A Joy For Ever

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120. I trust that in a little while there will be few of our rich men
who, through carelessness or covetousness, thus forfeit the glorious
office which is intended for their hands. I said, just now, that wealth
ill-used was as the net of the spider, entangling and destroying: but
wealth well used is as the net of the sacred fisher who gathers souls of
men out of the deep. A time will come--I do not think even now it is
far from us--when this golden net of the world's wealth will be spread
abroad as the flaming meshes of morning cloud are over the sky; bearing
with them the joy of light and the dew of the morning, as well as the
summons to honourable and peaceful toil. What less can we hope from your
wealth than this, rich men of England, when once you feel fully how, by
the strength of your possessions--not, observe, by the exhaustion, but
by the administration of them and the power,--you can direct the
acts--command the energies--inform the ignorance--prolong the existence,
of the whole human race; and how, even of worldly wisdom, which man
employs faithfully, it is true, not only that her ways are pleasantness,
but that her paths are peace; and that, for all the children of men, as
well as for those to whom she is given, Length of days is in her right
hand, as in her left hand Riches and Honour?

ADDENDA

Note, p. 18.--"_Fatherly authority._"

121. This statement could not, of course, be heard without displeasure
by a certain class of politicians; and in one of the notices of these
lectures given in the Manchester journals at the time, endeavour was
made to get quit of it by referring to the Divine authority, as the only
Paternal power with respect to which men were truly styled "brethren."
Of course it is so, and, equally of course, all human government is
nothing else than the executive expression of this Divine authority. The
moment government ceases to be the practical enforcement of Divine law,
it is tyranny; and the meaning which I attach to the words "paternal
government," is, in more extended terms, simply this--"The executive
fulfilment, by formal human methods, of the will of the Father of
mankind respecting His children." I could not give such a definition of
Government as this in a popular lecture; and even in written form, it
will necessarily suggest many objections, of which I must notice and
answer the most probable.

Only, in order to avoid the recurrence of such tiresome phrases as "it
may be answered in the second place," and "it will be objected in the
third place," etc., I will ask the reader's leave to arrange the
discussion in the form of simple dialogue, letting _O._ stand for
objector, and _R._ for response.

122. _O._--You define your paternal government to be the executive
fulfilment, by formal human methods, of the Divine will. But, assuredly,
that will cannot stand in need of aid or expression from human laws. It
cannot fail of its fulfilment.

_R._ 122. In the final sense it cannot; and in that sense, men who are
committing murder and stealing are fulfilling the will of God as much as
the best and kindest people in the world. But in the limited and present
sense, the only sense with which _we_ have anything to do, God's will
concerning man is fulfilled by some men, and thwarted by others. And
those men who either persuade or enforce the doing of it, stand towards
those who are rebellious against it exactly in the position of faithful
children in a family, who, when the father is out of sight, either
compel or persuade the rest to do as their father would have them, were
he present; and in so far as they are expressing and maintaining, for
the time, the paternal authority, they exercise, in the exact sense in
which I mean the phrase to be understood, paternal government over the
rest.

_O._--But, if Providence has left a liberty to man in many things in
order to prove him, why should human law abridge that liberty, and take
upon itself to compel what the great Lawgiver does not compel?

123. _R._--It is confessed, in the enactment of any law whatsoever, that
human lawgivers have a right to do this. For, if you have no right to
abridge any of the liberty which Providence has left to man, you have no
right to punish any one for committing murder or robbery. You ought to
leave them to the punishment of God and Nature. But if you think
yourself under obligation to punish, as far as human laws can, the
violation of the will of God by these great sins, you are certainly
under the same obligation to punish, with proportionately less
punishment, the violation of His will in less sins.

_O._--No; you must not attempt to punish less sins by law, because you
cannot properly define nor ascertain them. Everybody can determine
whether murder has been committed or not, but you cannot determine how
far people have been unjust or cruel in minor matters, and therefore
cannot make or execute laws concerning minor matters.

_R._--If I propose to you to punish faults which cannot be defined, or
to execute laws which cannot be made equitable, reject the laws I
propose. But do not generally object to the principle of law.

