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Lecture I. - SesamePart III. - Sesame: Of Kings` Treasuries
Part III. - Sesame: Of Kings` Treasuries
35. IV. - You have despised Nature; that is to say, all the deep and
sacred sensations of natural scenery. The French revolutionists made stables
of the cathedrals of France; you have made race-courses of the cathedrals of
the earth. Your one conception of pleasure is to drive in railroad carriages
round their aisles, and eat off their altars. ^12 You have put a railroad
bridge over the fall of Schaffhausen. You have tunneled the cliffs of Lucerne
by Tell`s chapel; you have destroyed the Clarens shore of the Lake of Geneva;
there is not a quiet valley in England that you have not filled with bellowing
fire; there is no particle left of English land which you have not trampled
coal ashes into ^13 - nor any foreign city in which the spread of your
presence is not marked among its fair old streets and happy gardens by a
consuming white leprosy of new hotels and perfumers` shops: the Alps
themselves, which your own poets used to love so reverently, you look upon as
soaped poles in a bear garden, which you set yourselves to climb, and slide
down again with "shrieks of delight." When you are past shrieking, having no
human articulate voice to say you are glad with, you fill the quietude of
their valleys with gunpowder blasts, and rush home, red with cutaneous
eruption of conceit, and voluble with convulsive hiccough of
self-satisfaction. I think nearly the two sorrowfullest spectacles I have ever
seen in humanity, taking the deep inner significance of them, are the English
mobs in the valley of Chamouni, amusing themselves with firing rusty
howitzers; and the Swiss vintagers of Zurich expressing their Christian thanks
for the gift of the vine, by assembling in knots in the "towers of the
vineyards," and slowly loading and firing horse-pistols from morning till
evening. It is pitiful to have dim conceptions of duty; more pitiful, it seems
to me, to have conceptions like these, of mirth.
[Footnote 12: I meant that the beautiful places of the world - Switzerland,
Italy, South Germany, and so on - are, indeed, the truest cathedrals - places
to be reverent in, and to worship in; and that we only care to drive through
them, and to eat and drink at their most sacred places.]
[Footnote 13: I was singularly struck, some years ago, by finding all the
river shore at Richmond, in Yorkshire, black in its earth, from the mere drift
of soot-laden air from places many miles away.]
36. Lastly. You despise compassion. There is no need of words of mine for
proof of this. I will merely print one of the newspaper paragraphs which I am
in the habit of cutting out and throwing into my store-drawer; here is one
from a Daily Telegraph of an early date this year (1867) (date which, though
by me carelessly left unmarked, is easily discoverable; for on the back of the
slip, there is the announcement that "yesterday the seventh of the special
services of this year was performed by the Bishop of Ripon in St. Paul`s"); it
relates only one of such facts as happen now daily; this, by chance, having
taken a form in which it came before the corner. . . .
"An inquiry was held on Friday by Mr. Richards, deputy coroner, at the
White Horse Tavern, Christ Church, Spitalfields, respecting the death of
Michael Collins, aged 58 years. Mary Collins, a miserable-looking woman, said
that she lived with the deceased and his son in a room at 2, Cobb`s Court,
Christ Church. Deceased was a `translator` of boots. Witness went out and
bought old boots; deceased and his son made them into good ones, and then
witness sold them for what she could get at the shops, which was very little
indeed. Deceased and his son used to work night and day to try and get a
little bread and tea, and pay for the room (25. a week), so as to keep the
home together. On Friday night week, deceased got up from his bench and began
to shiver. He threw down the boots, saying, "Somebody else must finish them
when I am gone, for I can do no more.` There was no fire, and he said, `I
would be better if I was warm.` Witness therefore took two pairs of translated
boots ^14 to sell at the shop, but she could only get 14d. for the two pairs,
for the people at the shop said, `We must have our profit.` Witness got 14
lbs. of coal and a little tea and bread. Her son sat up the whole night to
make the `translations,` to get money, but deceased died on Saturday morning.
