The Depreciation of Gold. 1863.
The Law of Supply and Demand. 1864.
(Three letters: October 26 and 29, and November 2.)
Mr. Ruskin and Professor Hodgson. 1873.
(Two letters: November 8 and 15.)
Strikes v. Arbitration. 1865.
Work and Wages. 1865.
(Five letters: April 20, 22, and 29, and May 4 and 20.)
The Standard of Wages. 1867.
How the Rich Spend their Money. 1873.
(Three letters: January 23, 28, and 30.)
Commercial Morality. 1875.
The Definition of Wealth. 1875.
The Principles of Property. 1877.
On CoÖperation. (Two letters.) 1879-80.

[Pg 36]
[Pg 37]

LETTERS ON POLITICAL ECONOMY.

To the Editor of "The Times."

Sir: Being out of the way of my letters, I did not, till now, see your excellent article of the 23d September on the depreciation of gold.[32] Will you allow me, thus late, a very few words in confirmation of your statement of the insufficiency of the evidence hitherto offered on that subject?

The market value of "a pound" depends less on the supply of gold than on the extravagance or economy of the persons holding documentary currency (that is to say, claim to goods). Suppose, for instance, that I hold stock to the value of £500 a year;—if I live on a hundred a year, and lay by four hundred, I (for the time) keep down the prices of all goods to the distributed amount of £400 a year, or, in other words, neutralize the effect on the market of 400 pounds in gold imported annually from Australia. If, instead of laying by this sum in paper, I choose to throw it into bullion (whether gold-plate or coin does not matter), I not only keep down the price of goods, but raise the price of gold as a commodity, and neutralize 800 pounds' worth of imported gold. But if I annually spend my entire 500 (unproductively) I annually raise the price of goods by that amount, and neutralize a correspondent diminution in the supply of gold. If I spend my 500 productively, that is to say, so as to produce as much as, or more than I consume, I either leave the market as I find it, or by the excess of production increase the value of gold.

Similarly, whatever I lay by will, as it is ultimately spent by my successors, productively or unproductively, in that degree (coeteris paribus) increase or lower the value of gold. These agencies of daily economy have so much more power over the market than the supply from the mine that no statistics of which we are yet in possession are (at least in their existing form) sufficient to prove the dependence of any given phenomena of the market on the rate of metallic supply. The destruction of property in the American war and our European amusements in the manufacture of monster guns and steel "backings" lower the value of money far more surely and fatally than an increased supply of bullion, for the latter may very possibly excite parallel force of productive industry.

But the lowered value of money is often (and this is a very curious case of economical back current) indicated, not so much by a rise in the price of goods, as by a fall in that of labor. The household lives as comfortably as it did on a hundred a year, but the master has to work half as hard again to get it. This increase of toil is to an active nation often a kind of play; men go into it as into a violent game; fathers of families die quicker, and the gates of orphan asylums are choked with applicants; distress and crime spread and fester through a thousand silent channels; but there is no commercial or elementary convulsion; no chasm opens into the abyss through the London clay; no gilded victim is asked of the Guards; the Stock-Exchange falls into no hysterics; and the old lady of Threadneedle Street does not so much as ask for "My fan, Peter."

I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
J. Ruskin.
Chamounix, Oct. 2.

To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."

Sir: In your valuable article of to-day on the strike of the colliers, while you lay down the true and just law[33] respecting all such combinations, you take your stand, in the outset, on a maxim of political economy, which, however trite, stands yet—if I am not deceived—in need of much examination and qualification. "Labor," you say, like every other vendible commodity, "depends for its value on the relation of supply to demand." But, Sir, might it not be asked by any simple and practical person, who had heard this assertion for the first time—as I hope all practical persons will some day hear it for the last time—"Yes; but what does demand depend upon, and what does supply depend upon?" If, for instance, all death-beds came to resemble that so forcibly depicted in your next following article, and, in consequence, the demand for gin were unlimitedly increased towards the close of human life,[34] would this demand necessitate, or indicate, a relative increase in the "value" of gin as a necessary article of national wealth, and liquid foundation of national prosperity? Or might we not advisably make some steady and generally understood distinction between the terms "value" and "price," and determine at once whether there be, or be not, such a thing as intrinsic "value" or goodness in some things, and as intrinsic un-value or badness in other things; and as value extrinsic, or according to use, in all things? and whether a demand for intrinsically good things, and a corresponding knowledge of their use, be not conditions likely, on the whole, to tend towards national wealth? and whether a demand for intrinsically bad things, and relative experience in their use, be not conditions likely to lead to quite the reverse of national wealth, in exact proportion to the facility of the supply of the said bad things? I should be entirely grateful to you, Sir, or to any of your correspondents, if you or they would answer these short questions clearly for me.

I am, Sir, yours, etc.,
J. Ruskin.[35]
Denmark Hill, Oct. 26.

To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."

Sir: I am grateful to your correspondent "Economist" for trying his hand on me, and will be a docile pupil; but I hope his hand is not quite untried hitherto, for it would waste your space, and my time, and your readers' patience, if he taught me what I had afterwards to unlearn. But I think none of these will be wasted if he answers my questions clearly; there are, I am sure, many innocent persons who, like myself, will be glad of the information.

1. He tells me, then, in the outset, "The intrinsic value of commodities is a question outside political economy."

Is that an axiom for all political economists? and may I put it down for future reference? I particularly wish to be assured of this.

2. Assuming, for the present, that I may so set it down, and that exchangeable value is the only subject of politico-economical inquiry, I proceed to my informant's following statement:

"The" (question) "of intrinsic value belongs to the domain of philosophy, morals, or statecraft. The intrinsic value of anything depends on its qualities; the exchangeable value depends on how much there is of it, and how much people want it."

