by John Ruskin
PREFACE.
The following pages contain, I believe, the first accurate analysis ofthe laws of Political Economy which has been published in England. Manytreatises, within their scope, correct, have appeared in contradictionof the views popularly received; but no exhaustive examination of thesubject was possible to any person unacquainted with the value of theproducts of the highest industries, commonly called the "Fine Arts;" andno one acquainted with the nature of those industries has, so far as Iknow, attempted, or even approached, the task.
So that, to the date (1863) when these Essays were published, not onlythe chief conditions of the production of wealth had remained unstated,but the nature of wealth itself had never been defined. "Every one has anotion, sufficiently correct for common purposes, of what is meant bywealth," wrote Mr. Mill, in the outset of his treatise; and contentedlyproceeded, as if a chemist should proceed to investigate the laws ofchemistry without endeavouring to ascertain the nature of fire or water,because every one had a notion of them, "sufficiently correct for commonpurposes."
But even that apparently indisputable statement was untrue. There is notone person in ten thousand who has a notion sufficiently correct, evenfor the commonest purposes, of "what is meant" by wealth; still less ofwhat wealth everlastingly _is_, whether we mean it or not; which it isthe business of every student of economy to ascertain. We, indeed, know(either by experience or in imagination) what it is to be able toprovide ourselves with luxurious food, and handsome clothes; and if Mr.Mill had thought that wealth consisted only in these, or in the meansof obtaining these, it would have been easy for him to have so definedit with perfect scientific accuracy. But he knew better: he knew thatsome kinds of wealth consisted in the possession, or power of obtaining,other things than these; but, having, in the studies of his life, noclue to the principles of essential value, he was compelled to takepublic opinion as the ground of his science; and the public, of course,willingly accepted the notion of a science founded on their opinions.
I had, on the contrary, a singular advantage, not only in the greaterextent of the field of investigation opened to me by my daily pursuits,but in the severity of some lessons I accidentally received in thecourse of them.
When, in the winter of 1851, I was collecting materials for my work onVenetian architecture, three of the pictures of Tintoret on the roof ofthe School of St. Roch were hanging down in ragged fragments, mixed withlath and plaster, round the apertures made by the fall of three Austrianheavy shot. The city of Venice was not, it appeared, rich enough torepair the damage that winter; and buckets were set on the floor of theupper room of the school to catch the rain, which not only fell directlythrough the shot holes, but found its way, owing to the generallypervious state of the roof, through many of the canvases of Tintoret'sin other parts of the ceiling.
It was a lesson to me, as I have just said, no less direct than severe;for I knew already at that time (though I have not ventured to assert,until recently at Oxford,) that the pictures of Tintoret in Venice wereaccurately the most precious articles of wealth in Europe, being thebest existing productions of human industry. Now at the time that threeof them were thus fluttering in moist rags from the roof they hadadorned, the shops of the Rue Rivoli at Paris were, in obedienceto a steadily-increasing public Demand, beginning to show asteadily-increasing Supply of elaborately-finished and colouredlithographs, representing the modern dances of delight, among which thecancan has since taken a distinguished place.
The labour employed on the stone of one of these lithographs is verymuch more than Tintoret was in the habit of giving to a picture ofaverage size. Considering labour as the origin of value, therefore, thestone so highly wrought would be of greater value than the picture; andsince also it is capable of producing a large number of immediatelysaleable or exchangeable impressions, for which the "demand" isconstant, the city of Paris naturally supposed itself, and on allhitherto believed or stated principles of political economy, was,infinitely richer in the possession of a large number of theselithographic stones, (not to speak of countless oil pictures and marblecarvings of similar character), than Venice in the possession of thoserags of mildewed canvas, flaunting in the south wind and its salt rain.And, accordingly, Paris provided (without thought of the expense) loftyarcades of shops, and rich recesses of innumerable private apartments,for the protection of these better treasures of hers from the weather.
