]

NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.

It is due to my readers to state my reasons for raising the price, and withdrawing the frontispieces, of Fors.

The cessation of the latter has nothing to do with the price. At least, for the raised price I could easily afford the plates, and they would help the sale; but I cannot spare my good assistant’s time in their preparation, and find that, in the existing state of trade, I cannot trust other people, without perpetual looking after them; for which I have no time myself. Even last year the printing of my Fors frontispieces prevented the publication of my Oxford lectures on engraving; and it is absolutely necessary that my Oxford work should be done rightly, whatever else I leave undone. Secondly, for the rise in price. I hold it my duty to give my advice for nothing; but not to write it in careful English, and correct press, for nothing. I like the feeling of being paid for my true work as much as any other labourer; and though I write Fors, not for money, but because I know it to be wanted, as I would build a wall against the advancing sea for nothing, if I couldn’t be paid for doing it; yet I will have proper pay from the harbour-master, if I can get it. As soon as the book gives me and the publisher what is right, the surplus shall go to the St. George’s fund. The price will not signify ultimately;—sevenpence, or tenpence, or a shilling, will be all the same to the public if the book is found useful;—but I fix, and mean to keep to, tenpence, because I intend striking for use on my farms the pure [18]silver coin called in Florence the ‘soldo,’ of which the golden florin was worth twenty; (the soldo itself being misnamed from the Roman ‘solidus’) and this soldo will represent the Roman denarius, and be worth ten silver pence; and this is to be the price of Fors.

Then one further petty reason I have for raising the price. In all my dealings with the public, I wish them to understand that my first price is my lowest. They may have to pay more; but never a farthing less. And I am a little provoked at not having been helped in the least by the Working Men’s College, after I taught there for five years, or by any of my old pupils there, whom I have lost sight of:—(three remain who would always help me in anything,) and I think they will soon begin to want Fors, now,—and they shall not have it for sevenpence.

The following three stray newspaper cuttings may as well be printed now; they have lain some time by me. The first two relate to economy. The last is, I hope, an exaggerated report; and I give it as an example of the kind of news which my own journal will not give on hearsay. But I know that things did take place in India which were not capable of exaggeration in horror, and such are the results, remember, of our past missionary work, as a whole, in India and China.

I point to them to-day, in order that I may express my entire concurrence in all that I have seen reported of Professor Max Müller’s lecture in Westminster Abbey, though there are one or two things I should like to say in addition, if I can find time.

“Those who find fault with the present Government on account of its rigid economy, and accuse it of shabbiness, have little idea of the straits it is put to for money and the sacrifices it is obliged to make in order to make both ends meet. The following melancholy facts will serve to show how hardly pushed this great [19]nation is to find sixpence even for a good purpose. The Hakluyt Society was, as some of our readers may know, formed in the year 1846 for the purpose of printing in English for distribution among its members rare and valuable voyages, travels, and geographical records, including the more important early narratives of British enterprise. For many years the Home Office, the Board of Trade, and the Admiralty have been in the habit of subscribing for the publications of this society; and considering that an annual subscription of one guinea entitles each subscriber to receive without further charge a copy of every work produced by the society within the year subscribed for, it can hardly be said that the outlay was ruinous to the Exchequer. But we live in an exceptional period; and accordingly last year the society received a communication from the Board of Trade to the effect that its publications were no longer required. Then the Home Office wrote to say that its subscription must be discontinued, and followed up the communication by another, asking whether it might have a copy of the society’s publications supplied to it gratuitously. Lastly, the Admiralty felt itself constrained by the urgency of the times to reduce its subscription, and asked to have only one instead of two copies annually. It seems rather hard on the Hakluyt Society that the Home Office should beg to have its publications for nothing, and for the sake of appearance it seems advisable that the Admiralty should continue its subscription for two copies, and lend one set to its impoverished brother in Whitehall until the advent of better times.”—Pall Mall Gazette.

