The Crown of Wild Olive
certain direct good. It is far better to spend four thousand pounds in
making a good gun, and then to blow it to pieces, than to pass life in
idleness. Only do not let it be called 'political economy.' There is
also a confused notion in the minds of many persons, that the gathering
of the property of the poor into the hands of the rich does no ultimate
harm; since, in whosesoever hands it may be, it must be spent at last,
and thus, they think, return to the poor again. This fallacy has been
again and again exposed; but grant the plea true, and the same apology
may, of course, be made for black mail, or any other form of robbery. It
might be (though practically it never is) as advantageous for the nation
that the robber should have the spending of the money he extorts, as
that the person robbed should have spent it. But this is no excuse for
the theft. If I were to put a turnpike on the road where it passes my
own gate, and endeavour to exact a shilling from every passenger, the
public would soon do away with my gate, without listening to any plea on
my part that 'it was as advantageous to them, in the end, that I should
spend their shillings, as that they themselves should.' But if, instead
of out-facing them with a turnpike, I can only persuade them to come in
and buy stones, or old iron, or any other useless thing, out of my
ground, I may rob them to the same extent, and be, moreover, thanked as
a public benefactor, and promoter of commercial prosperity. And this
main question for the poor of England--for the poor of all countries--is
wholly omitted in every common treatise on the subject of wealth. Even
by the labourers themselves, the operation of capital is regarded only
in its effect on their immediate interests; never in the far more
terrific power of its appointment of the kind and the object of labour.
It matters little, ultimately, how much a labourer is paid for making
anything; but it matters fearfully what the thing is, which he is
compelled to make. If his labour is so ordered as to produce food, and
fresh air, and fresh water, no matter that his wages are low;--the food
and fresh air and water will be at last there; and he will at last get
them. But if he is paid to destroy food and fresh air or to produce
iron bars instead of them,--the food and air will finally _not_ be
there, and he will _not_ get them, to his great and final inconvenience.
So that, conclusively, in political as in household economy, the great
question is, not so much what money you have in your pocket, as what you
will buy with it, and do with it.
I have been long accustomed, as all men engaged in work of investigation
must be, to hear my statements laughed at for years, before they are
examined or believed; and I am generally content to wait the public's
time. But it has not been without displeased surprise that I have found
myself totally unable, as yet, by any repetition, or illustration, to
force this plain thought into my readers' heads,--that the wealth of
nations, as of men, consists in substance, not in ciphers; and that the
real good of all work, and of all commerce, depends on the final worth
of the thing you make, or get by it. This is a practical enough
statement, one would think: but the English public has been so possessed
by its modern school of economists with the notion that Business is
always good, whether it be busy in mischief or in benefit; and that
buying and selling are always salutary, whatever the intrinsic worth of
what you buy or sell,--that it seems impossible to gain so much as a
patient hearing for any inquiry respecting the substantial result of our
eager modern labours. I have never felt more checked by the sense of
this impossibility than in arranging the heads of the following three
lectures, which, though delivered at considerable intervals of time, and
in different places, were not prepared without reference to each other.
Their connection would, however, have been made far more distinct, if I
had not been prevented, by what I feel to be another great difficulty in
addressing English audiences, from enforcing, with any decision, the
common, and to me the most important, part of their subjects. I chiefly
desired (as I have just said) to question my hearers--operatives,
merchants, and soldiers, as to the ultimate meaning of the _business_
they had in hand; and to know from them what they expected or intended
their manufacture to come to, their selling to come to, and their
killing to come to. That appeared the first point needing determination
before I could speak to them with any real utility or effect. 'You
craftsmen--salesmen--swordsmen,--do but tell me clearly what you want,
then, if I can say anything to help you, I will; and if not, I will
account to you as I best may for my inability.' But in order to put this
question into any terms, one had first of all to face the difficulty
just spoken of--to me for the present insuperable,--the difficulty of
knowing whether to address one's audience as believing, or not
believing, in any other world than this. For if you address any average
modern English company as believing in an Eternal life, and endeavour to
draw any conclusions, from this assumed belief, as to their present
business, they will forthwith tell you that what you say is very
beautiful, but it is not practical. If, on the contrary, you frankly
address them as unbelievers in Eternal life, and try to draw any
consequences from that unbelief,--they immediately hold you for an
accursed person, and shake off the dust from their feet at you. And the
more I thought over what I had got to say, the less I found I could say
it, without some reference to this intangible or intractable part of the
subject. It made all the difference, in asserting any principle of war,
whether one assumed that a discharge of artillery would merely knead