(This "want" of it never, of course, in anywise depending on its qualities.)

?a??a??. Accordingly, in that ancient and rashly-speculative adage, "Venture a sprat to catch a herring," it is only assumed that people will always want herrings rather than sprats, and that there will always be fewer of them. No reference is involved, according to economists, to the relative sizes of a sprat and herring.

Farther: Were a fashionable doctor to write an essay on sprats, and increase their display at West-end tables to that extent that unseasonable sprats became worth a guinea a head, while herrings remained at the old nursery rate of one and a half for three-halfpence, would my "recognition" of the value of sprats in paying a guinea for one enable me to dine off it better than I should off that mysterious eleven-penny worth of herring? Or to take a more elevated instance. There is now on my room wall a water-color drawing, which was once bought for £30, and for which any dealer would to-morrow give me £300. The drawing is intrinsically worth about one-tenth of what it was when bought for £30, the sky having faded out of it, and many colors having changed elsewhere. But men's minds have changed like the colors, and Lord A. or Sir John B. are now ready to give me £300 instead of £30 for it.

Now, I want to know what it matters to "Economist," or to the Economical Society he (as I understand) represents, or to the British nation generally, whether Lord A. has the bit of colored paper and I the £300, or Lord A. the £300 and I the bit of paper. The pounds are there, and the paper is there: what does it nationally matter which of us have which?

Farther: What does it nationally matter whether Lord A. gives me £30 or £300 on the exchange? (Mind, I do not say it does not matter—I only want "Economist" to tell me if it does, and how it does.) In one case my lord has £270 more to spend; in the other I have. What does it signify which of us has?

Farther: To us, the exchangers, of what use is "Economist's" information that the rate of exchange depends on the "demand and supply" of colored paper and pounds? No ghost need come from the grave to tell us that. But if any economical ghost would tell my lord how to get more pounds, or me how to get more drawings, it might be to the purpose.

But yet farther, passing from specialties to generals:

Let the entire property of the nation be enumerated in the several articles of which it consists—a, b, c, d, etc.; we will say only three, for convenience sake. Then all the national property consists of a + b + c.

I ask, first, what a is worth.

"Economist" answers (suppose) 2 b.

I ask, next, what b is worth.

"Economist" answers (suppose) 3 c.

I ask, next, what c is worth.

"Economist" answers—a/b.

Many thanks. That is certainly Cocker's view of it.

I ask, finally, What is it all worth?

"Economist" answers, 1? a, or 3? b, or 10 c.

Thanks again. But now, intrinsic value not being in "Economist's" domain, but—if I chance to be a philosopher—in mine, I may any day discover any given intrinsic value to belong to any one of these articles.

Suppose I find, for instance, the value of c to be intrinsically zero, then the entire national property = 10c = intrinsically 0.

Shall I be justified in this conclusion?

3. In relation to the question of strikes, the difficulty, you told me yourself, Mr. Editor[36] (and doubtless "Economist" will tell me also), depends simply on supply and demand: that is to say, on an under-supply of wages and an over-supply of laborers. Profoundest thanks again; but I, poor blundering, thick-headed collier, feel disposed further to ask, "On what do this underness and overness of supply depend?" Have they any remote connection with marriage, or with improvidence, or with avarice, or with accumulativeness, or any other human weaknesses out of the ken of political economy? And, whatever they arise from, how are they to be dealt with? It appears to me, poor simple collier, that the shortest way of dealing with this "darned" supply of laborers will be by knocking some of them down, or otherwise disabling them for the present. Why is this mode of regulating the supply interdicted to me? and what have Economists to do with the morality of any proceeding whatever? and, in the name of economy generally, what else can I do?[37]

I am, Sir, yours, etc.,
J. Ruskin.
Denmark Hill, Oct. 29. [Monday.]

To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."

Sir: Having, unfortunately, occupation enough in my own business for all hours of the day, I cannot undertake to reply to the general correspondence which might, in large supply to my limited demand, propose itself in your columns. If my first respondent, "Economist," or any other person learned in his science, will give me direct answers to the direct questions asked in my Monday's letter, I may, with your permission, follow the points at issue farther; if not, I will trouble you no more. Your correspondent of to-day, Mr. Plummer, may ascertain whether I confuse the terms "value" and "price" by reference to the bottom of the second column in page 787 of "Fraser's Magazine" for June, 1862. Of my opinions respecting the treatment of the working classes he knows nothing, and can guess nothing.[38]

I am, Sir, yours, etc.,
J. Ruskin.
Denmark Hill, Nov. 2.

To the Editor of "The Scotsman."

Sir: In your impression of the 6th inst. I find a report of a lecture delivered by Professor Hodgson in the University of Edinburgh on the subject of "Supply and Demand," in which the Professor speaks of my "denunciations" of the principles he had expounded. Permit me, in a matter respecting which accuracy is of more importance to others than to myself, to correct the Professor's expression. I have never "denounced" the principles expounded by the Professor. I have simply stated that no such principles exist; that no "law of supply and demand," as expounded by Professor Hodgson and modern economists, ever did or can exist.

Professor Hodgson, as reported in your columns, states that "demand regulates supply." He does not appear to entertain the incomparably more important economical question, "What regulates demand?" But without pressing upon him that first question of all, I am content absolutely to contradict and to challenge him before the University of Edinburgh to maintain his statement that "demand regulates supply," and together with it (if he has ventured to advance it) the correlative proposition, "supply regulates demand."

A. Demand does not regulate supply.

For instance—there is at this moment a larger demand for champagne wine in England and Scotland than there was ten years ago; and a much more limited supply of champagne wine.

B. Supply does not regulate demand.

For instance—I can name many districts in Scotland where the supply of pure water is larger than in other namable localities, but where the inhabitants drink less water and more whiskey than in other namable localities.