“We make a present of a suggestion to Professor Beesly, Mr. Frederic Harrison, and the artisans who are calling upon the country to strike a blow for France. They must appoint a Select Committee to see what war really means. Special commissioners will find out for them how many pounds, on an average, have [20]been lost by the families whose breadwinners have gone to Paris with the King, or to Le Mans with Chanzy. Those hunters of facts will also let the working men know how many fields are unsown round Metz and on the Loire. Next, the Select Committee will get an exact return of the killed and wounded from Count Bismarck and M. Gambetta. Some novelist or poet—a George Eliot or a Browning—will then be asked to lavish all the knowledge of human emotion in the painting of one family group out of the half-million which the returns of the stricken will show. That picture will be distributed broadcast among the working men and their wives. Then the Select Committee will call to its aid the statisticians and the political economists—the Leone Levis and the John Stuart Mills. Those authorities will calculate what sum the war has taken from the wages fund of France and Germany; what number of working men it will cast out of employment, or force to accept lower wages, or compel to emigrate.” (I do not often indulge myself in the study of the works of Mr. Levi or Mr. Mill;—but have they really never done anything of this kind hitherto?) “Thus the facts will be brought before the toiling people, solidly, simply, truthfully. Finally, Professor Beesly and Mr. Harrison will call another meeting, will state the results of the investigation, will say, ‘This is the meaning of war,’ and will ask the workmen whether they are prepared to pay the inevitable price of helping Republican France. The answer, we imagine, would at once shock and surprise the scholarly gentlemen to whom the Democrats are indebted for their logic and their rhetoric. Meanwhile Mr. Ruskin and the Council of the Workmen’s National Peace Society have been doing some small measure of the task which we have mapped out. The Council asks the bellicose section of the operative classes a number of questions about the cost and the effect of battles. Some, it is true, are not very cogent, and some are absurd; but, taken together, they press the inquiry whether war [21]pays anybody, and in particular whether it pays the working man. Mr. Ruskin sets forth the truth much more vividly in the letter which appeared in our impression of Thursday. ‘Half the money lost by the inundation of the Tiber,’ etc., (the Telegraph quotes the letter to the end).

“Before stating what might have been done with the force which has been spent in the work of mutual slaughter, Mr. Ruskin might have explained what good it has undone, and how. Take, first, the destruction of capital. Millions of pounds have been spent on gunpowder, bombs, round shot, cannon, needle guns, chassepôts, and mitrailleuses. But for the war, a great part of the sum would have been expended in the growing of wheat, the spinning of cloth, the building of railway bridges, and the construction of ships. As the political economists say, the amount would have been spent productively, or, to use the plain words of common speech, would have been so used that, directly or indirectly, it would have added to the wealth of the country, and increased the fund to be distributed among the working people. But the wealth has been blown away from the muzzle of the cannon, or scattered among the woods and forts of Paris in the shape of broken shells and dismounted guns. Now, every shot which is fired is a direct loss to the labouring classes of France and Germany. King William on the one side, and General Trochu on the other, really load their guns with gold. They put the wages of the working people into every shell. The splinters of iron that strew the fields represent the pay which would have gone to the farm labourers of Alsace, the mechanics of Paris and Berlin, and the silk weavers of Lyons. If the political economist were some magician, he would command the supernatural agent to transform the broken gun-carriages, the fragments of bombs, and the round shot into loaves of bread, bottles of wine, fields of corn, clothes, houses, cattle, furniture, books, the virtue of women, the health of children, the years of the aged. The whole field would become [22]alive with the forms, the wealth, the beauty, the bustle of great cities. If working men ever saw such a transformation, they would rise up from end to end of Europe, and execrate the King or Emperor who should let loose the dogs of war. And yet such a scene would represent only a small part of the real havoc. For every man whom Germany takes away from the field or the workshop to place in the barrack or the camp, she must sustain as certain a loss as if she were to cast money into the sea. The loss may be necessary as an insurance against still greater injury; but nevertheless the waste does take place, and on the working people does it mainly fall. The young recruit may have been earning thirty shillings a week or a day, and that sum is lost to himself or his friends. Hitherto he has supported himself; now he must be maintained by the State—that is, by his fellow-subjects. Hitherto he has added to the national wealth by ploughing the fields, building houses, constructing railways. A skilful statistician could state, with some approach to accuracy, the number of pounds by which the amount of his yearly productive contribution could be estimated. It might be thirty, or a hundred, or a thousand. Well, he ceases to produce the moment that he becomes a soldier. He is then a drone. He is as unproductive as a pauper. The millions of pounds spent in feeding and drilling the army as clearly represent a dead loss as the millions spent on workhouses. Nor are these the only ways in which war destroys wealth. Hundreds of railway bridges have been broken down; the communications between different parts of the country have been cut off; hundreds of thousands have lost their means of livelihood; and great tracts of country are wasted like a desert. Thus the total destruction of wealth has been appalling. A considerable time ago Professor Leone Levi calculated that Germany alone had lost more than £300,000,000; France must have lost much more; and, even if we make a liberal discount from so tremendous a computation, we may safely say that the [23]war has cost both nations at least half as much as the National Debt of England.