Yet, all the while, Paris was not the richer for these possessions.Intrinsically, the delightful lithographs were not wealth, but polarcontraries of wealth. She was, by the exact quantity of labour she hadgiven to produce these, sunk below, instead of above, absolute Poverty.They not only were false Riches--they were true _Debt_, which had to bepaid at last--and the present aspect of the Rue Rivoli shows in whatmanner.
And the faded stains of the Venetian ceiling, all the while, wereabsolute and inestimable wealth. Useless to their possessors asforgotten treasure in a buried city, they had in them, nevertheless, theintrinsic and eternal nature of wealth; and Venice, still possessing theruins of them, was a rich city; only, the Venetians had _not_ a notionsufficiently correct even for the very common purpose of inducing themto put slates on a roof, of what was "meant by wealth."
The vulgar economist would reply that his science had nothing to do withthe qualities of pictures, but with their exchange-value only; and thathis business was, exclusively, to consider whether the remains ofTintoret were worth as many ten-and-sixpences as the impressions whichmight be taken from the lithographic stones.
But he would not venture, without reserve, to make such an answer, ifthe example be taken in horses, instead of pictures. The most dulleconomist would perceive, and admit, that a gentleman who had a finestud of horses was absolutely richer than one who had only ill-bred andbroken-winded ones. He would instinctively feel, though hispseudo-science had never taught him, that the price paid for theanimals, in either case, did not alter the fact of their worth: that thegood horse, though it might have been bought by chance for a fewguineas, was not therefore less valuable, nor the owner of the galledjade any the richer, because he had given a hundred for it.
So that the economist, in saying that his science takes no account ofthe qualities of pictures, merely signifies that he cannot conceive ofany quality of essential badness or goodness existing in pictures; andthat he is incapable of investigating the laws of wealth in sucharticles. Which is the fact. But, being incapable of defining intrinsicvalue in pictures, it follows that he must be equally helpless to definethe nature of intrinsic value in painted glass, or in painted pottery,or in patterned stuffs, or in any other national produce requiring truehuman ingenuity. Nay, though capable of conceiving the idea of intrinsicvalue with respect to beasts of burden, no economist has endeavoured tostate the general principles of National Economy, even with regard tothe horse or the ass. And, in fine, _the modern political economistshave been, without exception, incapable of apprehending the nature ofintrinsic value at all_.
And the first specialty of the following treatise consists in its givingat the outset, and maintaining as the foundation of all subsequentreasoning, a definition of Intrinsic Value, and IntrinsicContrary-of-Value; the negative power having been left by former writersentirely out of account, and the positive power left entirely undefined.
But, secondly: the modern economist, ignoring intrinsic value, andaccepting the popular estimate of things as the only ground of hisscience, has imagined himself to have ascertained the constant lawsregulating the relation of this popular demand to its supply; or, atleast, to have proved that demand and supply were connected by heavenlybalance, over which human foresight had no power. I chanced, by singularcoincidence, lately to see this theory of the law of demand and supplybrought to as sharp practical issue in another great siege, as I hadseen the theories of intrinsic value brought, in the siege of Venice.
I had the honour of being on the committee under the presidentship ofthe Lord Mayor of London, for the victualling of Paris after hersurr
ender. It became, at one period of our sittings, a question of vitalimportance at what moment the law of demand and supply would come intooperation, and what the operation of it would exactly be: the demand, onthis occasion, being very urgent indeed; that of several millions ofpeople within a few hours of utter starvation, for any kind of foodwhatsoever. Nevertheless, it was admitted, in the course of debate, tobe probable that the divine principle of demand and supply might finditself at the eleventh hour, and some minutes over, in want of carts andhorses; and we ventured so far to interfere with the divine principle asto provide carts and horses, with haste which proved, happily, in timefor the need; but not a moment in advance of it. It was fartherrecognized by the committee that the divine principle of demand andsupply would commence its operations by charging the poor of Paristwelve-pence for a penny's worth of whatever they wanted; and would endits operations by offering them twelve-pence worth for a penny, ofwhatever they didn't want. Whereupon it was concluded by the committeethat the tiny knot, on this special occasion, was scarcely "_dignusvindice_," by the divine principle of demand and supply: and that wewould venture, for once, in a profane manner, to provide for the poor ofParis what they wanted, when they wanted it. Which, to the value of thesums entrusted to us, it will be remembered we succeeded in doing.