I do not therefore denounce the so-called law of supply and demand, but I absolutely deny the existence of such law; and I do in the very strongest terms denounce the assertion of the existence of such a law before the University of Edinburgh as disgraceful both to its assertor and to the University, unless immediate steps be taken to define, in scientific terms, the limitations under which such statement is to be understood.

I am, etc.,
John Ruskin.[39]

To the Editor of "The Scotsman."

Sir: For Professor Hodgson's "undue encroachments on your space and his own time," I leave you to answer to your readers, and the Professor to console his class. To his criticisms on my language and temper I bow, their defence being irrelevant to the matter in hand. Of his harmless confusion of the word "correlative" with the word "consequent" I take no notice; and his promise of a sifting examination of my economic teaching I anticipate with grateful awe.[40]

But there is one sentence in his letter of real significance, and to that alone I reply. The Professor ventured (he says) to suggest that possibly I with others "believe that economists confused existing demand with wise and beneficial demand, and existing supply with wise and beneficial supply."

I do believe this. I have written all my books on political economy in such belief. And the entire gist of them is the assertion that a real law of relation holds between the non-existent wise demand and the non-existent beneficial supply, but that no real law of relation holds between the existent foolish demand and the existent mischievous supply.

That is to say (to follow Professor Hodgson with greater accuracy into his lunar illustrations), if you ask for the moon, it does not follow that you will get it; nor is your satisfaction more secure if you ask for sixpence from a Poor-Law guardian; but if you limit your demand to an honest penny, and endeavor to turn it by honest work, the divine law of supply will, in the plurality of cases, answer that rational and therefore divine demand.

Now, Professor Hodgson's statement, as reported in your columns, was that "demand regulates supply." If his assertion, in his lecture, was the qualified one, or that "wise demand regulates beneficial supply," your reporter is much to be blamed, the Professor's class profoundly to be congratulated, and this correspondence is at an end; while I look forward with deepest interest to the necessary elucidations by the Professor of the nature of wisdom and benefit; neither of these ideas having been yet familiar ones in common economical treatises. But I wrote under the impression that the Professor dealt hitherto, as it has been the boast of economists to deal, with things existent, and not theoretical (and assuredly the practical men of this country expect their children to be instructed by him in the laws which govern existing things); and it is therefore only in the name of your practical readers that I challenged him, and to-day repeat my challenge, in terms from which I trust he will not again attempt to escape by circumambient criticism of my works,[41] to define, in scientific terms, the limits under which his general statement that "supply regulates demand" is to be understood. That is to say, whether he, as Professor of Political Economy, is about to explain the relations (A) of rational and satiable demand with beneficial and benevolently-directly supply; or (B) of irrational and insatiable demand with mischievous and malevolently-directed supply; or (C) of a demand of which he cannot explain the character with a supply of which he cannot predict the consequence?

I am, etc.,
J. Ruskin.

To the Editor of "The Pall Mall Gazette."

Sir: I read your Gazette so attentively that I am always falling into arrears, and have only to-day arrived at your last week's articles on strikes, arbitration, etc., which afford me the greatest satisfaction, but nevertheless embarrass me somewhat. Will you permit me to ask for a word or two of further elucidation?

I am an entirely selfish person, and having the means of indulging myself (in moderation), should, I believe, have led a comfortable life, had it not been for occasional fits and twinges of conscience, to which I inherit some family predisposition, and from which I suffer great uneasiness in cloudy weather. Articles like yours of Wednesday,[42] on the proper attention to one's own interests, are very comforting and helpful to me; but, as I said, there are yet some points in them I do not understand.

Of course it is right to arrange all one's business with reference to one's own interest; but what will the practical difference be ultimately between such arrangement and the old and simple conscientious one? In those bygone days, I remember, one endeavored, with such rough estimate as could be quickly made, to give one's Roland for one's Oliver; if a man did you a service, you tried in return to do as much for him; if he broke your head, you broke his, shook hands, and were both the better for it. Contrariwise, on this modern principle of self-interest, I understand very well that if a man does me a service, I am always to do the least I can in return for it; but I don't see how I am always to get more out of him than he gets out of me. I dislike any references to abstract justice as much as you do, but I cannot see my way to keeping this injustice always in my own favor; and if I cannot, it seems to me the matter may as well be settled at first, as it must come to be settled at last, in that disagreeably just way.

Thus, for instance, in producing a piece of iron for the market, one man digs it, another smelts it, another puddles it, and I sell it. We get so much between us four; and I suppose your conscientious people would say that the division of the pay should have some reference to the hardness of the work, and the time spent in it. It is true that by encouraging the diggers and puddlers to spend all they get in drink, and by turning them off as soon as I hear they are laying by money, it may yet be possible to get them for some time to take less than I suppose they should have; but I cannot hide from myself that the men are beginning to understand the game a little themselves; and if they should, with the help of those confounded—(I beg pardon! I forgot that one does not print such expressions in Pall Mall)—education-mongers, learn to be men, and to look after their own business as I do mine, what am I to do? Even at present I don't feel easy in telling them that I ought to have more money than they because I know better how to spend it, for even this involves a distant reference to notions of propriety and principle which I would gladly avoid. Will you kindly tell me what is best to be done (or said)?

I am, Sir, your obliged servant,
John Ruskin.
Easter Monday, 1865.

To the Editor of "The Pall Mall Gazette."

Sir: I am not usually unready for controversy, but I dislike it in spring, as I do the east wind (pace Mr. Kingsley), and I both regret having given occasion to the only dull leader which has yet[43] appeared in the Pall Mall Gazette, and the necessity I am involved in of dissecting the same, instead of a violet, on which I was about this morning to begin operations.

