LETTER LXX.

I have been not a little pestered this month by the quantities of letters, which I can’t wholly cure myself of the weakness of reading, from people who fancy that, like other political writers of the day, I print, on the most important subjects, the first thing that comes into my head; and may be made immediately to repent of what I have said, and generally to see the error of my ways, by the suggestions of their better judgment.

Letters of this sort do not surprise me if they have a Scottish postmark, the air of Edinburgh having always had a curiously exciting quality, and amazing power over weak heads; but one or two communications from modest and thoughtful English friends have seriously troubled me by the extreme simplicity of their objections to statements which, if not acceptable, I had at least hoped would have been intelligible to them.

I had, indeed, expected difficulty in proving to my readers the mischievousness of Usury; but I never thought to find confusion in their minds between Property itself, and its Interest. Yet I find this singular confusion at the root of the objections made by most of my cavilling correspondents: “How are we to live” (they say) “if, when we have saved a hundred pounds, we can’t make a hundred and five of them, without any more trouble?”

Gentlemen and ladies all,—you are to live on your hundred pounds, saved; and if you want five pounds more, you must go and work for five pounds more; just as a man who hasn’t a hundred pounds must work for the first five he gets.

The following sentence, written by a man of real economical knowledge, expresses, with more than usual precision, the common mistake: “I much fear if your definition of Usury be correct, which is to the effect that it is a sin to derive money from the possession of capital, or otherwise than by our own personal work. Should we follow this proposition to its final logical conclusion, we must preach communism, pure and simple, and contend that property is theft,—which God forbid.”

To this correspondent I answered briefly, “Is my house not my property unless I let it for lodgings, or my wife not my property unless I prostitute her?”

But I believe it will be well, though I intended to enter on other matters this month, to repeat instead once more, in the shortest and strongest terms I can find, what I have now stated at least a hundred times respecting the eternal nature and sanctity of ‘Property.’

A man’s ‘Property,’ the possession ‘proper’ to him, his own, rightly so called, and no one else’s on any pretence of theirs—consists of,

A, The good things,

B, Which he has honestly got,

C, And can skilfully use.

That is the A B C of Property.

A. It must consist of good things—not bad ones. It is rightly called therefore a man’s ‘Goods,’ not a man’s ‘Bads.’

If you have got a quantity of dung lodged in your drains, a quantity of fleas lodged in your bed, or a quantity of nonsense lodged in your brains,—that is not ‘Property,’ but the reverse thereof; the value to you of your drains, bed, and brains being thereby diminished, not increased.

Can you understand that much more, my practical friend?

C. It must be not only something good, and not only something honestly got, but also something you can skilfully use.

For, as the old proverb, “You can’t eat your pudding and have it,” is utterly true in its bearing against Usury,—so also this reverse of it is true in confirmation of property—that you can’t ‘have’ your pudding unless you can eat it. It may be composed for you of the finest plums, and paid for wholly out of your own pocket; but if you can’t stomach it—the pudding is not for you. Buy the finest horse on four legs, he is not ‘proper’ to you if you can’t ride him. Buy the best book between boards,—Horace, or Homer, or Dante,—and if you don’t know Latin, nor Greek, nor Christianity, the paper and boards are yours indeed, but the books—by no means.

You doubt this, my practical friend?

Try a child with a stick of barley-sugar;—tell him it is his, but he mustn’t eat it; his face will express to you the fallaciousness of that principle of property in an unmistakable manner. But by the time he grows as old and stupid as you, perhaps he will buy barley-sugar that he can’t taste, to please the public.

“I’ve no pleasure in that picture of Holman Hunt’s,” said a highly practical man of business to a friend of mine the other day, “nor my wife neither, for that matter; but I always buy under good advice as to market value; and one’s collection isn’t complete without one.”

Now what the difference may be in the quality of property which honest and dishonest women like is—for you, my practical friend—quite an unfathomable question; but you can at least understand that all the china, timepieces, and lewd pictures, which form the main ‘property’ of Paris and her imitators, are verily, in the commercial sense of the word, property; and would be estimated as such by any Jew in any bankruptcy court; yet the harlots don’t lend their china, or timepieces, on usury, nor make an income out of their bed-hangings,—do they? So that you see it is perfectly possible to have property, and a very costly quantity of it, without making any profit of such capital?