The family never had enough to eat. - Coroner: `It seems to me deplorable that
you did not go into the workhouse.` Witness: `We wanted the comforts of our
little home.` a juror asked what the comforts were, for he only saw a little
straw in the corner of the room, the windows of which were broken. The witness
began to cry, and said that they had a quilt and other little things. The
deceased said he never would go into the workhouse. In summer, when the season
was good, they sometimes made as much as 105. profit in a week. They then
always saved towards the next week, which was generally a bad one. In winter
they made not half so much. For three years they had been getting from bad to
worse. - Cornelius Collins said that he had assisted his father since 1847.
They used to work so far into the night that both nearly lost their eyesight.
Witness now had a film over his eyes. Five years ago deceased applied to the
parish for aid. The relieving officer gave him a 4-lb. loaf, and told him if
he came again he should `get the stones.` ^15
[Footnote 14: One of the things which we must very resolutely enforce, for the
good of all classes, in our future arrangements, must be that they wear no
"translated" articles of dress.]
[Footnote 15: This abbreviation of the penalty of useless labor is curiously
coincident in verbal form with a certain passage which some of us may
remember. It may, perhaps, be well to preserve beside this paragraph another
cutting out of my store-drawer, from the Morning Post, of about a parallel
date, Friday, March 10th, 1865: - "The salons of Mme. C___, who did the honors
with clever imitative grace and elegance, were crowded with princes, dukes,
marquises, and counts - in fact, with the same male company as one meets at
the parties of the Princess Metternich and Madame Drouyn de Lhuys. Some
English peers and members of Parliament were present, and appeared to enjoy
the animated and dazzlingly improper scene. On the second floor the
suppertables were loaded with every delicacy of the season. That your readers
may form some idea of the dainty fare of the Parisian demi-monde, I copy the
menu of the supper, which was served to all the guests (about 200) seated at
four o`clock. Choice Yquem, Johannisberg, Lafitte, Tokay, and champagne of the
finest vintages were served most lavishly throughout the morning. After supper
dancing was resumed with increased animation, and the ball terminated with a
chaine diabolique and a cancan d`enfer at seven in the morning.
(Morning-service - `Ere the fresh lawns appeared, under the opening eyelids of
the Morn. - `) Here is the menu: `Consomme de volaille a la Bagration; 16
hors-d`oeuvres varies. Bouchees, a la Talleyrand. Saumons froids, sauce
Ravigote. Filets de boeuf en Bellevue, timbales milanaises chaudfroid de
gibier. Dindes truffees. Pates de foies gras, buissons d`ecrevisses, salades
venetiennes, gelees blanches aux fruits, gateaux mancini, parisiens et
parisiennes. Fromages glaces. Ananas. Dessert.`"]
That disgusted deceased, and he would have nothing to do with them since.
They got worse and worse until last Friday week, when they had not even a half
penny to buy a candle. Deceased then lay down on the straw, and said he could
not live till morning. - A juror: `You are dying of starvation yourself, and
you ought to go into the house until the summer.` Witness: `If we went in we
should die. When we come out in the summer we should be like people dropped
from the sky. No one would know us, and we would not have even a room. I could
work now if I had food, for my sight would get better.` Dr. G. P. Walker said
deceased died from syncope, from exhaustion, from want of food. The deceased
had had no bedclothes. For four months he had had nothing but bread to eat.