But the fact is that the so-called "law," which was felt to be false inthis case of extreme exigence, is alike false in cases of lessexigence. It is false always, and everywhere. Nay to such an extent isits existence imaginary, that the vulgar economists are not even agreedin their account of it; for some of them mean by it, only that pricesare regulated by the relation between demand and supply, which is partlytrue; and others mean that the relation itself is one with the processof which it is unwise to interfere; a statement which is not only, as inthe above instance, untrue; but accurately the reverse of the truth: forall wise economy, political or domestic, consists in the resolvedmaintenance of a given relation between supply and demand, other thanthe instinctive, or (directly) natural, one.
Similarly, vulgar political economy asserts for a "law" that wages aredetermined by competition.
Now I pay my servants exactly what wages I think necessary to make themcomfortable. The sum is not determined at all by competition; butsometimes by my notions of their comfort and deserving, and sometimes bytheirs. If I were to become penniless to-morrow, several of them wouldcertainly still serve me for nothing.
In both the real and supposed cases the so-called "law" of vulgarpolitical economy is absolutely set at defiance. But I cannot set thelaw of gravitation at defiance, nor determine that in my house I willnot allow ice to melt, when the temperature is above thirty-two degrees.A true law outside of my house, will remain a true one inside of it. Itis not, therefore, a law of Nature that wages are determined bycompetition. Still less is it a law of State, or we should not now bedisputing about it publicly, to the loss of many millions of pounds tothe country. The fact which vulgar economists have been weak enough toimagine a law, is only that, for the last twenty years a number of verysenseless persons have attempted to determine wages in that manner; andhave, in a measure, succeeded in occasionally doing so.
Both in definition of the elements of wealth, and in statement of thelaws which govern its distribution, modern political economy has beenthus absolutely incompetent, or absolutely false. And the followingtreatise is not, as it has been asserted with dull pertinacity, anendeavour to put sentiment in the place of science; but it contains theexposure of what insolently pretended to be a science; and thedefinition, hitherto unassailed--and I do not fear to assert,unassailable--of the material elements with which political economy hasto deal, and the moral principles in which it consists; being not itselfa science, but "a system of conduct founded on the sciences, andimpossible, except under certain conditions of moral culture." Which isonly to say, that industry, frugality, and discretion, the threefoundations of economy, are moral qualities, and cannot be attainedwithout moral discipline: a flat truism, the reader may think, thusstated, yet a truism which is denied both vociferously, and in allendeavour, by the entire populace of Europe; who are at present hopefulof obtaining wealth by tricks of trade, without industry; who,possessing wealth, have lost in the use of it even the conception,--howmuch more the habit?--of frugality; and who, in the choice of theelements of wealth, cannot so much as lose--since they have neverhitherto at any time possessed,--the faculty of discretion.
Now if the teachers of the pseudo-science of economy had ventured tostate distinctly even the poor conclusions they had reached on thesubjects respecting which it is most dangerous for a populace to beindiscreet, they would have soon found, by the use made of them, whichwere true, and which false.
But on main and vital questions, no political economist has hithertoventured to state one guiding principle. I will instance three subjectsof universal importance. National Dress. National Rent. National Debt.
Now if we are to look in any quarter for a systematic and exhaustivestatement of the principles of a given science, it must certainly befrom its Professor at Cambridge.