But the harlots have another kind of capital which you, my blind practical friend, don’t call ‘Property’; but which I, having the use of my eyes as well as of my hands, do. They have beauty of body;—many of them, also, wit of mind. And on these two articles of property, you observe, my friend, being much more their own, and much more valuable things, if they knew it, than china and timepieces—on these they do make an annual income, and turn them over, as you call it, several times perhaps in the year.

Now if beauty of body and wit of tongue can be thus made sources of income, you will rank them perhaps, even as I do, among articles of wealth.

But, in old usury, there was yet another kind of treasure held account of, namely—Beauty of Heart, and Wit of Brains;—or what was shortly called by the Greek usurers, Psyche—(you may have heard the word before, my practical friend; but I do not expect you to follow me further). And this Psyche, or Soul, was held by the two great old masters of economy—that is to say, by Plato and David—the best property of all that a man had; except only one thing, which the soul itself must be starved without, yet which you would never guess, my practical friend, if you guessed yourself into your grave, to be an article of property at all! The Law of God, of which David says, “My soul fainteth for the longing that it hath unto thy judgments,” or in terms which you can perhaps better understand, “The law of thy mouth is dearer unto me than thousands of gold and silver.”

But indeed the market value of this commodity has greatly fallen in these times. “Damn the Laws of God,” answered a City merchant of standing to a personal friend of mine, who was advising him the other day to take a little of that capital into his business.

And now, to make all matters as clear as may be, I will put down in the manner of a Dutch auction—proceeding to the lower valuation,—the articles of property, rightly so called, which belong to any human creature.

I. The Master, or Father, in the old Latin phrase, ‘Pater Noster;’ of whom David wrote, “Whom have I in heaven but thee, and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee;” but this possession, includes in Plato’s catalogue, the attendant spirits, “θεοὺς, ὄντας δεσπότας, καὶ τοὺς τούτοις ἑπομένους”—“the Gods, being Masters, and those next to them,” specially signified in another place as “the Gods, and the Angels, and the Heroes, and the Spirits of our Home, and our Ancestors.”

II. The Law or Word of God, which the Bible Society professes to furnish for eighteenpence. But which, indeed, as often heretofore stated in Fors Clavigera, is by no means to be had at that low figure; the whole long hundred and nineteenth Psalm being little more than one agonizing prayer for the gift of it: and a man’s life well spent if he has truly received and learned to read ever so little a part of it.

IV. The Body, in its sanity and beauty: strength of it being the first simple meaning of what the Greeks called virtue: and the eternity of it being the special doctrine of the form of religion professed in Christendom under the name of Christianity.

V. The things good and pleasing to the Psyche; as the visible things of creation,—sky, water, flowers, and the like; and the treasured-up words or feats of other Spirits.

VI. The things good and pleasing to the Body; summed under the two heads of Bread and Wine, brought forth by the Amorite King of Salem.