But I see, Sir, that you mean fairly, and that you have careful thinkers and writers on your staff. And I will accept your battle, if you will fight with short swords, which is clearly your interest, for such another article would sink the Gazette; and mine, for I have no time to answer speculations on what you writers suppose my opinions may be, "if we understand" them.

You shall understand them utterly, as I already understand yours. I will not call yours "fallacies" À priori; you shall not call mine so. I will not tell you of your "unconscious" meanings; you shall not tell me of mine.[44] But I will ask you the plainest questions, and make to you the plainest answers my English will admit of, on one point at a time only, expecting you also to ask or answer as briefly, without divergence or deprecation. And twenty lines will always contain all I would say, at any intervals of time you choose.

For example: I said I must "dissect" your leader, meaning that I should have to take a piece of it, as I would of my flower, and deal with that first; then with its sequences.

I take this sentence then: "He (Mr. R.) seems to think that apart from the question of the powers of the parties, there is some such thing as a just rate of wages. He seems to be under the impression that the wages ought to be proportioned, not to the supply and demand of labor and capital, but 'to the hardship of the work and the time spent in it.'"

Yes, Sir, I am decisively under that impression—as decisively as ever Greek coin was under its impression. You will beat me out of all shape, if you can beat me out of this. Will you join issue on it, and are these following statements clear enough for you, either to accept or deny, in as positive terms?—

I. A man should in justice be paid for two hours' work twice as much as for one hour's work, and for n hour's work n times as much, if the effort be similar and continuous.

II. A man should in justice be paid for difficult or dangerous work proportionately more than for easy and safe work, supposing the other conditions of the work similar.

III. (And now look out, for this proposition involves the ultimate principle of all just wages.) If a man does a given quantity of work for me, I am bound in justice to do, or procure to be done, a precisely equal quantity of work for him; and just trade in labor is the exchange of equivalent quantities of labor of different kinds.

If you pause at this word "equivalent," you shall have definition of it in my next letter. I am sure you will in fairness insert this challenge, whether you accept it or decline.

I am, Sir, your obliged servant,
John Ruskin.[45]
Denmark Hill, Thursday, April 20.

To the Editor of "The Pall Mall Gazette."

Sir: I accept your terms, and reply in the fewest words I can.

I. You "see no injustice in hiring a fly for 2s. 6d. for the first hour and 1s. 6d. for each succeeding one." Nor I either; so far from it, that I never give a cabman less than a shilling; which I doubt not is your practice also, and a very proper one. The cabmen make no objection, and you could not have given a neater instance of the proportion of payment to labor which you deny. You pay in the first hour for the various trouble involved in taking the man off his stand, and for a proportion of the time during which he has waited for the chance of your custom. That paid, you hire him by the formula which I state, and you deny.

II. "Danger and difficulty have attractions for some men." They have, and if, under the influence of those attractions, they choose to make you a present of their labor, for love (in your own terms,[46] "as you give a penny to a beggar"), you may accept the gift as the beggar does, without question of justice. But if they do not choose to give it you, they have a right to higher payment. My guide may perhaps, for love, play at climbing Mont Blanc with me; if he will not, he has a right to be paid more than for climbing the Breven.

III. "Mr. Ruskin can define justice, or any other word, as he chooses."

It is a gracious permission; but suppose justice be something more than a word! When you derived it jussum[47] (falsely, for it is not derived from jussum, but from the root of jungo), you forgot, or ignored, that the Saxons had also a word for it, by which the English workman still pleads for it; that the Greeks had a word for it, by which Plato and St. Paul reasoned of it; and that the Powers of Heaven have, presumably, an idea of it with which it may be well for "our interests" that your definition, as well as mine, should ultimately correspond, since their "definitions" are commonly not by a word but a blow.

But accepting for the nonce your own conception of it as "the fulfilment of a compulsory agreement" ("the wages" you say "which you force the men to take, and they can force you to pay"), allow me to ask your definition of force, or compulsion. As thus: (Case 1.) I agree with my friend that we will pay a visit to Mr. A. at two in the morning. My friend agrees with me that he will hold a pistol to Mr. A.'s head. Under those circumstances, I agree with Mr. A. that I shall remove his plate without expression of objection on his part. Is this agreement, in your sense, "jussum"? (Case 2.) Mr. B. goes half through the ice into the canal on a frosty morning. I, on the shore, agree with Mr. B. that I shall have a hundred pounds for throwing him a rope. Is this agreement validly "jussum"?

The first of these cases expresses in small compass the general nature of arrangements under compulsory circumstances over which one of the parties has entire control. The second, that of arrangements made under circumstances accidentally compulsory, when the capital is in one party's hands exclusively. For you will observe Mr. B. has no right whatever to the use of my rope: and that capital (though it would probably have been only the final result of my operations with respect to Mr. A.) makes me completely master of the situation with reference to Mr. B.

I am, Sir, your obliged servant,
John Ruskin[48]
Denmark Hill, Saturday, April 22, 1865.

To the Editor of "The Pall Mall Gazette."

Sir: I have not hastened my reply to your last letter, thinking that your space at present would be otherwise occupied; having also my own thoughts busied in various directions, such as you may fancy; yet busied chiefly in a sad wonder, which perhaps you would not fancy. I mourn for Mr. Lincoln,[49] as man should mourn the fate of man, when it is sudden and supreme. I hate regicide as I do populicide—deeply, if frenzied; more deeply, if deliberate. But my wonder is in remembering the tone of the English people and press respecting this man during his life; and in comparing it with their sayings of him in his death. They caricatured and reviled him when his cause was poised in deadly balance—when their praise would have been grateful to him, and their help priceless. They now declare his cause to have been just, when it needs no aid; and his purposes to have been noble, when all human thoughts of them have become vanity, and will never so much as mix their murmurs in his ears with the sentence of the Tribunal which has summoned him to receive a juster praise and tenderer blame than ours.