There was not a particle of fat in the body. There was no disease, but if
there had been medical attendance, he might have survived the syncope or
fainting. The coroner having remarked upon the painful nature of the case, the
jury returned the following verdict: `That deceased died from exhaustion, from
want of food and the common necessaries of life; also through want of medical
aid.`"
37. "Why would witness not go into the workhouse?" you ask. Well, the
poor seem to have a prejudice against the workhouse which the rich have not;
for, of course, every one who takes a pension from Government goes into the
workhouse on a grand scale; ^16 only the workhouses for the rich do not
involve the idea of work, and should be called play-houses. But the poor like
to die independently, it appears; perhaps if we made the play-houses for them
pretty and pleasant enough, or gave them their pensions at home, and allowed
them a little introductory peculation with the public money, their minds might
be reconciled to the conditions. Meantime, here are the facts: we make our
relief either so insulting to them, or so painful, that they rather die than
take it at our hands; or, for third alternative, we leave them so untaught and
foolish that they starve like brute creatures, wild and dumb, not knowing what
to do, or what to ask. I say, you despise compassion; if you did not, such a
newspaper paragraph would be as impossible in a Christian country as a
deliberate assassination permitted in its public streets. ^17 "Christian," did
I say? Alas, if we were but wholesomely un-Christian, it would be impossible;
it is our imaginary Christianity that helps us to commit these crimes, for we
revel and luxuriate in our faith, for the lewd sensation of it; dressing it
up, like everything else, in fiction. The dramatic Christianity of the organ
and aisle, of dawn-service and twilight-revival - the Christianity which we do
not fear to mix the mockery of, pictorially, with our play about the devil, in
our Satanellas, - Roberts, - Fausts; chanting hymns through traceried windows
for background effect, and artistically modulating the "Dio" through variation
on variation of mimicked prayer (while we distribute tracts, next day, for the
benefit of uncultivated swearers, upon what we suppose to be the signification
of the Third Commandment); - this gas-lighted, and gas-inspired, Christianity,
we are triumphant in, and draw back the hem of our robes from the touch of the
heretics who dispute it. But to do a piece of common Christian righteousness
in a plain English word or deed; to make Christian law any rule of life, and
found one National act or hope thereon, - we know too well what our faith
comes to for that! You might sooner get lightning out of incense smoke than
true action or passion out of your modern English religion. You had better get
rid of the smoke, and the organ-pipes, both; leave them, and the Gothic
windows, and the painted glass, to the propertyman; give up your carburetted
hydrogen ghost in one healthy expiration, and look after Lazarus at the
doorstep. For there is a true Church wherever one hand meets another
helpfully, and that is the only holy or Mother Church which ever was, or ever
shall be.
[Footnote 16: Please observe this statement, and think of it, and consider how
it happens that a poor old woman will be ashamed to take a shilling a week
from the country - but no one is ashamed to take a pension of a thousand a
year.]
[Footnote 17: I am heartily glad to see such a paper as the Pall Mall Gazette
established; for the power of the press in the hands of highly educated men,
in independent position, and of honest purpose, may, indeed, become all that
it has been hitherto vainly vaunted to be. Its editor will, therefore, I doubt
not, pardon me, in that, by very reason of my respect for the journal, I do
not let pass unnoticed an article in its third number, page 5, which was wrong
in every word of it, with the intense wrongness which only an honest man can
achieve who has taken a false turn of thought in the outset, and is following
it, regardless of consequences. It contained at the end this notable passage:
- "The bread of affliction, and the water of affliction - aye, and the
bedsteads and blankets of affliction, are the very utmost that the law ought
to give to outcasts merely as outcasts." I merely put beside this expression
of the gentlemanly mind of England in 1865, a part of the message which Isaiah
was ordered to "lift up his voice like a trumpet" in declaring to the
gentlemen of his day: "Ye fast for strife, and to smite with the fist of
wickedness. Is not this the fast that I have chosen, to deal thy bread to the
hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out (margin, `afflicted`)
to thy house?" The falsehood on which the writer had mentally founded himself,
as previously stated by him, was this: "To confound the functions of the
dispensers of the poor-rates which those of the dispensers of a charitable
institution is a great and pernicious error." This sentence is so accurately
and exquisitely wrong, that its substance must be thus reversed in our minds
before we can deal with any existing problem of national distress. "To
understand that the dispensers of the poor-rates are the almoners of the
nation, and should distribute its alms with a gentleness and freedom of hand
as much greater and franker than that possible to individual charity, as the
collective national wisdom and power may be supposed greater than those of any
single person, is the foundation of all law respecting pauperism." (Since this
was written the Pall Mall Gazette has become a mere party paper - like the
rest; but it writes well, and does more good than mischief on the whole.)]
