The Crown of Wild Olive
to have been dead several hours. He had perished of cold and wet, and
the rain had been beating down on him all night. The deceased was a
bone-picker. He was in the lowest stage of poverty, poorly clad, and
half-starved. The police had frequently driven him away from the stone
yard, between sunset and sunrise, and told him to go home. He selected a
most desolate spot for his wretched death. A penny and some bones were
found in his pockets. The deceased was between fifty and sixty years of
age. Inspector Roberts, of the K division, has given directions for
inquiries to be made at the lodging-houses respecting the deceased, to
ascertain his identity if possible.'--_Morning Post_, November 25, 1864.
You have the separation thus in brief compass; and I want you to take
notice of the 'a penny and some bones were found in his pockets,' and to
compare it with this third statement, from the _Telegraph_ of January
16th of this year:--
'Again, the dietary scale for adult and juvenile paupers was drawn up by
the most conspicuous political economists in England. It is low in
quantity, but it is sufficient to support nature; yet within ten years
of the passing of the Poor Law Act, we heard of the paupers in the
Andover Union gnawing the scraps of putrid flesh and sucking the marrow
from the bones of horses which they were employed to crush.'
You see my reason for thinking that our Lazarus of Christianity has some
advantage over the Jewish one. Jewish Lazarus expected, or at least
prayed, to be fed with crumbs from the rich man's table; but _our_
Lazarus is fed with crumbs from the dog's table.
Now this distinction between rich and poor rests on two bases. Within
its proper limits, on a basis which is lawful and everlastingly
necessary; beyond them, on a basis unlawful, and everlastingly
corrupting the framework of society. The lawful basis of wealth is, that
a man who works should be paid the fair value of his work; and that if
he does not choose to spend it to-day, he should have free leave to keep
it, and spend it to-morrow. Thus, an industrious man working daily, and
laying by daily, attains at last the possession of an accumulated sum of
wealth, to which he has absolute right. The idle person who will not
work, and the wasteful person who lays nothing by, at the end of the
same time will be doubly poor--poor in possession, and dissolute in
moral habit; and he will then naturally covet the money which the other
has saved. And if he is then allowed to attack the other, and rob him of
his well-earned wealth, there is no more any motive for saving, or any
reward for good conduct; and all society is thereupon dissolved, or
exists only in systems of rapine. Therefore the first necessity of
social life is the clearness of national conscience in enforcing the
law--that he should keep who has JUSTLY EARNED.
That law, I say, is the proper basis of distinction between rich and
poor. But there is also a false basis of distinction; namely, the power
held over those who earn wealth by those who levy or exact it. There
will be always a number of men who would fain set themselves to the
accumulation of wealth as the sole object of their lives. Necessarily,
that class of men is an uneducated class, inferior in intellect, and
more or less cowardly. It is physically impossible for a well-educated,
intellectual, or brave man to make money the chief object of his
thoughts; as physically impossible as it is for him to make his dinner
the principal object of them. All healthy people like their dinners, but
their dinner is not the main object of their lives. So all healthily
minded people like making money--ought to like it, and to enjoy the
sensation of winning it; but the main object of their life is not money;
it is something better than money. A good soldier, for instance, mainly
wishes to do his fighting well. He is glad of his pay--very properly
so, and justly grumbles when you keep him ten years without it--still,
his main notion of life is to win battles, not to be paid for winning
them. So of clergymen. They like pew-rents, and baptismal fees, of
course; but yet, if they are brave and well educated, the pew-rent is
not the sole object of their lives, and the baptismal fee is not the
sole purpose of the baptism; the clergyman's object is essentially to
baptize and preach, not to be paid for preaching. So of doctors. They
like fees no doubt,--ought to like them; yet if they are brave and well
educated, the entire object of their lives is not fees. They, on the
whole, desire to cure the sick; and,--if they are good doctors, and the
choice were fairly put to them,--would rather cure their patient, and
lose their fee, than kill him, and get it. And so with all other brave
and rightly trained men; their work is first, their fee second--very
important always, but still _second_. But in every nation, as I said,
there are a vast class who are ill-educated, cowardly, and more or less
stupid. And with these people, just as certainly the fee is first, and
the work second, as with brave people the work is first and the fee
second. And this is no small distinction. It is the whole distinction in
a man; distinction between life and death _in_ him, between heaven and
hell _for_ him. You cannot serve two masters;--you _must_ serve one or
other. If your work is first with you, and your fee second, work is your
master, and the lord of work, who is God. But if your fee is first with
you, and your work second, fee is your master, and the lord of fee, who
is the Devil; and not only the Devil, but the lowest of devils--the
'least erected fiend that fell.' So there you have it in brief terms;
Work first--you are God's servants; Fee first--you are the Fiend's. And
it makes a difference, now and ever, believe me, whether you serve Him
who has on His vesture and thigh written, 'King of Kings,' and whose
service is perfect freedom; or him on whose vesture and thigh the name
is written, 'Slave of Slaves,' and whose service is perfect slavery.