VII. The documents giving claim to the possession of these things, when not in actual possession; or ‘money.’

This catalogue will be found virtually to include all the articles of wealth which men can either possess or lend, (for the fourth, fully understood, means the entire treasure of domestic and social affection;) and the law of their tenure is that a man shall neither sell nor lend that which is indeed his own; neither his God, his conscience, his soul, his body, or his wife’s; his country, his house, nor his tools. But that things which are not ‘his own,’ but over which he has charge or authority, (as of more land than he can plough, or more books than he can read,) these he is bound to lend or give, as he sees they may be made serviceable to others; and not for farther gain to himself. Thus his Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury is, under penalties, bound to make his very excellent library at Lambeth serviceable to other scholars; but it is not at all permitted to his Grace, by the laws of God, to use any part of the income derived from his pretty estate on the slope of the Addington Hills, for the purchase of books, by the loan of which, in the manner of Mr. Mudie, to the ignorant inhabitants of the village of Croydon, his Grace may at once add to his income (not more than) five per cent. on the capital thus laid out in literature; and to his dignity as a Christian pastor. I know, as it happens, more about the heather than the rents of his Grace’s estate at Addington; my father and I having taken much pleasure in its bloom, and the gleaming of bluebells amongst it—when he, in broken health, sought any English ground that Scottish flowers grew on, and I was but a child;—so that I thought it would please him to be laid in his last rest at the feet of those brown hills. And thus, as I say, I know somewhat of their flowers, but never inquired into their rents; and perhaps, as I rather hope, the sweet wood and garden ground serve only for his Grace’s entertainment—not emolument: but even if only so, in these hard times his Grace must permit me to observe that he has quite as much earthly ground and lodging as any angel of the Lord can be supposed to require; and is under no necessity of adding to his possessions by the practice of usury. I do not know if the Archbishop has in his library the works of Mr. Thackeray; but he probably has sometimes relieved his studies of the Christian Fathers with modern literature, and may remember a figure of an amiable and economical little school-boy who begins life by lending three halfpence, early in the week, to the boys who had outrun their income, for four halfpence at the week’s end. The figure of the same little boy grown into an Archbishop, and making a few pence extra on his episcopal income by the loan of his old school books, did not, it appears, suggest itself to the lamented author; but here it is, in relief, for us:—

East Surrey Hall, Museum and Library Company

(LIMITED).

Registered under the Companies Acts, 1862 and 1867.

President.

His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Vice-Presidents.

Granville Leveson Gower, Esq., High Sheriff of Surrey.

S. Birch, Esq., LL.D., etc., British Museum.

Rev. Dr. Moffat, late African Missionary.

The High Bailiff of the Borough of Southwark.

The Mayor of Reigate.

The Hall will be adapted for public meetings of every description, and it is hoped that it will also be an ornament to the town.

In the Museum it is intended to form a collection of objects of historic, scientific, and artistic interest, particularly of such as may be found in the County of Surrey. The Museum will be free.

The Library will consist of standard works of reference, arranged in rooms suitably furnished for the purposes of reading and study. In addition to works on general literature, it is intended to place in this Library, Books, Maps, and everything of the like nature, tending to elucidate the History, Topography, etc., of the County of Surrey, and especially of the Parish of Croydon. In the Company’s Memorandum of Association it is expressly stipulated that one department of this Library shall be Free.

Other parts of the building will be so arranged as to be suitable for occupation, or for letting as offices to Friendly Societies and other Public Bodies.

The Capital required to found this Institution will be raised by means of Donations and One Pound Shares.

The Donations will be applied to carrying out all or any of the above objects, according as the Donor may desire.

The Articles of Association provide that “no dividend shall be declared in any one year exceeding in amount £5 per cent. per annum upon the amount of the Capital of the Company for the time being called up. If, in any one year, the net earnings of the Company would allow of a dividend exceeding in amount the said dividend of £5 per cent. per annum being declared, the Directors shall employ the surplus earnings in improving the buildings of the Company, or in the purchase of additional stock or effects, or otherwise, for the benefit of the Company, as the Directors for the time being shall from time to time determine.”

Venice, 16th September, 1876.

I am weary, this morning, with vainly trying to draw the Madonna-herb clustered on the capitals of St. Mark’s porch; and mingling its fresh life with the marble acanthus leaves which saw Barbarossa receive the foot of the Primate of Christendom on his neck;—wondering within myself all the while, which did not further my painting, how far the existing Primate of Canterbury, in modestly declining to set his foot upon the lion and the adder, was bettering the temper of the third Alexander; and wondering yet more whether the appointment—as vice-defender of the Faith for Her Majesty—of Lord Lonsdale to be curator of Lancashire souls, in the number implied by the catalogue of livings in his patronage, given in our fourth article of Correspondence, gave to the Lord of the Dales of Lune more of the character of the Pope, or the Lion?

What may be the real value of the Lancashire souls as a property in trust, we may, perhaps, as clearly gather from the following passage of Plato as from any Christian political economist.

“And now, whosoever has been content to hear me speaking of the Gods, and of our dear ancestors, let him yet hear me in this. For next to the Gods, of all his possessions his soul is the mightiest, being the most his own.