_O._--Yes; I generally object to the principle of law as applied to
minor things; because, if you could succeed (which you cannot) in
regulating the entire conduct of men by law in little things as well as
great, you would take away from human life all its probationary
character, and render many virtues and pleasures impossible. You would
reduce virtue to the movement of a machine, instead of the act of a
spirit.

124. _R._--You have just said, parenthetically, and I fully and
willingly admit it, that it is impossible to regulate all minor matters
by law. Is it not probable, therefore, that the degree in which it is
_possible_ to regulate them by it, is also the degree in which it is
_right_ to regulate them by it? Or what other means of judgment will you
employ, to separate the things which ought to be formally regulated from
the things which ought not? You admit that great sins should be legally
repressed; but you say that small sins should not be legally repressed.
How do you distinguish between great and small sins? and how do you
intend to determine, or do you in practice of daily life determine, on
what occasions you should compel people to do right, and on what
occasions you should leave them the option of doing wrong?

_O._--I think you cannot make any accurate or logical distinction in
such matters; but that common sense and instinct have, in all civilised
nations, indicated certain crimes of great social harmfulness, such as
murder, theft, adultery, slander, and such like, which it is proper to
repress legally; and that common sense and instinct indicate also the
kind of crimes which it is proper for laws to let alone, such as
miserliness, ill-natured speaking, and many of those commercial
dishonesties which I have a notion you want your paternal government to
interfere with.

_R._--Pray do not alarm yourself about what my paternal government is
likely to interfere with, but keep to the matter in hand. You say that
"common sense and instinct" have, in all civilised nations,
distinguished between the sins that ought to be legally dealt with and
that ought not. Do you mean that the laws of all civilised nations are
perfect?

_O._--No; certainly not.

_R._--Or that they are perfect at least in their discrimination of what
crimes they should deal with, and what crimes they should let alone?

_O._--No; not exactly.

_R._--What _do_ you mean, then?

125. _O._--I mean that the general tendency is right in the laws of
civilised nations; and that, in due course of time, natural sense and
instinct point out the matters they should be brought to bear upon. And
each question of legislation must be made a separate subject of inquiry
as it presents itself: you cannot fix any general principles about what
should be dealt with legally, and what should not.

_R._--Supposing it to be so, do you think there are any points in which
our English legislation is capable of amendment, as it bears on
commercial and economical matters, in this present time?

_O._--Of course I do.

_R._--Well, then, let us discuss these together quietly; and if the
points that I want amended seem to you incapable of amendment, or not in
need of amendment, say so: but don't object, at starting, to the mere
proposition of applying law to things which have not had law applied to
them before. You have admitted the fitness of my expression, "paternal
government": it only has been, and remains, a question between us, how
far such government should extend. Perhaps you would like it only to
regulate, among the children, the length of their lessons; and perhaps I
should like it also to regulate the hardness of their cricket-balls: but
cannot you wait quietly till you know what I want it to do, before
quarrelling with the thing itself?

_O._--No; I cannot wait quietly; in fact, I don't see any use in
beginning such a discussion at all, because I am quite sure from the
first, that you want to meddle with things that you have no business
with, and to interfere with healthy liberty of action in all sorts of
ways; and I know that you can't propose any laws that would be of real
use.[15]

[Note 15: If the reader is displeased with me for putting this
foolish speech into his mouth, I entreat his pardon; but he may be
assured that it is a speech which would be made by many people, and the
substance of which would be tacitly felt by many more, at this point of
the discussion. I have really tried, up to this point, to make the
objector as intelligent a person as it is possible for an author to
imagine anybody to be who differs with him.]

126. _R._--If you indeed know that, you would be wrong to hear me any
farther. But if you are only in painful doubt about me, which makes you
unwilling to run the risk of wasting your time, I will tell you
beforehand what I really do think about this same liberty of action,
namely, that whenever we can make a perfectly equitable law about any
matter, or even a law securing, on the whole, more just conduct than
unjust, we ought to make that law; and that there will yet, on these
conditions, always remain a number of matters respecting which legalism
and formalism are impossible; enough, and more than enough, to exercise
all human powers of individual judgment, and afford all kinds of scope
to individual character. I think this; but of course it can only be
proved by separate examination of the possibilities of formal restraint
in each given field of action; and these two lectures are nothing more
than a sketch of such a detailed examination in one field, namely, that
of art. You will find, however, one or two other remarks on such
possibilities in the next note.