However, in every nation there are, and must always be, a certain number
of these Fiend's servants, who have it principally for the object of
their lives to make money. They are always, as I said, more or less
stupid, and cannot conceive of anything else so nice as money. Stupidity
is always the basis of the Judas bargain. We do great injustice to
Iscariot, in thinking him wicked above all common wickedness. He was
only a common money-lover, and, like all money-lovers, didn't understand
Christ;--couldn't make out the worth of Him, or meaning of Him. He
didn't want Him to be killed. He was horror-struck when he found that
Christ would be killed; threw his money away instantly, and hanged
himself. How many of our present money-seekers, think you, would have
the grace to hang themselves, whoever was killed? But Judas was a
common, selfish, muddle-headed, pilfering fellow; his hand always in the
bag of the poor, not caring for them. He didn't understand Christ;--yet
believed in Him, much more than most of us do; had seen Him do miracles,
thought He was quite strong enough to shift for Himself, and he, Judas,
might as well make his own little bye-perquisites out of the affair.
Christ would come out of it well enough, and he have his thirty pieces.
Now, that is the money-seeker's idea, all over the world. He doesn't
hate Christ, but can't understand Him--doesn't care for him--sees no
good in that benevolent business; makes his own little job out of it at
all events, come what will. And thus, out of every mass of men, you have
a certain number of bag-men--your 'fee-first' men, whose main object is
to make money. And they do make it--make it in all sorts of unfair ways,
chiefly by the weight and force of money itself, or what is called the
power of capital; that is to say, the power which money, once obtained,
has over the labour of the poor, so that the capitalist can take all its
produce to himself, except the labourer's food. That is the modern
Judas's way of 'carrying the bag,' and 'bearing what is put therein.'
Nay, but (it is asked) how is that an unfair advantage? Has not the man
who has worked for the money a right to use it as he best can? No; in
this respect, money is now exactly what mountain promontories over
public roads were in old times. The barons fought for them fairly:--the
strongest and cunningest got them; then fortified them, and made
everyone who passed below pay toll. Well, capital now is exactly what
crags were then. Men fight fairly (we will, at least, grant so much,
though it is more than we ought) for their money; but, once having got
it, the fortified millionaire can make everybody who passes below pay
toll to his million, and build another tower of his money castle. And I
can tell you, the poor vagrants by the roadside suffer now quite as much
from the bag-baron, as ever they did from the crag-baron. Bags and crags
have just the same result on rags. I have not time, however, to-night to
show you in how many ways the power of capital is unjust; but this one
great principle I have to assert--you will find it quite indisputably
true--that whenever money is the principal object of life with either
man or nation, it is both got ill, and spent ill; and does harm both in
the getting and spending; but when it is not the principal object, it
and all other things will be well got, and well spent. And here is the
test, with every man, of whether money is the principal object with him,
or not. If in mid-life he could pause and say, "Now I have enough to
live upon, I'll live upon it; and having well earned it, I will also
well spend it, and go out of the world poor, as I came into it," then
money is not principal with him; but if, having enough to live upon in
the manner befitting his character and rank, he still wants to make
more, and to _die_ rich, then money is the principal object with him,
and it becomes a curse to himself, and generally to those who spend it
after him. For you know it _must_ be spent some day; the only question
is whether the man who makes it shall spend it, or some one else. And
generally it is better for the maker to spend it, for he will know best
its value and use. This is the true law of life. And if a man does not
choose thus to spend his money, he must either hoard it or lend it, and
the worst thing he can generally do is to lend it; for borrowers are
nearly always ill-spenders, and it is with lent money that all evil is
mainly done, and all unjust war protracted.
For observe what the real fact is, respecting loans to foreign military
governments, and how strange it is. If your little boy came to you to
ask for money to spend in squibs and crackers, you would think twice
before you gave it him; and you would have some idea that it was wasted,
when you saw it fly off in fireworks, even though he did no mischief
with it. But the Russian children, and Austrian children, come to you,
borrowing money, not to spend in innocent squibs, but in cartridges and
bayonets to attack you in India with, and to keep down all noble life in
Italy with, and to murder Polish women and children with; and _that_ you
will give at once, because they pay you interest for it. Now, in order
to pay you that interest, they must tax every working peasant in their
dominions; and on that work you live. You therefore at once rob the
Austrian peasant, assassinate or banish the Polish peasant, and you live
on the produce of the theft, and the bribe for the assassination! That
is the broad fact--that is the practical meaning of your foreign loans,
and of most large interest of money; and then you quarrel with Bishop
Colenso, forsooth, as if _he_ denied the Bible, and you believed it!
though, wretches as you are, every deliberate act of your lives is a new