I have twice (I see) used the word "just" inadvertently, forgetting that it has no meaning, or may mean (you tell me) quite what we choose; and that so far as it has a meaning, "the important question is not whether the action is just." Indeed when I read this curious sentence in your reply on Tuesday last, "Justice, as we use it, implies merely the conformity of an action to any rules whatever, good or bad," I had nearly closed the discussion by telling you that there remained no ground on which we could meet, for the English workmen, in whose name I wrote to you, asked, not for conformity with bad rules, but enactment of good ones. But I will not pounce upon these careless sentences, which you are forced to write in all haste, and at all disadvantage, while I have the definitions and results determined through years of quiet labor, lying ready at my hand. You never meant what you wrote (when I said I would not tell you of unconscious meanings, I did not promise not to tell you of unconscious wants of meanings); but it is for you to tell me what you mean by a bad rule, and what by a good one. Of the law of the Eternal Lawgiver, it is dictated that "the commandment is holy, and just, and good." Not merely that it is a law; but that it is such and such a law. Are these terms senseless to you? or do you understand by them only that the observance of that law is generally conducive to our interests? And if so, what are our interests? Have we ever an interest in being something, as well as in getting something; may not even all getting be at last summed in being? is it not the uttermost of interests to be just rather than unjust? Let us leave catching at phrases, and try to look in each other's faces and hearts; so define our thoughts; then reason from them. [See below.][50]

Yet, lest you say I evade you in generalities, here is present answer point by point.

I. "The fare has nothing to do with the labor in preparing the fly for being hired."—Nor, of course, the price of any article with the labor expended in preparing it for being sold? This will be a useful note to the next edition of "Ricardo." [The price depends on the relative forces of the buyer and the seller. The price asked by the seller no doubt depends on the labor expended. The price given by the buyer depends on the degree in which he desires to possess the thing sold, which has nothing to do with the labor laid out on it.]

The answer to your instances[51] is that all just price involves an allowance for average necessary, not for unnecessary, labor. The just price of coals at Newcastle does not involve an allowance for their carriage to Newcastle. But the just price of a cab at a stand involves an allowance to the cabman for having stood there. [Why? who is to determine what is necessary?]

II. "This admits the principle of Bargaining." No, Sir; it only admits the principle of Begging. If you like to ask your guide to give you his legs for nothing, or your workman his arms for nothing, or your shopkeeper his goods for nothing, and they consent, for love, or for play—you are doubtless both dignified and fortunate; but there is no question of trade in the matters; only of Alms. [We mean by Alms money or goods given merely from motives of benevolence, and without return. In the case supposed the guide goes one mile to please himself, and ten more for hire, which satisfies him. How does he give Alms? He goes for less money than he otherwise would require, because he likes the job, not because his employer likes it. The Alms are thus given by himself to himself.]

III. It is true that "every one can affix to words any sense he chooses." But if I pay for a yard of broadcloth, and the shopman cuts me three-quarters, I shall not put up with my loss more patiently on being informed that Bishop Butler meant by justice something quite different from what Bentham meant by it, or that to give for every yard three-quarters, is the rule of that establishment. [If the word "yard" were as ambiguous as the word "justice," Mr. Ruskin ought to be much obliged to the shopman for defining his sense of it, especially if he gave you full notice before he cut the cloth.]

Further, it is easy to ascertain the uses of words by the best scholars—[Nothing is more difficult. To ascertain what Locke meant by an "idea," or Sir W. Hamilton by the word "inconceivable," is no easy task.]—and well to adopt them, because they are sure to be founded on the feelings of gentlemen.—[Different gentlemen feel and think in very different ways. Though we differ from Mr. Ruskin, we hope he will not deny this.] Thus, when Horace couples his tenacem propositi with justum, he means to assert that the tenacity is only noble which is justified by uprightness, and shows itself by insuffer-ance of the jussa "prava jubentium" And although Portia does indeed accept your definition of justice from the lips of Shylock, changing the divine, "who sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not" into the somewhat less divine "who sweareth to his neighbor's hurt and changeth not;" and though she carries out his and your conception of such justice to the uttermost, the result is not, even in Shylock's view of it, "for the interest of both parties."

IV. To your two final questions "exhausting" (by no means, my dear Sir, I assure you) "the points at issue,"[52] I reply in both cases, "No." And to your plaintive "why should they do so?" while, observe, I do not admit it to be a monstrous requirement of men that they should sometimes sacrifice their own interests, I would for the present merely answer that I have never found my own interests seriously compromised by my practice, which is, when I cannot get the fair price of a thing, not to sell it, and when I cannot give the fair price of a thing, not to buy it. The other day, a dealer in want of money offered me a series of Hartz minerals for two-thirds of their value. I knew their value, but did not care to spend the entire sum which would have covered it. I therefore chose forty specimens out of the seventy, and gave the dealer what he asked for the whole.

In the example you give, it is not the interest of the guide to take his fifty francs rather than nothing; because all future travellers, though they could afford the hundred, would then say, "You went for fifty; we will give you no more." [Does a man say to a broker, "You sold stock yesterday at 90; I will pay no more to-day"?] And for me, if I am not able to pay my hundred francs, I either forego Mont Blanc, or climb alone; and keep my fifty francs to pay at another time, for a less service, some man who also would have got nothing otherwise, and who will be honestly paid by what I give him, for what I ask of him.

I am, Sir, your obliged servant,
John Ruskin.
Saturday, 29th April, 1865.

To the Editor of "The Pall Mall Gazette."

Sir: I am under the impression that we are both getting prosy, or, at all events, that no one will read either my last letter, or your comments upon it, in the places in which you have so gracefully introduced them. For which I am sorry, and you, I imagine, are not.