* * * * *

Note 2nd, p. 21.--"_Right to public support._"

127. It did not appear to me desirable, in the course of the spoken
lecture, to enter into details or offer suggestions on the questions of
the regulation of labour and distribution of relief, as it would have
been impossible to do so without touching on many disputed or disputable
points, not easily handled before a general audience. But I must now
supply what is wanting to make my general statement clear.

I believe, in the first place, that no Christian nation has any business
to see one of its members in distress without helping him, though,
perhaps, at the same time punishing him: help, of course--in nine cases
out of ten--meaning guidance, much more than gift, and, therefore,
interference with liberty. When a peasant mother sees one of her
careless children fall into a ditch, her first proceeding is to pull him
out; her second, to box his ears; her third, ordinarily, to lead him
carefully a little way by the hand, or send him home for the rest of the
day. The child usually cries, and very often would clearly prefer
remaining in the ditch; and if he understood any of the terms of
politics, would certainly express resentment at the interference with
his individual liberty: but the mother has done her duty. Whereas the
usual call of the mother nation to any of her children, under such
circumstances, has lately been nothing more than the foxhunter's,--"Stay
still there; I shall clear you." And if we always _could_ clear them,
their requests to be left in muddy independence might be sometimes
allowed by kind people, or their cries for help disdained by unkind
ones. But we can't clear them. The whole nation is, in fact, bound
together, as men are by ropes on a glacier--if one falls, the rest must
either lift him or drag him along with them[16] as dead weight, not
without much increase of danger to themselves. And the law of right
being manifestly in this--as, whether manifestly or not, it is always,
the law of prudence--the only question is, how this wholesome help and
interference are to be administered.

[Note 16: It is very curious to watch the efforts of two
shop-keepers to ruin each other, neither having the least idea that his
ruined neighbour must eventually be supported at his own expense, with
an increase of poor rates; and that the contest between them is not in
reality which shall get everything for himself, but which shall first
take upon himself and his customers the gratuitous maintenance of the
other's family.]

128. The first interference should be in education. In order that men
may be able to support themselves when they are grown, their strength
must be properly developed while they are young; and the State should
always see to this--not allowing their health to be broken by too early
labour, nor their powers to be wasted for want of knowledge. Some
questions connected with this matter are noticed farther on under the
head "trial schools": one point I must notice here, that I believe all
youths, of whatever rank, ought to learn some manual trade thoroughly;
for it is quite wonderful how much a man's views of life are cleared by
the attainment of the capacity of doing any one thing well with his
hands and arms. For a long time, what right life there was in the upper
classes of Europe depended in no small degree on the necessity which
each man was under of being able to fence; at this day, the most useful
things which boys learn at public schools are, I believe, riding,
rowing, and cricketing. But it would be far better that members of
Parliament should be able to plough straight, and make a horseshoe, than
only to feather oars neatly or point their toes prettily in stirrups.
Then, in literary and scientific teaching, the great point of economy is
to give the discipline of it through knowledge which will immediately
bear on practical life. Our literary work has long been economically
useless to us because too much concerned with dead languages; and our
scientific work will yet, for some time, be a good deal lost, because
scientific men are too fond or too vain of their systems, and waste the
student's time in endeavouring to give him large views, and make him
perceive interesting connections of facts; when there is not one
student, no, nor one man, in a thousand, who can feel the beauty of a
system, or even take it clearly into his head; but nearly all men can
understand, and most will be interested in, the facts which bear on
daily life. Botanists have discovered some wonderful connection between
nettles and figs, which a cowboy who will never see a ripe fig in his
life need not be at all troubled about; but it will be interesting to
him to know what effect nettles have on hay, and what taste they will
give to porridge; and it will give him nearly a new life if he can be
got but once, in a spring time, to look well at the beautiful circlet of
white nettle blossom, and work out with his schoolmaster the curves of
its petals, and the way it is set on its central mast. So, the principle
of chemical equivalents, beautiful as it is, matters far less to a
peasant boy, and even to most sons of gentlemen, than their knowing how
to find whether the water is wholesome in the back-kitchen cistern, or
whether the seven-acre field wants sand or chalk.