38. All these pleasures, then, and all these virtues, I repeat, you
nationally despise. You have, indeed, men among you who do not; by whose work,
by whose strength, by whose life, by whose death, you live, and never thank
them. Your wealth, your amusement, your pride, would all be alike impossible,
but for those whom you scorn or forget. The policeman, who is walking up and
down the black lane all night to watch the guilt you have created there, and
may have his brains beaten out, and be maimed for life, at any moment, and
never be thanked; the sailor wrestling with the sea`s rage; the quiet student
poring over his book or his vial; the common worker, without praise, and
nearly without bread, fulfilling his task as your horses drag your carts,
hopeless, and spurned of all: these are the men by whom England lives; but
they are not the nation; they are only the body and nervous force of it,
acting still from old habit in a convulsive perseverance, while the mind is
gone. Our National wish and purpose are to be amused; our National religion is
the performance of church ceremonies, and preaching of soporific truths (or
untruths) to keep the mob quietly at work, while we amuse ourselves; and the
necessity for this amusement is fastening on us as a feverous disease of
parched throat and wandering eyes - senseless, dissolute, merciless. How
literally that word Dis-Ease, the Negation and impossibility of Ease,
expresses the entire moral state of our English Industry and its Amusements!
39. When men are rightly occupied, their amusement grows out of their
work, as the color-petals out of a fruitful flower; - when they are
faithfully helpful and compassionate, all their emotions become steady, deep,
perpetual, and vivifying to the soul as the natural pulse of the body. But
now, having no true business, we pour our whole masculine energy into the
false business of money-making; and having no true emotion, we must have
false emotions dressed up for us to play with, not innocently, as children
with dolls, but guiltily and darkly, as the idolatrous Jews with their
pictures on cavern walls, which men had to dig to detect. The justice we do
not execute, we mimic in the novel and on the stage; for the beauty we destroy
in nature, we substitute the metamorphosis of the pantomime, and (the human
nature of us imperatively requiring awe and sorrow of some kind) for the noble
grief we should have borne with our fellows, and the pure tears we should have
wept with them, we gloat over the pathos of the police court, and gather the
night-dew of the grave.
40. It is difficult to estimate the true significance of these things;
the facts are frightful enough; - the measure of national fault involved in
them is, perhaps, not as great as it would at first seem. We permit, or cause,
thousands of deaths daily, but we mean no harm; we set fire to houses, and
ravage peasants` fields; yet we should be sorry to find we had injured
anybody. We are still kind at heart; still capable of virtue, but only as
children are. Chalmers, at the end of his long life, having had much power
with the public, being plagued in some serious matter by a reference to
"public opinion," uttered the impatient exclamation, "The public is just a
great baby!" And the reason that I have allowed all these graver subjects of
thought to mix themselves up with an inquiry into methods of reading, is that,
the more I see of our national faults and miseries, the more they resolve
themselves into conditions of childish illiterateness, and want of education
in the most ordinary habits of thought. It is, I repeat, not vice, not
selfishness, not dullness of brain, which we have to lament; but an
unreachable schoolboy`s recklessness, only differing from the true schoolboy`s
in its incapacity of being helped, because it acknowledges no master.
41. There is a curious type of us given in one of the lovely, neglected
works of the last of our great painters. It is a drawing of Kirkby Lonsdale
churchyard, and of its brook, and valley, and hills, and folded morning sky
beyond. And unmindful alike of these, and of the dead who have left these for
other valleys and for other skies, a group of schoolboys have piled their
little books upon a grave, to strike them off with stones. So, also, we play
with the words of the dead that would teach us, and strike them far from us
with our bitter, reckless will; little thinking that those leaves which the
wind scatters had been piled, not only upon a gravestone, but upon the seal of
an enchanted vault - nay, the gate of a great city of sleeping kings, who
would awake for us, and walk with us, if we knew but how to call them by their
names. How often, even if we lift the marble entrance gate, do we but wander
among those old kings in their repose, and finger the robes they lie in, and
stir the crowns on their foreheads; and still they are silent to us, and seem
but a dusty imagery; because we know not the incantation of the heart that
would wake them; - which, if they once heard, they would start up to meet us
in their power of long ago, narrowly to look upon us, and consider us; and, as
the fallen kings of Hades meet the newly fallen, saying, "Art thou also become
weak as we - art thou also become one of us?" so would these kings, with their
undimmed, unshaken diadems, meet us, saying, "Art thou also become pure and
mighty of heart as we - art thou also become one of us?"
