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140. "She was a strict economist, which she said, enabled her to be liberal; out of her little income of about £300 a year she bestowed at least a third in well-chosen charities, and with the rest, lived like a gentlewoman, and even with hospitality more general than seemed to suit her age; yet I could never prevail on her to accept of any assistance. You cannot conceive how affecting it was to me to see the little preparations of presents which she had assorted for the New Year, for she was a great observer of the old fashions of her period—and to think that the kind heart was cold which delighted in all these arts of kindly affection."

141. "The Duke is one of those retired and high-spirited men who will never be known until the world asks what became of the huge oak that grew on the brow of the hill, and sheltered such an extent of ground. During the late distress, though his own immense rents remained in arrears, and though I know he was pinched for money, as all men were, but more especially the possessors of entailed estates, he absented himself from London in order to pay, with ease to himself, the laborers employed on his various estates. These amounted (for I have often seen the roll and helped to check it) to nine hundred and fifty men, working at day wages, each of whom on a moderate average might maintain three persons, since the single men have mothers, sisters, and aged or very young relations to protect and assist. Indeed it is wonderful how much even a small sum, comparatively, will do in supporting the Scottish laborer, who in his natural state is perhaps one of the best, most intelligent, and kind-hearted of human beings; and in truth I have limited my other habits of expense very much since I fell into the habit of employing mine honest people. I wish you could have seen about a hundred children, being almost entirely supported by their fathers' or brothers' labor, come down yesterday to dance to the pipes, and get a piece of cake and bannock, and pence apiece (no very deadly largess) in honor of hogmanay. I declare to you, my dear friend, that when I thought the poor fellows, who kept these children so neat, and well taught, and well behaved, were slaving the whole day for eighteen pence or twenty pence at most, I was ashamed of their gratitude, and of their becks and bows. But after all, one does what one can, and it is better twenty families should be comfortable according to their wishes and habits, than that half that number should be raised above their situation."

142. I must pray Mr. Greg farther to observe, if he has condescended to glance at these remains of almost prehistoric thought, that although the modern philosopher will never have reason to blush for any man's gratitude, and has totally abandoned the romantic idea of making even so much as one family comfortable according to their wishes and habits, the alternative suggested by Scott, that half "the number should be raised above their situation" may become a very inconvenient one if the doctrines of Modern Equality and competition should render the other half desirous of parallel promotion.

143. It is now just sixteen years since Mr. Greg's present philosophy of Expenditure was expressed with great precision by the Common Councilmen of New York, in their report on the commercial crisis of 1857, in the following terms:—¹²¹

"Another erroneous idea is that luxurious living, extravagant dressing, splendid turn-outs and fine houses, are the cause of distress to a nation, No more erroneous impression could exist. Every extravagance that the man of 100.000 or 1,000,000 dollars indulges in, adds to the means, the support, the wealth of ten or a hundred who had little or nothing else but their labor, their intellect, or their taste. If a man of 1,000,000 dollars spends principal and interest in ten years, and finds himself beggared at the end of that time, he has actually made a hundred who have catered to his extravagance, employers or employed, so much richer by the division of his wealth. He may be ruined, but the nation is better off and richer, for one hundred minds and hands, with 10,000 dollars apiece, are far more productive than one with the whole."

Now that is precisely the view also taken of the matter by a large number of Radical Economists in England as well as America; only they feel that the time, however short, which the rich gentleman takes to divide his property among them in his own way, is practically wasted; and even worse, because the methods which the gentleman himself is likely to adopt for the depression of his fortune will not, in all probability, be conducive to the elevation of his character. It appears, therefore, on moral as well as economical grounds, desirable that the division and distribution should at once be summarily effected; and the only point still open to discussion in the views of the Common Councilmen is to what degree of minuteness they would think it advisable to carry the subsequent subdivision.