129. Having, then, directed the studies of our youth so as to make them
practically serviceable men at the time of their entrance into life,
that entrance should always be ready for them in cases where their
private circumstances present no opening. There ought to be government
establishments for every trade, in which all youths who desired it
should be received as apprentices on their leaving school; and men
thrown out of work received at all times. At these government
manufactories the discipline should be strict, and the wages steady, not
varying at all in proportion to the demand for the article, but only in
proportion to the price of food; the commodities produced being laid up
in store to meet sudden demands, and sudden fluctuations in prices
prevented:--that gradual and necessary fluctuation only being allowed
which is properly consequent on larger or more limited supply of raw
material and other natural causes. When there was a visible tendency to
produce a glut of any commodity, that tendency should be checked by
directing the youth at the government schools into other trades; and the
yearly surplus of commodities should be the principal means of
government provisions for the poor. That provision should be large, and
not disgraceful to them. At present there are very strange notions in
the public mind respecting the receiving of alms: most people are
willing to take them in the form of a pension from government, but
unwilling to take them in the form of a pension from their parishes.
There may be some reason for this singular prejudice, in the fact of the
government pension being usually given as a definite acknowledgment of
some service done to the country;--but the parish pension is, or ought
to be, given precisely on the same terms. A labourer serves his country
with his spade, just as a man in the middle ranks of life serves it with
his sword, pen, or lancet: if the service is less, and therefore the
wages during health less, then the reward, when health is broken, may be
less, but not, therefore, less honourable; and it ought to be quite as
natural and straight-forward a matter for a labourer to take his
pension from his parish, because he has deserved well of his parish, as
for a man in higher rank to take his pension from his country, because
he has deserved well of his country.

130. If there be any disgrace in coming to the parish, because it may
imply improvidence in early life, much more is there disgrace in coming
to the government: since improvidence is far less justifiable in a
highly educated than in an imperfectly educated man; and far less
justifiable in a high rank, where extravagance must have been luxury,
than in a low rank, where it may only have been comfort. So that the
real fact of the matter is, that people will take alms delightedly,
consisting of a carriage and footmen, because those do not look like
alms to the people in the street; but they will not take alms consisting
only of bread and water and coals, because everybody would understand
what those meant. Mind, I do not want any one to refuse the carriage who
ought to have it; but neither do I want them to refuse the coals. I
should indeed be sorry if any change in our views on these subjects
involved the least lessening of self-dependence in the English mind: but
the common shrinking of men from the acceptance of public charity is
not self-dependence, but mere base and selfish pride. It is not that
they are unwilling to live at their neighbours' expense, but that they
are unwilling to confess they do: it is not dependence they wish to
avoid, but gratitude. They will take places in which they know there is
nothing to be done--they will borrow money they know they cannot
repay--they will carry on a losing business with other people's
capital--they will cheat the public in their shops, or sponge on their
friends at their houses; but to say plainly they are poor men, who need
the nation's help and go into an almshouse,--this they loftily
repudiate, and virtuously prefer being thieves to being paupers.

131. I trust that these deceptive efforts of dishonest men to appear
independent, and the agonizing efforts of unfortunate men to remain
independent, may both be in some degree checked by a better
administration and understanding of laws respecting the poor. But the
ordinances for relief and the ordinances for labour must go together;
otherwise distress caused by misfortune will always be confounded, as
it is now, with distress caused by idleness, unthrift, and fraud. It is
only when the State watches and guides the middle life of men, that it
can, without disgrace to them, protect their old age, acknowledging in
that protection that they have done their duty, or at least some portion
of their duty, in better days.

I know well how strange, fanciful, or impracticable these suggestions
will appear to most of the business men of this day; men who conceive
the proper state of the world to be simply that of a vast and
disorganized mob, scrambling each for what he can get, trampling down
its children and old men in the mire, and doing what work it finds
_must_ be done with any irregular squad of labourers it can bribe or
inveigle together, and afterwards scatter to starvation. A great deal
may, indeed, be done in this way by a nation strong-elbowed and
strong-hearted as we are--not easily frightened by pushing, nor
discouraged by falls. But it is still not the right way of doing things,
for people who call themselves Christians. Every so named soul of man
claims from every other such soul, protection and education in
childhood,--help or punishment in middle life,--reward or relief, if
needed, in old age; all of these should be completely and unstintingly
given; and they can only be given by the organization of such a system
as I have described.

