Note 85 — Chapter XXIV · EDUCATION AND THE SOCIAL PROBLEM—HISTORIC. EUROPE.

“For instance, I have seven thousand pounds in what we call the Funds or Founded things; but I am not comfortable about the founding of them. All that I can see of them is a square bit of paper, with some ugly printing on it, and all that I know of them is that this bit of paper gives me the right to tax you every year, and make you pay me two hundred pounds out of your wages; which is very pleasant for me; but how long will you be pleased to do so? Suppose it should occur to you, any summer’s day, that you had better not? Where would my seven thousand pounds be? In fact, where are they now? We call ourselves a rich people; but you see this seven thousand pounds of mine has no real existence—it only means that you, the workers, are poorer by two hundred pounds a year than you would be if I hadn’t got it. And this is surely a very odd kind of money for a country to boast of.”—“Fors Clavigera,” Part I., p. 67. By John Ruskin, LL.D. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1880.