The Crown of Wild Olive
withdrawn from circulation as long as I choose to keep it there. It is
no otherwise withdrawn if I bury it, nor even if I choose to make it,
and others, into a golden cup, and drink out of them; since a rise in
the price of the wine, or of other things, may at any time cause me to
melt the cup and throw it back into currency; and the bullion operates
on the prices of the things in the market as directly, though not as
forcibly, while it is in the form of a cup as it does in the form of a
sovereign. No calculation can be founded on my humour in either case. If
I like to handle rouleaus, and therefore keep a quantity of gold, to
play with, in the form of jointed basaltic columns, it is all one in its
effect on the market as if I kept it in the form of twisted filigree,
or, steadily "amicus lamnae," beat the narrow gold pieces into broad
ones, and dined off them. The probability is greater that I break the
rouleau than that I melt the plate; but the increased probability is not
calculable. Thus, documents are only withdrawn from the currency when
cancelled, and bullion when it is so effectually lost as that the
probability of finding it is no greater than of finding new gold in the
mine.
[41] For example, suppose an active peasant, having got his ground into
good order and built himself a comfortable house, finding time still on
his hands, sees one of his neighbours little able to work, and
ill-lodged, and offers to build him also a house, and to put his land in
order, on condition of receiving for a given period rent for the
building and tithe of the fruits. The offer is accepted, and a document
given promissory of rent and tithe. This note is money. It can only be
good money if the man who has incurred the debt so far recovers his
strength as to be able to take advantage of the help he has received,
and meet the demand of the note; if he lets his house fall to ruin, and
his field to waste, his promissory note will soon be valueless: but the
existence of the note at all is a consequence of his not having worked
so stoutly as the other. Let him gain as much as to be able to pay back
the entire debt; the note is cancelled, and we have two rich
store-holders and no currency.
[42] [You need not trouble yourself to make out the sentence in
parenthesis, unless you like, but do not think it is mere metaphor. It
states a fact which I could not have stated so shortly, _but_ by
metaphor.]
[43] [What follows, to the end of the chapter, was a note only, in the
first printing; but for after service, it is of more value than any
other part of the book, so I have put it into the main text.]
CHAPTER IV.
COMMERCE.
95. As the currency conveys right of choice out of many things in
exchange for one, so Commerce is the agency by which the power of choice
is obtained; so that countries producing only timber can obtain for
their timber silk and gold; or, naturally producing only jewels and
frankincense, can obtain for them cattle and corn. In this function,
commerce is of more importance to a country in proportion to the
limitations of its products, and the restlessness of its
fancy;--generally of greater importance towards Northern latitudes.
96. Commerce is necessary, however, not only to exchange local products,
but local skill. Labour requiring the agency of fire can only be given
abundantly in cold countries; labour requiring suppleness of body and
sensitiveness of touch, only in warm ones; labour involving accurate
vivacity of thought only in temperate ones; while peculiar imaginative
actions are produced by extremes of heat and cold, and of light and
darkness. The production of great art is limited to climates warm enough
to admit of repose in the open air, and cool enough to render such
repose delightful. Minor variations in modes of skill distinguish every
locality. The labour which at any place is easiest, is in that place
cheapest; and it becomes often desirable that products raised in one
country should be wrought in another. Hence have arisen discussions on
"International values" which will be one day remembered as highly
curious exercises of the human mind. For it will be discovered, in due
course of tide and time, that international value is regulated just as
inter-provincial or inter-parishional value is. Coals and hops are
exchanged between Northumberland and Kent on absolutely the same
principles as iron and wine between Lancashire and Spain. The greater
breadth of an arm of the sea increases the cost, but does not modify the
principle of exchange; and a bargain written in two languages will have
no other economical results than a bargain written in one. The distances
of nations are measured, not by seas, but by ignorances; and their
divisions determined, not by dialects, but by enmities.[44]
97. Of course, a system of international values may always be
constructed if we assume a relation of moral law to physical geography;
as, for instance, that it is right to cheat or rob across a river,
though not across a road; or across a sea, though not across a river,
&c.;--again, a system of such values may be constructed by assuming
similar relations of taxation to physical geography; as, for instance,
that an article should be taxed in crossing a river, but not in crossing
a road; or in being carried fifty miles, but not in being carried five,
&c.; such positions are indeed not easily maintained when once put in
logical form; but _one_ law of international value is maintainable in
any form: namely, that the farther your neighbour lives from you, and
the less he understands you, _the more you are bound to be true in your
dealings with him_; because your power over him is greater in proportion
to his ignorance, and his remedy more difficult in proportion to his
distance.[45]