144. I do not suppose, however, that this is the conclusion which Mr. Greg is desirous that the general Anti-Christian public should adopt; and in that case, as I see by his paper in the last number of the Contemporary,¹²² that he considers the Christian life itself virtually impossible, may I recommend his examination of the manners of the Pre-Christian? For I can certify him that this important subject, of which he has only himself imperfectly investigated one side, had been thoroughly investigated on all sides, at least seven hundred years before Christ; and from that day to this, all men of wit, sense, and feeling have held precisely the same views on the subjects of economy and charity, in all nations under the sun. It is of no consequence whether Mr. Greg chooses the experience of Boeotia, Lombardy, or Yorkshire, nor whether he studies the relation of work to-day or under Hesiod, Virgil, or Sydney Smith. But it is desirable that at least he should acquaint himself with the opinions of some such persons, as well as with those of the Common Councilmen of New York; for though a man of superior sagacity may be pardoned for thinking, with the friends of Job, that Wisdom will die with him, it can only be through neglect of the existing opportunities of general culture that he remains distinctly under the impression that she was born with him.

145. It may perhaps be well that in conclusion, I should state briefly the causes and terms of the economical crisis of our own day, which has been the subject of the debate between Mr. Goldwin Smith and Mr. Greg.

No man ever became, or can become, largely rich merely by labor and economy.¹²³ All large fortunes (putting treasure-trove and gambling out of consideration) are founded either on occupation of land, usury, or taxation of labor. Whether openly or occultly, the landlord, money-lender, and capitalist employer, gather into their possession a certain quantity of the means of existence which other people produce by the labor of their hands. The effect of this impost upon the condition of life of the tenant, borrower, and workman, is the first point to be studied;—the results, that is to say, of the mode in which Captain Roland fills his purse.

Secondly, we have to study the effects of the mode in which Captain Roland empties his purse. The landlord, usurer, or labor-master, does not, and cannot, himself consume all the means of life he collects. He gives them to other persons, whom he employs for his own behoof—growers of champagne, jockeys, footmen, jewelers, builders, painters, musicians, and the like. The division of the labor of these persons from the production of food to the production of articles of luxury is very frequently, and at the present day, very grievously the cause of famine. But when the luxuries are produced, it becomes a quite separate question who is to have them, and whether the landlord and capitalist are entirely to monopolize the music, the painting, the architecture, the hand-service, the horse-service, and the sparkling champagne of the world.

146. And it is gradually, in these days, becoming manifest to the tenants, borrowers, and laborers, that instead of paying these large sums into the hands of the landlords, lenders, and employers, for them to purchase music, painting, etc., with, the tenants, borrowers, and workers had better buy a little music and painting for themselves. That, for instance, instead of the capitalist-employer paying three hundred pounds for a full-length portrait of himself, in the attitude of investing his capital, the united workmen had better themselves pay the three hundred pounds into the hands of the ingenious artist, for a painting in the antiquated manner of Leonardo or Raphael, of some subject more religiously or historically interesting to them; and placed where they can always see it. And again instead of paying three hundred pounds to the obliging landlord, for him to buy a box at the opera with, whence to study the refinements of music and dancing, the tenants are beginning to think that they may as well keep their rents to themselves, and therewith pay some Wandering Willie to fiddle at their own doors, or bid some gray-haired minstrel

 
"Tune, to please a peasant's ear,
The harp a king had loved to hear."
 

And similarly the dwellers in the hut of the field and garret of the city are beginning to think that instead of paying half a crown for the loan of half a fire-place, they had better keep their half-crown in their pockets till they can buy for themselves a whole one.

147. These are the views which are gaining ground among the poor; and it is entirely vain to endeavor to repress them by equivocations. They are founded on eternal laws; and although their recognition will long be refused, and their promulgation, resisted as it will be, partly by force, partly by falsehood, can only be through incalculable confusion and misery, recognized they must be eventually; and with these three ultimate results:—that the usurer's trade will be abolished utterly,—that the employer will be paid justly for his superintendence of labor, but not for his capital, and the landlord paid for his superintendence of the cultivation of land, when he is able to direct it wisely: that both he, and the employer of mechanical labor, will be recognized as beloved masters, if they deserve love, and as noble guides when they are capable of giving discreet guidance; but neither will be permitted to establish themselves any more as senseless conduits through which the strength and riches of their native land are to be poured into the cup of the fornication of its capital.