“And the nature of it is in all things twofold; the part that is stronger and better, ruling, and the part that is weaker and worse, serving; and the part of it that rules is always to be held in honour before that that serves. I command, therefore, every man that he should rightly honour his soul, calling it sacred, next to the Gods and the higher Powers attendant on them.

“For example, the boy just become man thinks himself able to judge of all things; and thinks that he honours his own soul in praising it; and eagerly commits to its doing whatsoever it chooses to do.

“But, according to what has been just said, in doing this he injures and does not honour his soul, which, second to the Gods, he is bound to honour.

That is as much of Plato’s opinions concerning the Psyche as I can write out for you to-day; in next Fors, I may find you some parallel ones of Carpaccio’s: meantime I have to correct a mistake in Fors, which it will be great delight to all Amorites to discover; namely, that the Princess, whom I judged to be industrious because she went on working while she talked to her father about her marriage, cannot, on this ground, be praised beyond Princesses in general; for, indeed, the little mischief, instead of working, as I thought,—while her father is leaning his head on his hand in the greatest distress at the thought of parting with her,—is trying on her marriage ring!

NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.

I. Affairs of the Company.

I am sending in gifts to the men at Sheffield, wealth of various kinds, in small instalments—but in secure forms. Five bits of opal; the market value of one, just paid to Mr. Wright, of Great Russell Street, £3; a beryl, of unusual shape, ditto, £2; a group of emeralds, from the mine of Holy Faith of Bogota, and two pieces of moss gold,—market value £2 10s.,—just paid to Mr. Tennant. Also, the first volume of the Sheffield Library; an English Bible of the thirteenth century,—market value £50,—just paid to Mr. Ellis. I tell these prices only to secure the men’s attention, because I am not sure what acceptant capacity they have for them. When once they recognize the things themselves to be wealth,—when they can see the opals, know the wonderfulness of the beryl, enjoy the loveliness of the golden fibres, read the illuminations of the Bible page,—they will not ask what the cost, nor consider what they can get for them. I don’t believe they will think even of lending their Bible out on usury.

I have no subscriptions, or other progress of the Society, to announce this month.

II. Affairs of the Master.

I am a little ashamed of my accounts this time, having bought a missal worth £320 for myself, and only given one worth £50 to Sheffield. I might state several reasons, more or less excusing this selfishness; one being that the £50 Bible is entirely perfect in every leaf, but mine wants the first leaf of Genesis; and is not, therefore, with all its beauty, fit for the first volume of the library. But it is one of my present principles of action not at all to set myself up for a reformer, and it must be always one not to set up for a saint; and I must beg my severely judging readers, in the meantime, rather to look at what I have done, than at what I have left undone, of the things I ask others to do. To the St. George’s Fund I have given a tenth of my living,—and much more than the tenth of the rest was before, and is still, given to the poor. And if any of the rich people whom we all know will do as much as this, I believe you may safely trust them to discern and do what is right with the portion they keep, (if kept openly, and not Ananias-fashion,) and if you press them farther, the want of grace is more likely on your part than theirs. I have never, myself, felt so much contempt for any living creature as for a miserable Scotch woman—curiously enough of Burns’ country, and of the Holy Willy breed,—whom I once by mischance allowed to come and stay in my house; and who, asking, when I had stated some general truths of the above nature, “why I kept my own pictures;” and being answered that I kept them partly as a national property, in my charge, and partly as my tools of work,—said “she liked to see how people reasoned when their own interests were touched;”—the wretch herself evidently never in all her days having had one generous thought which could not have been smothered if it had touched ‘her own interest,’ and being therefore totally unable to conceive any such thought in others.

Farther, as to the price I ask for my books, and my continuing to take rent for my house property, and interest from the Bank, I must request my readers still for a time to withhold their judgment;—though I willingly insert the following remonstrance addressed to my publisher on the subject by an American Quaker gentleman, whose benevolent satisfaction in sending Mr. Sillar’s three shillings to St. George’s Fund, has induced him farther to take this personal interest in the full carrying out of all my principles.

33, Oak Street, Rochester, N.Y., U.S.A.,

11th mo. 4th, 1875.

