The Crown of Wild Olive
laws which govern its distribution, modern political economy has been
thus absolutely incompetent, or absolutely false. And the following
treatise is not, as it has been asserted with dull pertinacity, an
endeavour to put sentiment in the place of science; but it contains the
exposure of what insolently pretended to be a science; and the
definition, hitherto unassailed--and I do not fear to assert,
unassailable--of the material elements with which political economy has
to deal, and the moral principles in which it consists; being not itself
a science, but "a system of conduct founded on the sciences, and
impossible, except under certain conditions of moral culture." Which is
only to say, that industry, frugality, and discretion, the three
foundations of economy, are moral qualities, and cannot be attained
without moral discipline: a flat truism, the reader may think, thus
stated, yet a truism which is denied both vociferously, and in all
endeavour, by the entire populace of Europe; who are at present hopeful
of obtaining wealth by tricks of trade, without industry; who,
possessing wealth, have lost in the use of it even the conception,--how
much more the habit?--of frugality; and who, in the choice of the
elements of wealth, cannot so much as lose--since they have never
hitherto at any time possessed,--the faculty of discretion.
Now if the teachers of the pseudo-science of economy had ventured to
state distinctly even the poor conclusions they had reached on the
subjects respecting which it is most dangerous for a populace to be
indiscreet, they would have soon found, by the use made of them, which
were true, and which false.
But on main and vital questions, no political economist has hitherto
ventured to state one guiding principle. I will instance three subjects
of universal importance. National Dress. National Rent. National Debt.
Now if we are to look in any quarter for a systematic and exhaustive
statement of the principles of a given science, it must certainly be
from its Professor at Cambridge.
Take the last edition of Professor Fawcett's _Manual of Political
Economy_, and forming, first clearly in your mind these three following
questions, see if you can find an answer to them.
I. Does expenditure of capital on the production of luxurious dress and
furniture tend to make a nation rich or poor?
II. Does the payment, by the nation, of a tax on its land, or on the
produce of it, to a certain number of private persons, to be expended by
them as they please, tend to make the nation rich or poor?
III. Does the payment, by the nation, for an indefinite period, of
interest on money borrowed from private persons, tend to make the nation
rich or poor?
These three questions are, all of them, perfectly simple, and primarily
vital. Determine these, and you have at once a basis for national
conduct in all important particulars. Leave them undetermined, and there
is no limit to the distress which may be brought upon the people by the
cunning of its knaves, and the folly of its multitudes.
I will take the three in their order.
I. Dress. The general impression on the public mind at this day is, that
the luxury of the rich in dress and furniture is a benefit to the poor.
Probably not even the blindest of our political economists would venture
to assert this in so many words. But where do they assert the contrary?
During the entire period of the reign of the late Emperor it was assumed
in France, as the first principle of fiscal government, that a large
portion of the funds received as rent from the provincial labourer
should be expended in the manufacture of ladies' dresses in Paris. Where
is the political economist in France, or England, who ventured to assert
the conclusions of his science as adverse to this system? As early as
the year 1857 I had done my best to show the nature of the error, and to
give warning of its danger;[7] but not one of the men who had the
foolish ears of the people intent on their words, dared to follow me in
speaking what would have been an offence to the powers of trade; and the
powers of trade in Paris had their full way for fourteen years
more,--with this result, to-day,--as told us in precise and curt terms
by the Minister of Public Instruction,--[8]
"We have replaced glory by gold, work by speculation, faith
and honour by scepticism. To absolve or glorify immorality;
to make much of loose women; to gratify our eyes with
luxury, our ears with the tales of orgies; to aid in the
manoeuvres of public robbers, or to applaud them; to laugh
at morality, and only believe in success; to love nothing
but pleasure, adore nothing but force; to replace work with
a fecundity of fancies; to speak without thinking; to prefer
noise to glory; to erect sneering into a system, and lying
into an institution--is this the spectacle that we have
seen?--is this the society that we have been?"
Of course, other causes, besides the desire of luxury in furniture and
dress, have been at work to produce such consequences; but the most
active cause of all has been the passion for these; passion unrebuked by
the clergy, and, for the most part, provoked by economists, as
advantageous to commerce; nor need we think that such results have been
arrived at in France only; we are ourselves following rapidly on the
same road. France, in her old wars with us, never was so fatally our
enemy as she has been in the fellowship of fashion, and the freedom of
trade: nor, to my mind, is any fact recorded of Assyrian or Roman luxury
more ominous, or ghastly, than one which came to my knowledge a few
weeks ago, in England; a respectable and well-to-do father and mother,
in a quiet north country town, being turned into the streets in their
old age, at the suit of their only daughter's milliner.