“A large part of that amount, it is true, would have been spent unproductively, even if the war had not taken place. A vast sum would have been lavished on the luxuries of dress and the table, on the beauties of art, and on the appliances of war. But it is safe to calculate that at least half of the amount would have been so expended as to bring a productive return. Two or three hundred millions would have been at the service of peace; and Mr. Ruskin’s letter points the question, What could have been done with that enormous total? If it were at the disposal of an English statesman as farseeing in peace as Bismarck is in war, what might not be done for the England of the present and the future? The prospect is almost millennial. Harbours of refuge might be built all round the coast; the fever dens of London, Manchester, and Liverpool might give place to abodes of health; the poor children of the United Kingdom might be taught to read and write; great universities might be endowed; the waste lands might be cultivated, and the Bog of Allen drained; the National Debt could be swiftly reduced; and a hundred other great national enterprises would sooner or later be fulfilled. But all this store of human good has been blown away from the muzzles of the Krupps and the chassepôts. It has literally been transformed into smoke. We do not deny that such a waste may be necessary in order to guard against still further destruction. Wars have often been imperative. It would frequently be the height of national wickedness to choose an ignoble peace. Nevertheless war is the most costly and most wasteful of human pursuits. When the working class followers of Professor Beesly ask themselves what is the price of battle, what it represents, and by whom the chief part is paid, they will be better able to respond to the appeal for armed intervention than they were on Tuesday night.”—Daily Telegraph, January 14th, 1871.[24]

“The story of the massacre of Tientsin, on the 21st June last, is told in a private letter dated Cheefoo, June 30th, published in Thursday’s Standard, but the signature of which is not given. The horrors narrated are frightful, and remembering how frequently stories of similar horrors in the Mutiny melted away on close investigation,—though but too many were true,—we may hope that the writer, who does not seem to have been in Tientsin at the time, has heard somewhat exaggerated accounts. Yet making all allowances for this, there was evidently horror enough. The first attack was on the French Consul, who was murdered, the Chinese mandarins refusing aid. Then the Consulate was broken open, and two Catholic priests murdered, as well as M. and Madame Thomassin, an attaché to the Legation at Pekin and his bride. Then came the worst part. The mob, acting with regular Chinese soldiers, it is said, whom their officers did not attempt to restrain, attacked the hospital of the French Sisters of Charity, stripped them, exposed them to the mob, plucked out their eyes, mutilated them in other ways, and divided portions of their flesh among the infuriated people, and then set fire to the hospital, in which a hundred orphan children, who were the objects of the sisters’ care, were burnt to death.”—The Spectator, September 3, 1870.

[25]

1 Of 6th March, not long ago, but I have lost note of the year. ↑

2 The close of the ninth book of Plato’s Republic. I use for the most part Mr. Jowett’s translation, here and there modifying it in my own arbitrarily dogged or diffuse way of Englishing passages of complex significance. ↑

3 Plato does not mean here, merely dissipation of a destructive kind, (as the next sentence shows,) but also healthy animal stupidities, as our hunting, shooting, and the like. ↑

FORS CLAVIGERA.

LETTER XXXVIII.

Herne Hill, December, 1873.

The laws of Florence in the fourteenth century, for us in the nineteenth!

Even so, good reader. You have, perhaps, long imagined that the judges of Israel, and heroes of Greece, the consuls of Rome, and the dukes of Venice, the powers of Florence, and the kings of England, were all merely the dim foreshadowings and obscure prophecyings of the advent of the Jones and Robinson of the future: demi-gods revealed in your own day, whose demi-divine votes, if luckily coincident upon any subject, become totally divine, and establish the ordinances thereof, for ever.

You will find it entirely otherwise, gentlemen, whether of the suburb, or centre. Laws small and great, for ever unchangeable;—irresistible by all the force of Robinson, and unimprovable by finest jurisprudence of Jones, have long since been known, and, by wise nations, obeyed. [26]Out of the statute books of one of these I begin with an apparently unimportant order, but the sway of it cuts deep.

“No person whatsoever shall buy fish, to sell it again, either in the market of Florence, or in any markets in the state of Florence.”

It is one of many such laws, entirely abolishing the profession of middleman, or costermonger of perishable articles of food, in the city of the Lily.

“Entirely abolishing!—nonsense!” thinks your modern commercial worship. “Who was to prevent private contract?”