42. Mighty of heart, mighty of mind - "magnanimous" - to be this, is,
indeed, to be great in life; to become this increasingly, is, indeed, to
"advance in life," - in life itself - not in the trappings of it. My friends,
do you remember that old Scythian custom, when the head of a house died? How
he was dressed in his finest dress, and set in his chariot, and carried about
to his friends` houses; and each of them placed him at his table`s head, and
all feasted in his presence? Suppose it were offered to you, in plain words,
as it is offered to you in dire facts, that you should gain this Scythian
honor, gradually, while you yet thought yourself alive. Suppose the offer were
this: You shall die slowly; your blood shall daily grow cold, your flesh
petrify, your heart beat at last only as a rusted group of iron valves. Your
life shall fade from you, and sink through the earth into the ice of Caina;
but, day by day, your body shall be dressed more gaily, and set in higher
chariots, and have more orders on its breast-crowns on its head, if you
will. Men shall bow before it, stare and shout round it, crowd after it up and
down the streets; build palaces for it, feast with it at their tables` heads
all the night long; your soul shall stay enough within it to know what they
do, and feel the weight of the golden dress on its shoulders, and the furrow
of the crown-edge on the skull; - no more. Would you take the offer,
verbally made by the death-angel? Would the meanest among us take it, think
you? Yet practically and verily we grasp at it, every one of us, in a measure;
many of us grasp at it in its fullness of horror. Every man accepts it, who
desires to advance in life without knowing what life is; who means only that
he is to get more horses, and more footmen, and more fortune, and more public
honor, and - not more personal soul. He only is advancing in life, whose heart
is getting softer, whose blood warmer, whose brain quicker, whose spirit is
entering into Living peace. And the men who have this life in them are the
true lords or kings of the earth - they, and they only. All other kingships,
so far as they are true, are only the practical issue and expression of
theirs; if less than this, they are either dramatic royalties, - costly shows,
set off, indeed, with real jewels instead of tinsel, - but still only the toys
of nations; or else they are no royalties at all, but tyrannies, or the mere
active and practical issue of national folly; for which reason I have said of
them elsewhere, "Visible governments are the toys of some nations, the
diseases of others, the harness of some, the burdens of more."
43. But I have no words for the wonder with which I hear Kinghood still
spoken of, even among thoughtful men, as if governed nations were a personal
property, and might be bought and sold, or otherwise acquired, as sheep, of
whose flesh their king was to feed, and whose fleece he was to gather; as if
Achilles` indignant epithet of base kings, "people-eating," were the constant
and proper title of all monarchs; and enlargement of a king`s dominion meant
the same thing as the increase of a private man`s estate! Kings who think so,
however powerful, can no more be the true kings of the nation than gadflies
are the kings of a horse; they suck it, and may drive it wild, but do not
guide it. They, and their courts, and their armies are, if one could see
clearly, only a large species of marsh mosquito, with bayonet proboscis and
melodious, band-mastered trumpeting in the summer air; the twilight being,
perhaps, sometimes fairer, but hardly more wholesome, for its glittering mists
of midge companies. The true kings, meanwhile, rule quietly, if at all, and
hate ruling; too many of them make "il gran rifiuto"; ^18 and if they do not,
the mob, as soon as they are likely to become useful to it, is pretty sure to
make its "gran rifiuto" of them.
[Footnote 18: The great renunciation.]
44. Yet the visible king may also be a true one, some day, if ever day
comes when he will estimate his dominion by the force of it, - not the
geographical boundaries. It matters very little whether Trent cuts you a
cantel out here, or Rhine rounds you a castle less there. But it does matter
to you, king of men, whether you can verily say to this man, "Go," and he
goeth; and to another, "Come," and he cometh. Whether you can turn your
people, as you can Trent - and where it is that you bid them come, and where
go. It matters to you, king of men, whether your people hate you, and die by
you, or love you, and live by you. You may measure your dominion by multitudes
better than by miles; and count degrees of love latitude, not from, but to, a
wonderfully warm and indefinite equator.
45. Measure! nay, you cannot measure. Who shall measure the difference
between the power of those who "do and teach," and who are greatest in the
kingdoms of earth, as of heaven - and the power of those who undo, and consume
- whose power, at the fullest, is only the power of the moth and the rust?