* * * * *

Note 3rd, p. 27.--"_Trial Schools._"

132. It may be seriously questioned by the reader how much of painting
talent we really lose on our present system,[17] and how much we should
gain by the proposed trial schools. For it might be thought that, as
matters stand at present, we have more painters than we ought to have,
having so many bad ones, and that all youths who had true painters'
genius forced their way out of obscurity.

[Note 17: It will be observed that, in the lecture, it is _assumed_
that works of art are national treasures; and that it is desirable to
withdraw all the hands capable of painting or carving from other
employments, in order that they may produce this kind of wealth. I do
not, in assuming this, mean that works of art add to the monetary
resources of a nation, or form part of its wealth, in the vulgar sense.
The result of the sale of a picture in the country itself is merely that
a certain sum of money is transferred from the hands of B, the
purchaser, to those of A, the producer; the sum ultimately to be
distributed remaining the same, only A ultimately spending it instead of
B, while the labour of A has been in the meantime withdrawn from
productive channels; he has painted a picture which nobody can live
upon, or live in, when he might have grown corn or built houses: when
the sale therefore is effected in the country itself, it does not add
to, but diminishes, the monetary resources of the country, except only
so far as it may appear probable, on other grounds, that A is likely to
spend the sum he receives for his picture more rationally and usefully
than B would have spent it. If, indeed, the picture, or other work of
art, be sold in foreign countries, either the money or the useful
products of the foreign country being imported in exchange for it, such
sale adds to the monetary resources of the selling, and diminishes those
of the purchasing nation. But sound political economy, strange as it may
at first appear to say so, has nothing whatever to do with separations
between national interests. Political economy means the management of
the affairs of _citizens_; and it either regards exclusively the
administration of the affairs of one nation, or the administration of
the affairs of the world considered as one nation. So when a transaction
between individuals which enriches A impoverishes B in precisely the
same degree, the sound economist considers it an unproductive
transaction between the individuals; and if a trade between two nations
which enriches one, impoverishes the other in the same degree, the sound
economist considers it an unproductive trade between the nations. It is
not a general question of political economy, but only a particular
question of local expediency, whether an article, in itself valueless,
may bear a value of exchange in transactions with some other nation. The
economist considers only the actual value of the thing done or produced;
and if he sees a quantity of labour spent, for instance, by the Swiss,
in producing woodwork for sale to the English, he at once sets the
commercial impoverishment of the English purchaser against the
commercial enrichment of the Swiss seller; and considers the whole
transaction productive only as far as the woodwork itself is a real
addition to the wealth of the world. For the arrangement of the laws of
a nation so as to procure the greatest advantages to itself, and leave
the smallest advantages to other nations, is not a part of the science
of political economy, but merely a broad application of the science of
fraud. Considered thus in the abstract, pictures are not an _addition_
to the monetary wealth of the world, except in the amount of pleasure or
instruction to be got out of them day by day: but there is a certain
protective effect on wealth exercised by works of high art which must
always be included in the estimate of their value. Generally speaking,
persons who decorate their houses with pictures will not spend so much
money in papers, carpets, curtains, or other expensive and perishable
luxuries as they would otherwise. Works of good art, like books,
exercise a conservative effect on the rooms they are kept in; and the
wall of the library or picture gallery remains undisturbed, when those
of other rooms are repapered or re-panelled. Of course this effect is
still more definite when the picture is on the walls themselves, either
on canvas stretched into fixed shapes on their panels, or in fresco;
involving, of course, the preservation of the building from all
unnecessary and capricious alteration. And, generally speaking, the
occupation of a large number of hands in painting or sculpture in any
nation may be considered as tending to check the disposition to indulge
in perishable luxury. I do not, however, in my assumption that works of
art are treasures, take much into consideration this collateral monetary
result. I consider them treasures, merely as permanent means of pleasure
and instruction; and having at other times tried to show the several
ways in which they can please and teach, assume here that they are thus
useful, and that it is desirable to make as many painters as we can.]

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