Nobody, my good sir;—there is, as you very justly feel, no power in law whatever to prevent private contract. No quantity of laws, penalties, or constitutions, can be of the slightest use to a public inherently licentious and deceitful. There is no legislation for liars and traitors. They cannot be prevented from the pit; the earth finally swallows them. They find their level against all embankment—soak their way down, irrestrainably, to the gutter grating;—happiest the nation that most rapidly so gets rid of their stench. There is no law, I repeat, for these, but gravitation. Organic laws can only be serviceable to, and in general will only be written by, a public of honourable citizens, loyal to their state, and faithful to each other.

The profession of middleman was then, by civic consent, and formal law, rendered impossible in Florence [27]with respect to fish. What advantage the modern blessed possibility of such mediatorial function brings to our hungry multitudes; and how the miraculous draught of fishes, which living St. Peter discerns, and often dextrously catches—“the shoals of them like shining continents,” (said Carlyle to me, only yesterday,)—are by such apostolic succession miraculously diminished, instead of multiplied; and, instead of baskets full of fragments taken up from the ground, baskets full of whole fish laid down on it, lest perchance any hungry person should cheaply eat of the same,—here is a pleasant little account for you, by my good and simple clergyman’s wife. It would have been better still, if I had not been forced to warn her that I wanted it for Fors, which of course took the sparkle out of her directly. Here is one little naughty bit of private preface, which really must go with the rest. “I have written my little letter about the fish trade, and L. says it is all right. I am afraid you won’t think there is anything in it worth putting in Fors, as I really know very little about it, and absolutely nothing that every one else does not know, except ladies, who generally never trouble about anything, but scold their cooks, and abuse the fishmongers—when they cannot pay the weekly bills easily.” (After this we are quite proper.)

“The poor fishermen who toil all through these bitter nights, and the retail dealer who carries heavy baskets, [28]or drags a truck so many weary miles along the roads, get but a poor living out of their labour; but what are called ‘fish salesmen,’ who by reason of their command of capital keep entire command of the London markets are making enormous fortunes.

“When you ask the fishermen why they do not manage better for themselves at the present demand for fish, they explain how helpless they are in the hands of what they call ‘the big men.’ Some fishermen at Aldborough, who have a boat of their own, told my brother that one season, when the sea seemed full of herrings, they saw in the newspapers how dear they were in London, and resolved to make a venture on their own account; so they spent all their available money in the purchase of a quantity of the right sort of baskets, and, going out to sea, filled them all,—putting the usual five hundred lovely fresh fish in each,—sent them straight up to London by train, to the charge of a salesman they knew of, begging him to send them into the market and do the best he could for them. But he was very angry with the fishermen; and wrote them word that the market was quite sufficiently stocked; that if more fish were sent in, the prices would go down; that he should not allow their fish to be sold at all; and, if they made a fuss about it, he would not send their baskets back, and would make them pay the carriage. As it was, he returned them, after a time; but the poor men never received one farthing for their thousands of nice fish, [29]and only got a scolding for having dared to try and do without the agents, who buy the fish from the boats at whatever price they choose to settle amongst themselves.

“When we were at Yarmouth this autumn, the enormous abundance of herrings on the fish quay was perfectly wonderful; it must be, (I should think,) two hundred yards long, and is capable of accommodating the unloading of a perfect fleet of boats. The ‘swills,’ as they call the baskets, each containing five hundred fish, were side by side, touching each other, all over this immense space, and men were shovelling salt about, with spades, over heaps of fish, previous to packing at once in boxes. I said, ‘How surprised our poor people would be to see such a sight, after constantly being obliged to pay three-halfpence for every herring they buy.’ An old fisherman answered me, saying, ‘No one need pay that, ma’am, if we could get the fish to them; we could have plenty more boats, and plenty more fish, if we could have them taken where the poor people could get them.’ We brought home a hundred dried herrings, for which we paid ten shillings; when we asked if we might buy some lovely mackerel on the Fish Quay, they said, (the fishermen,) that they were not allowed to sell them there, except all at once. Since then, I have read an account of a Royal Commission having been investigating the subject of the fishery for some time past, and the result of its inquiries seems to prove that it is [30]inexhaustible, and that in the North Sea it is always harvest-time.1

“When I told our fishmonger all about it, he said I was quite right about the ‘big men’ in London, and added, ‘They will not let us have the fish under their own prices; and if it is so plentiful that they cannot sell it all at that, they have it thrown away, or carted off for manure; sometimes sunk in the river. If we could only get it here, my trade would be twice what it is, for, except sprats, the poor can seldom buy fish now.’ [31]

“I asked him if the new Columbia Market was of no use in making things easier, but he said, ‘No;’ that these salesmen had got that into their hands also; and were so rich that they would keep any number of markets in their own hands. A few hundred pounds sacrificed any day to keep up the prices they think well worth their while.”