Take the last edition of Professor Fawcett's _Manual of PoliticalEconomy_, and forming, first clearly in your mind these three followingquestions, see if you can find an answer to them.
I. Does expenditure of capital on the production of luxurious dress andfurniture tend to make a nation rich or poor?
II. Does the payment, by the nation, of a tax on its land, or on theproduce of it, to a certain number of private persons, to be expended bythem as they please, tend to make the nation rich or poor?
III. Does the payment, by the nation, for an indefinite period, ofinterest on money borrowed from private persons, tend to make the nationrich or poor?
These three questions are, all of them, perfectly simple, and primarilyvital. Determine these, and you have at once a basis for nationalconduct in all important particulars. Leave them undetermined, and thereis no limit to the distress which may be brought upon the people by thecunning of its knaves, and the folly of its multitudes.
I will take the three in their order.
I. Dress. The general impression on the public mind at this day is, thatthe luxury of the rich in dress and furniture is a benefit to the poor.Probably not even the blindest of our political economists would ventureto assert this in so many words. But where do they assert the contrary?During the entire period of the reign of the late Emperor it was assumedin France, as the first principle of fiscal government, that a largeportion of the funds received as rent from the provincial labourershould be expended in the manufacture of ladies' dresses in Paris. Whereis the political economist in France, or England, who ventured to assertthe conclusions of his science as adverse to this system? As early asthe year 1857 I had done my best to show the nature of the error, and togive warning of its danger;[7] but not one of the men who had thefoolish ears of the people intent on their words, dared to follow me inspeaking what would have been an offence to the powers of trade; and thepowers of trade in Paris had their full way for fourteen yearsmore,--with this result, to-day,--as told us in precise and curt termsby the Minister of Public Instruction,--[8]
"We have replaced glory by gold, work by speculation, faith and honour by scepticism. To absolve or glorify immorality; to make much of loose women; to gratify our eyes with luxury, our ears with the tales of orgies; to aid in the manoeuvres of public robbers, or to applaud them; to laugh at morality, and only believe in success; to love nothing but pleasure, adore nothing but force; to replace work with a fecundity of fancies; to speak without thinking; to prefer noise to glory; to erect sneering into a system, and lying into an institution--is this the spectacle that we have seen?--is this the society that we have been?"
Of course, other causes, besides the desire of luxury in furniture anddress, have been at work to produce such consequences; but the mostactive cause of all has been the passion for these; passion unrebuked bythe clergy, and, for the most part, provok
ed by economists, asadvantageous to commerce; nor need we think that such results have beenarrived at in France only; we are ourselves following rapidly on thesame road. France, in her old wars with us, never was so fatally ourenemy as she has been in the fellowship of fashion, and the freedom oftrade: nor, to my mind, is any fact recorded of Assyrian or Roman luxurymore ominous, or ghastly, than one which came to my knowledge a fewweeks ago, in England; a respectable and well-to-do father and mother,in a quiet north country town, being turned into the streets in theirold age, at the suit of their only daughter's milliner.
II. Rent. The following account of the real nature of rent is given,quite accurately, by Professor Fawcett, at page 112 of the last editionof his _Political Economy_:--
"Every country has probably been subjugated, and grants of vanquished territory were the ordinary rewards which the conquering chief bestowed upon his more distinguished followers. Lands obtained by force had to be defended by force; and before law had asserted her supremacy, and property was made secure, no baron was able to retain his possessions, unless those who lived on his estates were prepared to defend them....[9] As property became secure, and landlords felt that the power of the State would protect them in all the rights of property, every vestige of these feudal tenures was abolished, and the relation between landlord and tenant has thus become purely commercial. A landlord offers his land to any one who is willing to take it; he is anxious to receive the highest rent he can obtain. What are the principles which regulate the rent which may thus be paid?"