It is true that differences of feeling may exist among gentlemen; yet I think that gentlemen of all countries agree that it is rude to interrupt your opponent while he is speaking; for a futile answer gains no real force by becoming an interjection; and a strong one can abide its time. I will therefore pray you, in future, if you publish my letters at all, to practice towards them so much of old English manners as may yet be found lingering round some old English dinner-tables; where, though we may be compelled by fashion to turn the room into a greenhouse, and serve everything cold, the piÈces de rÉsistance are still presented whole, and carved afterwards.

Of course it is open to you to reply that I dislike close argument. Which little flourish being executed, and if you are well breathed—en garde, if you please.

I. Your original position was that wages (or price) bear no relation to hardship of work. On that I asked you to join issue. You now admit, though with apparent reluctance, that "the price asked by the seller, no doubt, depends on the labor expended."

The price asked by the seller has, I believe, in respectable commercial houses, and respectable shops, very approximate relation to the price paid by the buyer. I do not know if you are in the habit of asking, from your wine-merchant or tailor, reduction of price on the ground that the sum remitted will be "alms to themselves;" but, having been myself in somewhat intimate connection with a house of business in the City,[53] not dishonorably accounted of during the last forty years, I know enough of their correspondents in every important town in the United Kingdom to be sure that they will bear me witness that the difference between the prices asked and the prices taken was always a very "imaginary" quantity.

But urging this no farther for the present, and marking, for gained ground, only your admission that "the price asked depends on the labor expended," will you farther tell me, whether that dependence is constant, or variable? If constant, under what law; if variable, within what limits?

II. "The alms are thus given by himself to himself." I never said they were not. I said it was a question of alms, not of trade. And if your original leader had only been an exhortation to English workmen to consider every diminution of their pay, in the picturesque though perhaps somewhat dim, religious light of alms paid by themselves to themselves, I never should have troubled you with a letter on the subject. For, singular enough, Sir, this is not one of the passages of your letters, however apparently indefensible, which I care to attack.

So far from it, in my own serious writings I have always maintained that the best work is done, and can only be done, for love.[54] But the point at issue between us is not whether there should be charity, but whether there can be trade; not whether men may give away their labor, but whether, if they do not choose to do so, there is such a thing as a price for it. And my statement, as opposed to yours, is briefly this—that for all labor, there is, under given circumstances, a just price approximately determinable; that every conscious deflection from this price towards zero is either gift on the part of the laborer, or theft on the part of the employer; and that all payment in conscious excess of this price is either theft on the part of the laborer, or gift on that of the employer.

III. If you wish to substitute the word "moral" for "just" in the above statement, I am prepared to allow the substitution; only, as you, not I, introduced this new word, I must pray for your definition of it first, whether remembered from Mr. Hobbes, or original.

IV. I am sorry you doubt my understanding your views; but, in that case, it may be well to ask for a word or two of farther elucidation.

"Justice," you say, is "conformity with any rule whatever, good or bad." And "good rules are rules which promote the general happiness of those whom they affect." And bad rules are (therefore) rules which promote the general misery of those whom they affect? Justice, therefore, may as often as not promote the general misery of those who practice it? Do you intend this?[55]

Again: "Good rules are rules which promote the general happiness of those whom they affect." But "the greatest happiness of the greatest number is best secured by laying down no rule at all" (as to the price of "labor").

Do you propose this as a sequitur? For if not, it is merely a petitio principii, and a somewhat wide one. Before, therefore, we branch into poetical questions concerning happiness, we will, with your permission, and according to my original stipulation, that we should dispute only of one point at a time, determine the matters already at issue. To which end, also, I leave without reply some parts of your last letter; not without a little strain on the e???? ?d??t??, for which I think, Sir, you may give me openly, credit, if not tacitly, thanks.

I am, Sir, your obliged servant,
John Ruskin.
Denmark Hill, May 4.

To the Editor of "The Pall Mall Gazette."

Sir: I have long delayed my reply to your notes on my last letter; partly being otherwise busy—partly in a pause of surprise and doubt how low in the elements of ethics we were to descend.

Let me, however, first assure you that I heartily concur in your opening remarks, and shall be glad to spare useless and avoid discourteous words. When you said, in your first reply to me, that my letter embodied fallacies which appeared to you pernicious in the highest degree, I also "could not consider this sort of language well judged." When you called one of your own questions an answer, and declared it to be "simple and perfectly conclusive," I thought the flourish might have been spared; and for having accused you of writing carelessly, I must hope your pardon; for the discourtesy, in my mind, would have been in imagining you to be writing with care.

For instance, I should hold it discourteous to suppose you unaware of the ordinary distinction between law and equity: yet no consciousness of such a distinction appears in your articles. I should hold it discourteous to doubt your acquaintance with the elementary principles laid down by the great jurists of all nations respecting Divine and Human law; yet such a doubt forces itself on me if I consider your replies as deliberate. And I should decline to continue the discussion with an opponent who could conceive of justice as (under any circumstances) "an hideously bad thing," if I did not suppose him to have mistaken the hideousness of justice, in certain phases, to certain persons, for its ultimate nature and power.

There may be question respecting these inaccuracies of thought; there can be none respecting the carelessness of expression which causes the phrases "are" and "ought to be" to alternate in your articles as if they were alike in meaning.