98. I have just said the breadth of sea increases the cost of exchange.
Now note that exchange, or commerce, _in itself_, is always costly; the
sum of the value of the goods being diminished by the cost of their
conveyance, and by the maintenance of the persons employed in it; so
that it is only when there is advantage to both producers (in getting
the one thing for the other) greater than the loss in conveyance, that
the exchange is expedient. And it can only be justly conducted when the
porters kept by the producers (commonly called merchants) expect _mere_
pay, and not profit.[46] For in just commerce there are but three
parties--the two persons or societies exchanging, and the agent or
agents of exchange; the value of the things to be exchanged is known by
both the exchangers, and each receives equal value, neither gaining nor
losing (for whatever one gains the other loses). The intermediate agent
is paid a known per-centage by both, partly for labour in conveyance,
partly for care, knowledge, and risk; every attempt at concealment of
the amount of the pay indicates either effort on the part of the agent
to obtain unjust profit, or effort on the part of the exchangers to
refuse him just pay. But for the most part it is the first, namely, the
effort on the part of the merchant to obtain larger profit (so-called)
by buying cheap and selling dear. Some part, indeed, of this larger gain
is deserved, and might be openly demanded, because it is the reward of
the merchant's knowledge, and foresight of probable necessity; but the
greater part of such gain is unjust; and unjust in this most fatal way,
that it depends, first, on keeping the exchangers ignorant of the
exchange value of the articles; and, secondly, on taking advantage of
the buyer's need and the seller's poverty. It is, therefore, one of the
essential, and quite the most fatal, forms of usury; for usury means
merely taking an exorbitant[47] sum for the use of anything; and it is
no matter whether the exorbitance is on loan or exchange, on rent or on
price--the essence of the usury being that it is obtained by advantage
of opportunity or necessity, and not as due reward for labour. All the
great thinkers, therefore, have held it to be unnatural and impious, in
so far as it feeds on the distress of others, or their folly.[48]
Nevertheless, attempts to repress it by law must for ever be
ineffective; though Plato, Bacon, and the First Napoleon--all three of
them men who knew somewhat more of humanity than the "British merchant"
usually does--tried their hands at it, and have left some (probably)
good moderative forms of law, which we will examine in their place. But
the only final check upon it must be radical purifying of the national
character, for being, as Bacon calls it, "concessum propter duritiem
cordis," it is to be done away with by touching the heart only; not,
however, without medicinal law--as in the case of the other permission,
"propter duritiem." But in this more than in anything (though much in
all, and though in this he would not himself allow of their application,
for his own laws against usury are sharp enough), Plato's words in the
fourth book of the Polity are true, that neither drugs, nor charms, nor
burnings, will touch a deep-lying political sore, any more than a deep
bodily one; but only right and utter change of constitution: and that
"they do but lose their labour who think that by any tricks of law they
can get the better of these mischiefs of commerce, and see not that they
hew at a Hydra."
99. And indeed this Hydra seems so unslayable, and sin sticks so fast
between the joinings of the stones of buying and selling, that "to
trade" in things, or literally "cross-give" them, has warped itself, by
the instinct of nations, into their worst word for fraud; for, because
in trade there cannot but be trust, and it seems also that there cannot
but also be injury in answer to it, what is merely fraud between enemies
becomes treachery among friends: and "trader," "traditor," and "traitor"
are but the same word. For which simplicity of language there is more
reason than at first appears: for as in true commerce there is no
"profit," so in true commerce there is no "sale." The idea of sale is
that of an interchange between enemies respectively endeavouring to get
the better one of another; but commerce is an exchange between friends;
and there is no desire but that it should be just, any more than there
would be between members of the same family.[49] The moment there is a
bargain over the pottage, the family relation is dissolved:--typically,
"the days of mourning for my father are at hand." Whereupon follows the
resolve, "then will I slay my brother."
100. This inhumanity of mercenary commerce is the more notable because
it is a fulfilment of the law that the corruption of the best is the
worst. For as, taking the body natural for symbol of the body politic,
the governing and forming powers may be likened to the brain, and the
labouring to the limbs, the mercantile, presiding over circulation and
communication of things in changed utilities, is symbolized by the
heart; and, if that hardens, all is lost. And this is the ultimate
lesson which the leader of English intellect meant for us, (a lesson,
indeed, not all his own, but part of the old wisdom of humanity), in the
tale of the _Merchant of Venice_; in which the true and incorrupt
merchant,--_kind and free beyond every other Shakspearian conception of
men_,--is opposed to the corrupted merchant, or usurer; the lesson being
deepened by the expression of the strange hatred which the corrupted
merchant bears to the pure one, mixed with intense scorn,--
"This is the fool that lent out money gratis; look to him, jailer," (as
to lunatic no less than criminal) the enmity, observe, having its
symbolism literally carried out by being aimed straight at the heart,
and finally foiled by a literal appeal to the great moral law that flesh