These principles the Professor goes on contentedly to investigate, neverappearing to contemplate for an instant the possibility of the firstprinciple in the whole business--the maintenance, by force, of thepossession of land obtained by force, being ever called in question byany human mind. It is, nevertheless, the nearest task of our day todiscover how far original theft may be justly encountered by reactionarytheft, or whether reactionary theft be indeed theft at all; and farther,what, excluding either original or corrective theft, are the justconditions of the possession of land.
III. Debt. Long since, when, a mere boy, I used to sit silentlylistening to the conversation of the London merchants who, all of themgood and sound men of business, were wont occasionally to meet round myfather's dining-table; nothing used to surprise me more than theconviction openly expressed by some of the soundest and most cautious ofthem, that "if there were no National debt they would not know what todo with their money, or where to place it safely." At the 399th page ofhis Manual, you will find Professor Fawcett giving exactly the samestatement.
"In our own country, this certainty against risk of loss is provided by the public funds;"
and again, as on the question of rent, the Professor proceeds, withoutappearing for an instant to be troubled by any misgiving that there maybe an essential difference between the effects on national prosperity ofa Government paying interest on money which it spent in fire worksfifty years ago, and of a Government paying interest on money to beemployed to-day on productive labour.
That difference, which the reader will find stated and examined atlength, in Secs. 127-129 of this volume, it is the business of economists,before approaching any other question relating to government, fully toexplain. And the paragraphs to which I refer, contain, I believe, theonly definite statement of it hitherto made.
The practical result of the absence of any such statement is, thatcapitalists, when they do not know what to do with their money, persuadethe peasants, in various countries, that the said peasants want guns toshoot each other with. The peasants accordingly borrow guns, out of themanufacture of which the capitalists get a per-centage, and men ofscience much amusement and credit. Then the peasants shoot a certainnumber of each other, until they get tired; and burn each other's homesdown in various places. Then they put the guns back into towers,arsenals, &c., in ornamental patterns; (and the victorious party putalso some ragged flags in churches). And then the capitalists tax both,annually, ever afterwards, to pay interest on the loan of the guns andgunpowder. And that is what capitalists call "knowing what to do withtheir money;" and what commercial men in general call "practical" asopposed to "sentimental" Political Economy.
Eleven years ago, in the summer of 1860, perceiving then fully, (asCarlyle had done long before), what distress was about to come on thesaid populace of Europe through these errors of their teachers, I beganto do the best I might, to combat them, in the series of papers for the_Cornhill Magazine_, since published under the title of _Unto thisLast_. The editor of the Magazine was my friend, and ventured theinsertion of the three first essays; but the outcry against them becamethen too strong for any editor to endure, and he wrote to me, with greatdiscomfort to himself, and many apologies to me, that the Magazine mustonly admit one Economical Essay more.
I made, with his permission, the last one longer than the rest, and gaveit blunt conclusion as well as I could--and so the book now stands; but,as I had taken not a little pains with the Essays, and knew that theycontained better work than most of my former writings, and moreimportant truths than all of them put together, this violent reprobationof them by the _Cornhill_ public set me still more gravely thinking;and, after turning the matter hither and thither in my mind for twoyears more, I resolved to make it the central work of my life to writean exhaustive treatise on Political Economy. It would not have beenbegun, at that time, however, had not the editor of _Fraser's Magazine_written to me, saying that he believed there was something in mytheories, and would risk the admission of what I chose to write on thisdangerous subject; whereupon, cautiously, and at intervals, during thewinter of 1862-63, I sent him, and he ventured to print, the preface ofthe intended work, divided into four chapters. Then, though the Editorhad not wholly lost courage, the Publisher indignantly interfered; andthe readers of _Fraser_, as those of the _Cornhill_, were protected, forthat time, from farther disturbance on my part. Subsequently, loss ofhealth, family distress, and various untoward chances, prevented myproceeding with the body of the book;--seven years have passedineffectually; and I am now fain to reprint the Preface by itself, underthe title which I intended for the whole.