What do you think of that, by way of Free-trade?—my British-never-never-never-will-be-slaves,—hey? Free-trade; and the Divine Law of Supply and Demand; and the Sacred Necessity of Competition, and what not;—and here’s a meek little English housewife who can’t get leave, on her bended knees, from Sultan Costermonger, to eat a fresh herring at Yarmouth! and must pay three-halfpence apiece, for his leave to eat them anywhere;—and you, you simpletons—Fishermen, indeed!—Cod’s heads and shoulders, say rather,—meekly receiving back your empty baskets; your miracle of loaves and fishes executed for you by the Costermongering Father of the Faithful, in that thimblerig manner!

“But haven’t you yourself been hard against competition, till now? and haven’t you always wanted to regulate prices?”

Yes, my good SS. Peter and Andrew!—very certainly I want to regulate prices; and very certainly I will, as to such things as I sell, or have the selling of. I should like to hear of anybody’s getting this letter for less than [32]tenpence!—and if you will send me some fish to sell for you, perhaps I may even resolve that they shall be sold at twopence each, or else made manure of,—like these very costermongers; but the twopence shall go into your pockets—not mine; which you will find a very pleasant and complete difference in principle between his Grace the Costermonger and me; and, secondly, if I raise the price of a herring to twopence, it will be because I know that people have been in some way misusing them, or wasting them; and need to get fewer for a time; or will eat twopenny herrings at fashionable tables, (when they wouldn’t touch halfpenny ones,) and so give the servants no reason to turn up their noses at them.2 I may have twenty such good reasons for fixing the price of your fish; but not one of them will be his Grace the Costermonger’s. All that I want you to see is, not only the possibility of regulating prices, but the fact that they are now regulated, and regulated by rascals, while all the world is bleating out its folly about Supply and Demand.

“Still, even in your way, you would be breaking the laws of Florence, anyhow, and buying to sell again?” Pardon me: I should no more buy your fish than a butcher’s boy buys his master’s mutton. I should simply carry your fish for you where I knew it was wanted; [33]being as utterly your servant in the matter as if I were one of your own lads sent dripping up to the town with basket on back. And I should be paid, as your servant, so much wages; (not commission, observe,) making bargains far away for you, and many another Saunders Mucklebackit, just as your wife makes them, up the hill at Monkbarns; and no more buying the fish, to sell again, than she.

“Well, but where could we get anybody to do this?”

Have you no sons then?—or, among them, none whom you can take from the mercy of the sea, and teach to serve you mercifully on the land?

It is not that way, however, that the thing will be done. It must be done for you by gentlemen. They may stagger on perhaps a year or two more in their vain ways; but the day must come when your poor little honest puppy, whom his people have been wanting to dress up in a surplice, and call, “The to be Feared,” that he might have pay enough, by tithe or tax, to marry a pretty girl, and live in a parsonage,—some poor little honest wretch of a puppy, I say, will eventually get it into his glossy head that he would be incomparably more reverend to mortals, and acceptable to St. Peter and all Saints, as a true monger of sweet fish, than a false fisher for rotten souls; and that his wife would be incomparably more ‘lady-like’—not to say Madonna-like—marching beside him in purple stockings and sabots—or even frankly barefoot—with [34]her creel full of caller herring on her back, than in administering any quantity of Ecclesiastical scholarship to her Sunday-schools.

“How dreadful—how atrocious!”—thinks the tender clerical lover. “My wife walk with a fish-basket on her back!”

Yes, you young scamp, your’s. You were going to lie to the Holy Ghost, then, were you, only that she might wear satin slippers and be called a ‘lady’? Suppose, instead of fish, I were to ask her and you to carry coals. Have you ever read your Bible carefully enough to wonder where Christ got them from, to make His fire, (when he was so particular about St. Peter’s dinner, and St. John’s)? Or if I asked you to be hewers of wood, and drawers of water;—would that also seem intolerable to you? My poor clerical friends, God was never more in the burning bush of Sinai than He would be in every crackling faggot (cut with your own hands) that you warmed a poor hearth with: nor did that woman of Samaria ever give Him to drink more surely than you may, from every stream and well in this your land, that you can keep pure.

20th Dec.—To hew wood—to draw water;—you think these base businesses, do you? and that you are noble, as well as sanctified, in binding faggot-burdens on poor men’s backs, which you will not touch with your own fingers;—and in preaching the efficacy of baptism inside the church, by yonder stream (under the first bridge of [35]