I have permitted this, that I might see the course of your argument in your own terms, but it is now needful that the confusion should cease. That wages are determined by supply and demand is no proof that under any circumstances they must be—still less that under all circumstances they ought to be. Permit me, therefore, to know the sense in which you use the word "ought" in your paragraph lettered b, page 832[56] (second column), and to ask whether the words "due," "duty," "devoir," and other such, connected in idea with the first and third of the "prÆcepta juris" of Justinian, quoted by Blackstone as a summary of the whole doctrine of law (honeste vivere,—alterum non lÆdere,—suumque cuique tribuere), are without meaning to you except as conditions of agreement?[57] Whether, in fact, there be, in your view, any honos, absolutely; or whether we are to launch out into an historical investigation of the several kinds of happiness enjoyed in lives of rapine, of selfish trade, and of unselfish citizenship, and to decide only upon evidence whether we will live as pirates, as pedlers, or as gentlemen? If so, while I shall be glad to see you undertake, independently, so interesting an inquiry, I must reserve my comments on it until its close.

But if you admit an absolute idea of a "devoir" of one man to another, and of every honorable man to himself, tell me why you dissent from my statement of the terms of that debt in the opening of this discussion. Observe, I asked for no evangelical virtue of returning good for evil: I asked only for the Sinaitic equity of return in good for good, as for Sinaitic equity of return in evil for evil. "Eye for eye," "tooth for tooth"—be it so; but will you thus pray according to the lex talionis and not according to the lex gratiÆ? Your debt is on both sides. Does a man take of your life, you take also of his. Shall he give you of his life, and will you not give him also of yours? If this be not your law of duty to him, tell me what other there is, or if you verily believe there is none.

But you ask of such repayment, "Who shall determine how much?"[58] I took no notice of the question, irrelevant when you asked it; but in its broad bearing it is the one imperative question of national economy. Of old, as at bridge-foot of Florence, men regulated their revenge by the law of demand and supply, and asked in measureless anger, "Who shall determine how much?" with economy of blood, such as we know. That "much" is now, with some approximate equity, determined at the judgment-seat, but for the other debt, the debt of love, we have no law but that of the wolf, and the locust, and the "fishes of the sea, which have no ruler over them." The workmen of England—of the world, ask for the return—as of wrath, so of reward by law; and for blood resolutely spent, as for that recklessly shed; for life devoted through its duration, as for that untimely cast away; they require from you to determine, in judgment, the equities of "Human Retribution."

I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
J. Ruskin.[59]
May 20, 1865.

To the Editor of "The Pall Mall Gazette."

Sir: In the course of your yesterday's article on strikes[60] you have very neatly and tersely expressed the primal fallacy of modern political economy—to wit, that the value of any piece of labor cannot be defined; and that "all that can be ascertained is simply whether any man can be got to do it for a certain sum."

Now, Sir, the "value" of any piece of labor (I should have written "price," not "value," but it is no matter)—that is to say, the quantity of food and air which will enable a man to perform it without eventually losing any of his flesh or nervous energy, is as absolutely fixed a quantity as the weight of powder necessary to carry a given ball a given distance. And within limits varying by exceedingly minor and unimportant circumstances, it is an ascertainable quantity. I told the public this five years ago, and—under pardon of your politico-economical contributor, it is not a sentimental, but a chemical, fact. Let any half-dozen London physicians of recognized standing state in precise terms the quantity and kind of food, and space of lodging, they consider approximately necessary for the healthy life of a laborer in any given manufacture, and the number of hours he may, without shortening his life, work at such business daily, if in such manner he be sustained. Let all masters be bound to give their men a choice between an order for that quantity of food and space of lodging, or the market wages for that specified number of hours of work. Proper laws for the maintenance of families would require further concession; but in the outset, let but this law of wages be established, and if then we have more strikes, you may denounce them without one word of remonstrance either from sense or sensibility.

I am, Sir, with sentiments of great respect,
Your faithful servant,
John Ruskin.
Denmark Hill, April 30, 1867.

To the Editor of "The Pall Mall Gazette."

Sir: Here among the hills, I read little, and withstand, sometimes for a fortnight together, even the attractions of my Pall Mall Gazette. A friend, however, sent me, two days ago, your article signed W. R. G. on spending of money (January 13),[61] which, as I happened to have over-eaten myself the day before, and taken perhaps a glass too much besides of quite priceless port (Quarles Harris, twenty years in bottle), would have been a great comfort to my mind, showing me that if I had done some harm to myself, I had at least conferred benefit upon the poor by these excesses, had I not been left in some painful doubt, even at the end of W. R. G.'s most intelligent illustrations, whether I ought not to have exerted myself further in the cause of humanity, and by the use of some cathartic process, such as appears to have been without inconvenience practised by the ancients, enabled myself to eat two dinners instead of one. But I write to you to-day, because if I were a poor man, instead of a (moderately) rich one, I am nearly certain that W. R. G.'s paper would suggest to me a question, which I am sure he will kindly answer in your columns, namely, "These means of living, which this generous and useful gentleman is so fortunately disposed to bestow on me—where does he get them himself?"

I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
J. Ruskin.
Brantwood, Coniston, Jan. 23.

To the Editor of "The Pall Mall Gazette."

Sir: I am disappointed of my Gazette to-day, and shall be grievously busy to morrow. I think it better, therefore, to follow up my own letter, if you will permit me, with a simple and brief statement of the facts, than to wait till I see your correspondent W. R. G.'s reply, if he has vouchsafed me one.

These are the facts. The laborious poor produce "the means of life" by their labor. Rich persons possess themselves by various expedients of a right to dispense these "means of life," and keeping as much means as they want of it for themselves, and rather more, dispense the rest, usually only in return for more labor from the poor, expended in producing various delights for the rich dispenser. The idea is now gradually entering poor men's minds, that they may as well keep in their own hands the right of distributing "the means of life" they produce; and employ themselves, so far as they need extra occupation, for their own entertainment or benefit, rather than that of other people. There is something to be said, nevertheless, in favor of the present arrangement, but it cannot be defended in disguise; and it is impossible to do more harm to the cause of order, or the rights of property, than by endeavors, such as that of your correspondent, to revive the absurd and, among all vigorous thinkers, long since exploded notion of the dependence of the poor upon the rich.