down a certain quantity of red clay into a level line, as in a brick
field; or whether, out of every separately Christian-named portion of
the ruinous heap, there went out, into the smoke and dead-fallen air of
battle, some astonished condition of soul, unwillingly released. It made
all the difference, in speaking of the possible range of commerce,
whether one assumed that all bargains related only to visible
property--or whether property, for the present invisible, but
nevertheless real, was elsewhere purchasable on other terms. It made all
the difference, in addressing a body of men subject to considerable
hardship, and having to find some way out of it--whether one could
confidentially say to them, 'My friends,--you have only to die, and all
will be right;' or whether one had any secret misgiving that such advice
was more blessed to him that gave, than to him that took it. And
therefore the deliberate reader will find, throughout these lectures, a
hesitation in driving points home, and a pausing short of conclusions
which he will feel I would fain have come to; hesitation which arises
wholly from this uncertainty of my hearers' temper. For I do not now
speak, nor have I ever spoken, since the time of my first forward youth,
in any proselyting temper, as desiring to persuade any one of what, in
such matters, I thought myself; but, whomsoever I venture to address, I
take for the time his creed as I find it; and endeavour to push it into
such vital fruit as it seems capable of. Thus, it is a creed with a
great part of the existing English people, that they are in possession
of a book which tells them, straight from the lips of God all they ought
to do, and need to know. I have read that book, with as much care as
most of them, for some forty years; and am thankful that, on those who
trust it, I can press its pleadings. My endeavour has been uniformly to
make them trust it more deeply than they do; trust it, not in their own
favourite verses only, but in the sum of all; trust it not as a fetish
or talisman, which they are to be saved by daily repetitions of; but as
a Captain's order, to be heard and obeyed at their peril. I was always
encouraged by supposing my hearers to hold such belief. To these, if to
any, I once had hope of addressing, with acceptance, words which
insisted on the guilt of pride, and the futility of avarice; from these,
if from any, I once expected ratification of a political economy, which
asserted that the life was more than the meat, and the body than
raiment; and these, it once seemed to me, I might ask without accusation
or fanaticism, not merely in doctrine of the lips, but in the bestowal
of their heart's treasure, to separate themselves from the crowd of whom
it is written, 'After all these things do the Gentiles seek.'
It cannot, however, be assumed, with any semblance of reason, that a
general audience is now wholly, or even in majority, composed of these
religious persons. A large portion must always consist of men who admit
no such creed; or who, at least, are inaccessible to appeals founded on
it. And as, with the so-called Christian, I desired to plead for honest
declaration and fulfilment of his belief in life,--with the so-called
Infidel, I desired to plead for an honest declaration and fulfilment of
his belief in death. The dilemma is inevitable. Men must either
hereafter live, or hereafter die; fate may be bravely met, and conduct
wisely ordered, on either expectation; but never in hesitation between
ungrasped hope, and unconfronted fear. We usually believe in
immortality, so far as to avoid preparation for death; and in mortality,
so far as to avoid preparation for anything after death. Whereas, a wise
man will at least hold himself prepared for one or other of two events,
of which one or other is inevitable; and will have all things in order,
for his sleep, or in readiness, for his awakening.
Nor have we any right to call it an ignoble judgment, if he determine to
put them in order, as for sleep. A brave belief in life is indeed an
enviable state of mind, but, as far as I can discern, an unusual one. I
know few Christians so convinced of the splendour of the rooms in their
Father's house, as to be happier when their friends are called to those
mansions, than they would have been if the Queen had sent for them to
live at Court: nor has the Church's most ardent 'desire to depart, and
be with Christ,' ever cured it of the singular habit of putting on
mourning for every person summoned to such departure. On the contrary, a
brave belief in death has been assuredly held by many not ignoble
persons, and it is a sign of the last depravity in the Church itself,
when it assumes that such a belief is inconsistent with either purity of
character, or energy of hand. The shortness of life is not, to any
rational person, a conclusive reason for wasting the space of it which
may be granted him; nor does the anticipation of death to-morrow
suggest, to any one but a drunkard, the expediency of drunkenness
to-day. To teach that there is no device in the grave, may indeed make
the deviceless person more contented in his dulness; but it will make
the deviser only more earnest in devising, nor is human conduct likely,
in every case, to be purer under the conviction that all its evil may in
a moment be pardoned, and all its wrong-doing in a moment redeemed; and
that the sigh of repentance, which purges the guilt of the past, will
waft the soul into a felicity which forgets its pain,--than it may be
under the sterner, and to many not unwise minds, more probable,
apprehension, that 'what a man soweth that shall he also reap'--or
others reap,--when he, the living seed of pestilence, walketh no more in
darkness, but lies down therein.
But to men whose feebleness of sight, or bitterness of soul, or the
offence given by the conduct of those who claim higher hope, may have