II. Rent. The following account of the real nature of rent is given,
quite accurately, by Professor Fawcett, at page 112 of the last edition
of his _Political Economy_:--
"Every country has probably been subjugated, and grants of
vanquished territory were the ordinary rewards which the
conquering chief bestowed upon his more distinguished
followers. Lands obtained by force had to be defended by
force; and before law had asserted her supremacy, and
property was made secure, no baron was able to retain his
possessions, unless those who lived on his estates were
prepared to defend them....[9] As property became secure,
and landlords felt that the power of the State would protect
them in all the rights of property, every vestige of these
feudal tenures was abolished, and the relation between
landlord and tenant has thus become purely commercial. A
landlord offers his land to any one who is willing to take
it; he is anxious to receive the highest rent he can obtain.
What are the principles which regulate the rent which may
thus be paid?"
These principles the Professor goes on contentedly to investigate, never
appearing to contemplate for an instant the possibility of the first
principle in the whole business--the maintenance, by force, of the
possession of land obtained by force, being ever called in question by
any human mind. It is, nevertheless, the nearest task of our day to
discover how far original theft may be justly encountered by reactionary
theft, or whether reactionary theft be indeed theft at all; and farther,
what, excluding either original or corrective theft, are the just
conditions of the possession of land.
III. Debt. Long since, when, a mere boy, I used to sit silently
listening to the conversation of the London merchants who, all of them
good and sound men of business, were wont occasionally to meet round my
father's dining-table; nothing used to surprise me more than the
conviction openly expressed by some of the soundest and most cautious of
them, that "if there were no National debt they would not know what to
do with their money, or where to place it safely." At the 399th page of
his Manual, you will find Professor Fawcett giving exactly the same
statement.
"In our own country, this certainty against risk of loss is
provided by the public funds;"
and again, as on the question of rent, the Professor proceeds, without
appearing for an instant to be troubled by any misgiving that there may
be an essential difference between the effects on national prosperity of
a Government paying interest on money which it spent in fire works
fifty years ago, and of a Government paying interest on money to be
employed to-day on productive labour.
That difference, which the reader will find stated and examined at
length, in Secs. 127-129 of this volume, it is the business of economists,
before approaching any other question relating to government, fully to
explain. And the paragraphs to which I refer, contain, I believe, the
only definite statement of it hitherto made.
The practical result of the absence of any such statement is, that
capitalists, when they do not know what to do with their money, persuade
the peasants, in various countries, that the said peasants want guns to
shoot each other with. The peasants accordingly borrow guns, out of the
manufacture of which the capitalists get a per-centage, and men of
science much amusement and credit. Then the peasants shoot a certain
number of each other, until they get tired; and burn each other's homes
down in various places. Then they put the guns back into towers,
arsenals, &c., in ornamental patterns; (and the victorious party put
also some ragged flags in churches). And then the capitalists tax both,
annually, ever afterwards, to pay interest on the loan of the guns and
gunpowder. And that is what capitalists call "knowing what to do with
their money;" and what commercial men in general call "practical" as
opposed to "sentimental" Political Economy.
Eleven years ago, in the summer of 1860, perceiving then fully, (as
Carlyle had done long before), what distress was about to come on the
said populace of Europe through these errors of their teachers, I began
to do the best I might, to combat them, in the series of papers for the
_Cornhill Magazine_, since published under the title of _Unto this
Last_. The editor of the Magazine was my friend, and ventured the
insertion of the three first essays; but the outcry against them became
then too strong for any editor to endure, and he wrote to me, with great
discomfort to himself, and many apologies to me, that the Magazine must
only admit one Economical Essay more.
I made, with his permission, the last one longer than the rest, and gave
it blunt conclusion as well as I could--and so the book now stands; but,
as I had taken not a little pains with the Essays, and knew that they
contained better work than most of my former writings, and more
important truths than all of them put together, this violent reprobation
of them by the _Cornhill_ public set me still more gravely thinking;
and, after turning the matter hither and thither in my mind for two
years more, I resolved to make it the central work of my life to write
an exhaustive treatise on Political Economy. It would not have been
begun, at that time, however, had not the editor of _Fraser's Magazine_
written to me, saying that he believed there was something in my
theories, and would risk the admission of what I chose to write on this
dangerous subject; whereupon, cautiously, and at intervals, during the
winter of 1862-63, I sent him, and he ventured to print, the preface of
the intended work, divided into four chapters. Then, though the Editor
had not wholly lost courage, the Publisher indignantly interfered; and
the readers of _Fraser_, as those of the _Cornhill_, were protected, for