George Allen.

Respected Friend,—I have paid to the Post Office here, to be paid to thee in London, the equivalent of three shillings, which I have been requested to forward to thee for the St. George’s Fund, in payment for W. C. Sillar’s pamphlets on Usury.

Thy friend, Edward Rushmore.

P.S.—I am a constant reader of Fors Clavigera, and was by it put in the way to obtain W. C. Sillar’s pamphlets. I have abandoned the practice of usury, and take pleasure in the thought that the payment for the pamphlets, though trifling, goes to St. George’s Fund. I sincerely wish Mr. Ruskin could feel it his duty to act promptly in withdrawing his money from usury. I think it would increase tenfold the force of his teaching on the subject. Please show this to him, if convenient.—E. Rushmore.

I am partly, indeed, of my correspondent’s way of thinking in this matter; but I must not allow myself to be dazzled by his munificence into an undue respect for his opinion; and I beg to assure him, and one or two other religious gentlemen who have had the goodness to concern themselves about my inconsistency, that the change in my mode of life which they wish me to carry out, while it would cause no inconvenience to me, seeing that I have before now lived in perfect comfort, and could now live in what is much more to me than comfort—peace—on a couple of guineas a week; plaguing myself no more either with authorship or philanthropy, and asking only so much charity from the Bursar of Corpus as to take charge for me of the sum of £2,000 sterling, and dole me out my guineas from that dead capital monthly,—the surplus, less burial expenses, to be spent in MSS. for Corpus library at my death;—while, I say, this would be an entirely satisfactory arrangement, and serenely joyful release from care, to myself, it would be an exceedingly inconvenient arrangement to a number of persons who are at present dependent on me for daily bread, and who, not sharing my views about Interest, would have no consolation in their martyrdom. For which, and sundry valid reasons besides, I once for all assure my conscientious correspondents that the time is not yet come for me to do more than I have done already, and that I shall receive without cavilling, or asking for more, the tenth part of their own fortunes for St. George, with extreme pleasure.

III. From ‘Carlisle Journal.’

“The deceased nobleman was the third Earl of the second creation of the title. He was born on the 27th of March, 1818, and was consequently fifty-eight years of age when he died. He was educated at Westminster and Trinity College, Cambridge, taking the degree of M.A. in 1838. In 1841, he entered the Life Guards as Cornet, and retired as Captain in 1854. From 1847 to 1872 he represented West Cumberland in Parliament in the Conservative interest, and succeeded to the title of Earl of Lonsdale upon the death of his uncle in 1872. He was Lord-Lieutenant and Custos Rotulorum of Cumberland and Westmoreland, Hon. Colonel of the Royal Cumberland Militia, and of Cumberland Rifle Volunteers, and Lieutenant-Colonel of Westmoreland and Cumberland Yeomanry Cavalry.

“The Earl was patron of more than forty church livings in this diocese. The following, forty-three in number, were, for the most part, wholly at his disposal, and of course descend to his successor:—Aikton, Armathwaite, Bootle, Bolton, Bowness, Brigham, Buttermere, Cockermouth, Cleator, Corney, Distington, Embleton, Gosforth, Hensingham, Haile, Kirkandrews-upon-Eden, Kirkbride, Lorton, Loweswater, Morseby, Mosser, St. Bees, Threlkeld, Whicham, Whitbeck; St. James, Christ Church, St. Nicholas, and Holy Trinity, Whitehaven; Askham, Bampton, Barton, Kirkby Stephen, Lowther, Patterdale, Clifton, Ravenstondale, Shap, Startforth (Yorkshire), Bampton Kirk, Orton, St. John’s-in-the-Vale, and Crosthwaite.