I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
J. Ruskin.
January 28.

To the Editor of "The Pall Mall Gazette."

Sir: I have my Pall Mall Gazette of the 28th to-day, and must at once, with your permission, solemnly deny the insidiosity of my question, "Where does the rich man get his means of living?" I don't myself see how a more straightforward question could be put! So straightforward indeed that I particularly dislike making a martyr of myself in answering it, as I must this blessed day—a martyr, at least, in the way of witness; for if we rich people don't begin to speak honestly with our tongues, we shall, some day soon, lose them and our heads together, having for some time back, most of us, made false use of the one and none of the other. Well, for the point in question then, as to means of living: the most exemplary manner of answer is simply to state how I got my own, or rather how my father got them for me. He and his partners entered into what your correspondent mellifluously styles "a mutually beneficent partnership,"[62] with certain laborers in Spain. These laborers produced from the earth annually a certain number of bottles of wine. These productions were sold by my father and his partners, who kept nine-tenths, or thereabouts, of the price themselves, and gave one-tenth, or thereabouts, to the laborers. In which state of mutual beneficence my father and his partners naturally became rich, and the laborers as naturally remained poor. Then my good father gave all his money to me (who never did a stroke of work in my life worth my salt, not to mention my dinner), and so far from finding his money "grow" in my hands, I never try to buy anything with it; but people tell me "money isn't what it was in your father's time, everything is so much dearer." I should be heartily glad to learn from your correspondent as much pecuniary botany as will enable me to set my money a-growing; and in the mean time, as I have thus given a quite indubitable instance of my notions of the way money is made, will he be so kind as to give us, not an heraldic example in the dark ages (though I suspect I know more of the pedigree of money, if he comes to that, than he does),[63] but a living example of a rich gentleman who has made his money by saving an equal portion of profit in some mutually beneficent partnership with his laborers?

I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
J. Ruskin.
Brantwood, Coniston,
King Charles the Martyr, 1873.

P.S.—I see by Christie & Manson's advertisement that some of the best bits of work of a good laborer I once knew, J. M. W. Turner (the original plates namely of the "Liber Studiorum"), are just going to be destroyed by some of his affectionate relations. May I beg your correspondent to explain, for your readers' benefit, this charming case of hereditary accumulation?

My dear Sir: Mr. Johnson's speech in the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, which you favor me by sending, appears to me the most important event that has occurred in relation to the true interests of the country during my lifetime. It begins an era of true civilization. I shall allude to it in the "Fors" of March, and make it the chief subject of the one following (the matter of this being already prepared).[65] It goes far beyond what I had even hoped to hear admitted—how much less enforced so gravely and weightily in the commercial world.

Believe me, faithfully yours,
J. Ruskin.

To the Editor of "The Monetary Gazette."

Sir: I congratulate you with all my mind on the sense, and with all my heart on the courage, of your last Saturday's leading article, which I have just seen.[66] You have asserted in it the two vital principles of economy, that society cannot exist by reciprocal pilfering, but must produce wealth if it would have it; and that money must not be lent, but administered by its masters.

You have not yet, however, defined wealth itself, or told the ingenuity of the public what it is to produce.

I have never been able to obtain this definition from economists;[67] perhaps, under the pressure of facts, they may at last discover some meaning in mine at the tenth and eleventh pages of "Munera Pulveris."

I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
J. Ruskin.

To the Editor of "The Socialist."

Sir: Some Sheffield friend has sent me your fourth number, in the general teaching of which I am thankful to be able to concur without qualification: but let me earnestly beg of you not to confuse the discussion of the principles of Property in Earth, Air, or Water, with the discussion of principles of Property in general.[68] The things which, being our neighbor's, the Mosaic Law commands us not to covet, are by the most solemn Natural Laws indeed our neighbor's "property," and any attempts to communize these have always ended, and will always end, in ruin and shame.

Do not attempt to learn from America. An Englishman has brains enough to discover for himself what is good for England; and should learn, when he is to be taught anything, from his Fathers, not from his children.

I observe in the first column of your 15th page the assertion by your correspondent of his definition of money as if different from mine. He only weakens my definition with a "certificate of credit "instead of a "promise to pay." What is the use of giving a man "credit"—if you don't engage to pay him?

But I observe that nearly all my readers stop at this more or less metaphysical definition, which I give in "Unto this Last," instead of going on to the practical statement of immediate need made in "Munera Pulveris."[69]

The promise to find Labor is one which meets general demand; but the promise to find Bread is the answer needed to immediate demand; and the only sound bases of National Currency are shown both in "Munera Pulveris," and "Fors Clavigera," to be bread, fuel, and clothing material, of certified quality.

I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
J. Ruskin.

Dear Mr. Holyoake: I am not able to write you a pretty letter to-day, being sadly tired, but am very heartily glad to be remembered by you. But it utterly silences me that you should waste your time and energy in writing "Histories of Co-operation" anywhere as yet. My dear Sir, you might as well write the history of the yellow spot in an egg—in two volumes. Co-operation is as yet—in any true sense—as impossible as the crystallization of Thames mud.

Ever faithfully yours,
J. Ruskin.

Dear Mr. Holyoake: I am very glad that you are safe back in England, and am not a little grateful for your kind reference to me while in America, and for your letter about Sheffield Museum.[71] But let me pray for another interpretation of my former letter than mere Utopianism. The one calamity which I perceive or dread for an Englishman is his becoming a rascal, and co-operation among rascals—if it were possible—would bring a curse. Every year sees our workmen more eager to do bad work and rob their customers on the sly. All political movement among such animals I call essentially fermentation and putrefaction—not co-operation.

Ever affectionately yours,
J. Ruskin.