Strange! to think how the Moth-kings lay up treasures for the moth; and the
Rusk-kings, who are to their peoples` strength as rust to armor, lay up
treasures for the rust; and the Robber-kings, treasures for the robber; but
how few kings have ever laid up treasures that needed no guarding - treasures
of which, the more thieves there were, the better! Broidered robe, only to be
rent; helm and sword, only to be dimmed; jewel and gold, only to be scattered;
- there have been three kinds of kings who have gathered these. Suppose there
ever should arise a Fourth order of kings, who had read, in some obscure
writing of long ago, that there was a Fourth kind of treasure, which the jewel
and gold could not equal, neither should it be valued with pure gold. A web
made fair in the weaving, by Athena`s shuttle; an armor, forged in divine fire
by Vulcanian force - a gold to be mined in the sun`s red heart, where he sets
over the Delphian cliffs; - deep-pictured tissue, impenetrable armor,
potable gold! - the three great Angels of Conduct, Toil, and Thought, still
calling to us, and waiting at the posts of our doors, to lead us, with their
winged power, and guide us, with their unerring eyes, by the path which no
fowl knoweth, and which the vulture`s eye has not seen! Suppose kings should
ever arise, who heard and believed this word, and at last gathered and brought
forth treasures of - Wisdom - for their people?
46. Think what an amazing business that would be! How inconceivable, in
the state of our present national wisdom! That we should bring up our peasants
to a book exercise instead of a bayonet exercise! - organize, drill, maintain
with pay, and good generalship, armies of thinkers, instead of armies of
stabbers! - find national amusement in reading-rooms as well as rifle -
grounds; give prizes for a fair shot at a fact, as well as for a leaden splash
on a target. What an absurd idea it seems, put fairly in words, that the
wealth of the capitalists of civilized nations should ever come to support
literature instead of war!
47. Have yet patience with me, while I read you a single sentence out of
the only book, properly to be called a book, that I have yet written myself,
the one that will stand (if anything stand) surest and longest of all work of
mine.
"It is one very awful form of the operation of wealth in Europe that it
is entirely capitalists` wealth that supports unjust wars. Just wars do not
need so much money to support them; for most of the men who wage such, wage
them gratis; but for an unjust war, men`s bodies and souls have both to be
bought; and the best tools of war for them besides, which make such war costly
to the maximum; not to speak of the cost of base fear, and angry suspicion,
between nations which have not grace nor honesty enough in all their
multitudes to buy an hour`s peace of mind with; as, at present, France and
England, purchasing of each other ten millions` sterling worth of
consternation, annually (a remarkably light crop, half thorns and half aspen
leaves, sown, reaped, and granaried by the `science` of the modern political
economist, teaching covetousness instead of truth). And, all unjust war being
supportable, if not by pillage of the enemy, only by loans from capitalists,
these loans are repaid by subsequent taxation of the people, who appear to
have no will in the matter, the capitalists` will being the primary root of
the war; but its real root is the covetousness of the whole nation, rendering
it incapable of faith, frankness, or justice, and bringing about, therefore,
in due time, his own separate loss and punishment to each person."
48. France and England literally, observe, buy panic of each other; they
pay, each of them, for ten thousand thousand pounds` worth of terror, a year.
Now suppose, instead of buying these ten millions` worth of panic annually,
they made up their minds to be at peace with each other, and buy ten millions`
worth of knowledge annually; and that each nation spent its ten thousand
thousand pounds a year in founding royal libraries, royal art galleries, royal
museums, royal gardens, and places of rest. Might it not be better somewhat
for both French and English?
49. It will be long, yet, before that comes to pass. Nevertheless, I hope
it will not be long before royal or national libraries will be founded in
every considerable city, with a royal series of books in them; the same series
in every one of them, chosen books, the best in every kind, prepared for that
national series in the most perfect way possible; their text printed all on
leaves of equal size, broad of margin, and divided into pleasant volumes,
light in the hand, beautiful, and strong, and thorough as examples of binders`
work; and that these great libraries will be accessible to all clean and
orderly persons at all times of the day and evening; strict law being enforced
for this cleanliness and quietness.
50. I could shape for you other plans for art galleries, and for natural
history galleries, and for many precious - many, it seems to me, needful -
things; but this book plan is the easiest and needfullest, and would prove a
considerable tonic to what we call our British constitution, which has fallen
dropsical of late, and has an evil thirst, and evil hunger, and wants
healthier feeding. You have got its corn laws repealed for it; try if you
cannot get corn laws established for it dealing in a better bread; - bread
made of that old enchanted Arabian grain, the Sesame, which opens doors; -
doors not of robbers`, but of Kings` Treasuries.