“The late Lord Lonsdale never took a prominent public part in political life, although he had a seat in the House of Commons for twenty-five years; but he had won much personal popularity as a country gentleman. In agriculture he was naturally interested, the rental of his landed estates in Cumberland alone being over £40,000 a year, and in Westmoreland nearly as much more; but it was that department concerning the breeding of horses to which he turned most attention. In the development of this taste he became an active member of the Turf. His horse ‘King Lud’ won the Cesarewitch Stakes in 1873, and it was its noble owner’s ambition to win the Cumberland Plate with it the following year. An unfortunate accident, however, lost him the race, and as in the previous year the breakdown of ‘The Preacher’ had also proved a disappointment, he did not try again. But horse-racing was not the only kind of sport with which the late Earl was closely connected. In the hunting-field he was a popular M.F.H., but only the other day it was announced that failing health had compelled him to say that he could not after next season hunt the Cottesmore hounds, of which he has held the mastership for six years.

“The remains of the deceased peer were removed to Lowther Castle on Tuesday evening, and several members of the Town and Harbour Board accompanied them from Whitehaven Castle to the railway station. The hearse was followed by two mourning coaches, containing the Viscount Lowther and Colonel Williams; Mr. R. A. Robinson, Mr. Mawson, and Mr. Borthwick. After these followed servants in the employ of the late lord, the trustees, and other inhabitants.

“The funeral will probably take place to-morrow or on Monday, at the family mausoleum at Lowther.

“The flags on the public buildings of Whitehaven and Carlisle have since Tuesday been displayed half-mast high.”—Carlisle Journal, August 18th, 1876.

The ‘Sportsman’ contains the following memoir of the late Lord Lonsdale as a patron of the Turf:—“When he succeeded his uncle to the title of Earl of Lonsdale in 1872, he relinquished his Parliamentary duties. It was then that the observance of a very ancient custom devolved upon him—that of giving a cup to be raced for on Burgh Marsh, the contest to be confined to horses bred in the barony. The only occasions of race meetings being held on the Marsh, or foreshores of the Solway, are when there is a new Lord-Lieutenant of Cumberland, and from having assisted at the meeting—the management of which was entrusted to Mr. Lawley—I can well remember with what zeal his lordship entered into the rural sports, and the graceful speech he made when he presented the cup to Major Browne, who won with ‘The Crow,’ a son of ‘Grand Secret,’ that had been travelling the county. It was the especial delight of Lord Lonsdale that the winner was ridden by Jem Snowdon—a native of Carlisle; and he presented the jockey with a handsome whip, and complimented the Cumberland horseman on his riding. There were not less than sixty thousand people present, and within almost a stone’s throw of the Grand Stand was the monument put up to mark the spot where died King Edward, who was on his way to Scotland when death overtook him. Lord Lonsdale acted as steward of Carlisle Races for years, and he took a great deal of interest in the meeting, as he also did in the local gathering on Harras Moor, close to Whitehaven.”

IV. I am very grateful for the following piece of letter, (as for all other kindness from the Companion to whom I owe it;) and really I think it is “enough to make one give up wearing Valenciennes.”

“August 9th, 1876.

“My dear Master,—I have tried in vain to resist those words in the August Fors,—‘some one tell me,’ but at last resolve to say my say, trusting to your indulgence if it is in vain.

“Some years ago, a friend of mine visiting Brussels went over the Royal Lace Manufactory, and seeing a woman busily at work on a very fine, and, according to the then fashion, large, collar, went up to her, and inquired how long she had been over this one piece. The woman answered, four years; and handed the work for my friend to examine more closely, but without changing her position, or lifting her eyes from the spot on which they were fixed; and on being asked the reason of this, said it would take too long time to have again to fix her eyes, so she kept them to the one spot through all the working hours. This is quite true. But the women were working in a large, light room—I doubt the correctness of the dark cellar, and do not see the reason for it—but all who have ever done any fine work can understand the loss of time in moving the eyes. But, after all, is lace-making worse for women than the ceaseless treadle movement of the sewing-machine? Lace-making hurts eyes only; the machine injures the whole woman—so I am told.”

V. A letter from a Methodist minister, though written on the 14th, only reaches me here at Venice on the 28th. It will appear in next Fors. The gist of it is contradiction of Mr. Sillar’s statement that the Wesleyans altered John Wesley’s rules. “The alterations, whether good or bad,” (says my new correspondent,) “were made by himself.” I am not surprised to hear this; for had Wesley been a wise Christian, there would no more, now, have been Wesleyan than Apollosian ministers.