Not discontentedly; being, at this time of life, resigned to the senseof failure; and also, because the preface is complete in itself as abody of definitions, which I now require for reference in the course ofmy _Letters to Workmen_; by which also, in time, I trust less formallyto accomplish the chief purpose of _Munera Pulveris_, practically summedin the two paragraphs 27 and 28: namely, to examine the moral resultsand possible rectifications of the laws of distribution of wealth, whichhave prevailed hitherto without debate among men. Laws which ordinaryeconomists assume to be inviolable, and which ordinary socialistsimagine to be on the eve of total abrogation. But they are both alikedeceived. The laws which at present regulate the possession of wealthare unjust, because the motives which provoke to its attainment areimpure; but no socialism can effect their abrogation, unless it canabrogate also covetousness and pride, which it is by no means yet in theway of doing. Nor can the change be, in any case, to the extent that hasbeen imagined. Extremes of luxury may be forbidden, and agony of penuryrelieved; but nature intends, and the utmost efforts of socialism willnot hinder the fulfilment of her intention, that a provident personshall always be richer than a spendthrift; and an ingenious one morecomfortable than a fool. But, indeed, the adjustment of the possessionof the products of industry depends more on their nature than theirquantity, and on wise determination therefore of the aims of industry.
A nation which desires true wealth, desires it moderately, and cantherefore distribute it with kindness, and possess it with pleasure; butone which desires false wealth, desires it immoderately, and can neitherdispense it with justice, nor enjoy it in peace.
Therefore, needing, constantly in my present work, to refer to thedefinitions of true and false wealth given in the following Essays, Irepublish them with careful revisal. They
were written abroad; partly atMilan, partly during a winter residence on the south-eastern slope ofthe Mont Saleve, near Geneva; and sent to London in as legible MS. as Icould write; but I never revised the press sheets, and have beenobliged, accordingly, now to amend the text here and there, or correctit in unimportant particulars. Wherever any modification has involvedchange in the sense, it is enclosed in square brackets; and what fewexplanatory comments I have felt it necessary to add, have beenindicated in the same manner. No explanatory comments, I regret toperceive, will suffice to remedy the mischief of my affectedconcentration of language, into the habit of which I fell by thinkingtoo long over particular passages, in many and many a solitary walktowards the mountains of Bonneville or Annecy. But I never intended thebook for anything else than a dictionary of reference, and that forearnest readers; who will, I have good hope, if they find what theywant in it, forgive the affectedly curt expressions.
The Essays, as originally published, were, as I have just stated, fourin number. I have now, more conveniently, divided the whole into sixchapters; and (as I purpose throughout this edition of my works)numbered the paragraphs.
I inscribed the first volume of this series to the friend who aided mein chief sorrow. Let me inscribe the second to the friend and guide whohas urged me to all chief labour, THOMAS CARLYLE.
* * * * *
I would that some better means were in my power of showing reverence tothe man who alone, of all our masters of literature, has written,without thought of himself, what he knew it to be needful for the peopleof his time to hear, if the will to hear were in them: whom, therefore,as the time draws near when his task must be ended, Republican andFree-thoughted England assaults with impatient reproach; and out of theabyss of her cowardice in policy and dishonour in trade, sets the hacksof her literature to speak evil, grateful to her ears, of the SolitaryTeacher who has asked her to be brave for the help of Man, and just, forthe love of God.
_Denmark Hill,_ _25th November, 1871._
FOOTNOTES:
[7] _Political Economy of Art._ (Smith and Elder, 1857, pp. 65-76.)
[8] See report of speech of M. Jules Simon, in _Pall Mall Gazette_ ofOctober 27, 1871.
[9] The omitted sentences merely amplify the statement; they in no wisemodify it.
MUNERA PULVERIS.
"Te maris et terrae numeroque carentis arenae Mensorem cohibent, Archyta, Pulveris exigui prope litus parva Matinum Munera."