Note To Section 30
Respecting the increase of rent by the deaths of the poor, for evidence
of which see the preface to the Medical officers` report to the Privy Council,
just published, there are suggestions in its preface which will make some stir
among us, I fancy, respecting which let me note these points following: -
There are two theories on the subject of land now abroad, and in
contention; both false.
The first is that, by Heavenly law, there have always existed, and must
continue to exist, a certain number of hereditarily sacred persons to whom the
earth, air, and water of the world belong, as personal property; of which
earth, air, and water, these persons may, at their pleasure, permit, or
forbid, the rest of the human race to eat, breathe, or to drink. This theory
is not for many years longer tenable. The adverse theory is that a division of
the land of the world among the mob of the world would immediately elevate the
said mob into sacred personages; that houses would then build themselves, and
corn grow of itself; and that everybody would be able to live, without doing
any work for his living. This theory would also be found highly untenable in
practice.
It will, however, require some rough experiments and rougher
catastrophes, before the generality of persons will be convinced that no law
concerning anything - least of all concerning land, for either holding or
dividing it, or renting it high, or renting it low - would be of the smallest
ultimate use to the people, so long as the general contest for life, and for
the means of life, remains one of mere brutal competition. That contest, in an
unprincipled nation, will take one deadly form or another, whatever laws you
make against it. For instance, it would be an entirely wholesome law for
England, if it could be carried, that maximum limits should be assigned to
incomes according to classes; and that every nobleman`s income should be paid
to him as a fixed salary or pension by the nation; and not squeezed by him in
variable sums, at discretion, out of the tenants of his land. But if you could
get such a law passed to-morrow, and if, which would be farther necessary,
you could fix the value of the assigned incomes by making a given weight of
pure bread for a given sum, a twelvemonth would not pass before another
currency would have been tacitly established, and the power of accumulative
wealth would have reasserted itself in some other article, or some other
imaginary sign. There is only one cure for public distress - and that is
public education, directed to make men thoughtful, merciful, and just. There
are, indeed, many laws conceivable which would gradually better and strengthen
the national temper; but, for the most part, they are such as the national
temper must be much bettered before it would bear. A nation in its youth may
be helped by laws, as a weak child by backboards, but when it is old it cannot
that way straighten its crooked spine.
And besides, the problem of land, at its worst, is a bye one; distribute
the earth as you will, the principal question remains inexorable, - Who is to
dig it? Which of us, in brief words, is to do the hard and dirty work for the
rest - and for what pay? Who is to do the pleasant and clean work, and for
what pay? Who is to do no work, and for what pay? And there are curious moral
and religious questions connected with these. How far is it lawful to suck a
portion of the soul out of a great many persons, in order to put the
abstracted psychical quantities together and make one very beautiful or ideal
soul? If we had to deal with mere blood, instead of spirit (and the thing
might literally be done - as it has been done with infants before now) - so
that it were possible by taking a certain quantity of blood from the arms of a
given number of the mob, and putting it all into one person, to make a more
azure blooded gentleman of him, the thing would of course be managed; but
secretly, I should conceive. But now, because it is brain and soul that we
abstract, not visible blood, it can be done quite openly, and we live, we
gentlemen, on delicatest prey, after the manner of weasels; that is to say, we
keep a certain number of clowns digging and ditching, and generally stupefied,
in order that we, being fed gratis, may have all the thinking and feeling to
ourselves. Yet there is a great deal to be said for this. A highly-bred and
trained English, French, Austrian, or Italian gentleman (much more a lady) is
a great production, - a better production than most statues; being beautifully
colored as well as shaped, and plus all the brains; a glorious thing to look
at, a wonderful thing to talk to; and you cannot have it, any more than a
pyramid or a church, but by sacrifice of much contributed life. And it is,
perhaps, better to build a beautiful human creature than a beautiful dome or
steeple - and more delightful to look up reverently to a creature far above
us, than to a wall; only the beautiful human creature will have some duties to
do in return - duties of living belfry and rampart - of which presently.
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