USURY.¹²⁴
A REPLY AND A REJOINDER

148. I have been honored by the receipt of a letter from the Bishop of Manchester, which, with his Lordship's permission, I have requested the editor of the Contemporary Review to place before the large circle of his readers, with a brief accompanying statement of the circumstances by which the letter has been called forth, and such imperfect reply as it is in my power without delay to render.

J. Ruskin.

Manchester, December 8, 1879.

Dear Sir,—In a letter from yourself to the Rev. F. A. Malleson,¹²⁵ published in the Contemporary Review of the current month, I observe the following passage:—"I have never yet heard so much as one (preacher) heartily proclaiming against all those 'deceivers with vain words,' that no 'covetous person, which is an idolater, hath any inheritance in the Kingdom of Christ and of God;' and on myself personally and publicly challenging the Bishops of England generally, and by name the Bishop of Manchester, to say whether usury was, or was not, according to the will of God, I have received no answer from any one of them." I confess, for myself, that until I saw this passage in print a few days ago, I was unaware of the existence of such challenge, and therefore I could not answer it. It appears to have been delivered (A) in No. 82 of a series of letters which, under the title of Fors Clavigera, you have for some time been addressing to the working classes of England, but which, from the peculiar mode of their publication, are not easily accessible to the general reader and which I have only caught a glimpse of, on the library-table of the Athenæum Club, on the rare occasions when I am able to use my privileges as a member of that Society. I have no idea why I had the honor of being specially mentioned by name (B); but I beg to assure you that my silence did not arise from any discourtesy towards my challenger, nor from that discretion which, some people may think, is usually the better part of episcopal valor, and which consists in ignoring inconvenient questions from a sense of inability to answer them; but simply from the fact that I was not conscious that your lance had touched my shield.

149. The question you have asked is just one of those to which Aristotle's wise caution applies: "We must distinguish and define such words, if we would know how far, and in what sense, the opposite views are true" (Eth. Nic., ix, c. viii. § 3). What do you mean by "usury"? (C) Do you comprehend under it any payment of money as interest for the use of borrowed capital? or only exorbitant, inequitable, grinding interest, such as the money-lender, Fufidius, extorted?

 
Quinas hic capiti mercedes exsecat, atque
Quanto perditior quisque est, tanto acrius urget:
Nomina sectatur modo sumta veste virili
Sub patribus duris tironum. Maxime, quis non,
Jupiter, exclamat, simul atque audivit?
 

—Hor. Sat. i. 2, 14-18.

Usury, in itself, is a purely neutral word, carrying with it, in its primary meaning, neither praise nor blame; and a "usurer" is defined in our dictionaries as "a person accustomed to lend money and take interest for it"—which is the ordinary function of a banker, without whose help great commercial undertakings could not be carried out; though it is obvious how easily the word may pass into a term of reproach, so that to have been "called a usurer" was one of the bitter memories that rankled most in Shylock's catalogue of his wrongs.

150. I do not believe that anything has done more harm to the practical efficacy of religions sanctions than the extravagant attempts that are frequently made to impose them in cases which they never originally contemplated, or to read into "ordinances," evidently "imposed for a time"—δικαιὡματα μἑχρι καιρου (Heb. ix. 10)—a law of eternal and immutable obligation. Just as we are told (D) not to expect to find in the Bible a scheme of physical science, so I do not expect to find there a scheme of political economy. What I do expect to find, in relation to my duty to my neighbor, are those unalterable principles of equity, fairness, truthfulness, honesty (E), which are the indispensable bases of civil society. I am sure I have no need to remind you that, while a Jew was forbidden by his law to take usury—i.e., interest for the loan of money—from his brother, if he were waxen poor and fallen into decay with him, and this generous provision was extended even to strangers and sojourners in the land (Lev. xxv. 35-38), and the interesting story in Nehemiah (v. 1-13), tells us how this principle was recognized in the latest days of the commonwealth—still in that old law there is no denunciation of usury in general, and it was expressly permitted in the case of ordinary strangers¹²⁶ (Deut. xxiii. 20).

It seems to me plain also that our Blessed Lord's precept about "lending, hoping for nothing again" (Luke vi. 35), has the same, or a similar, class of circumstances in view, and was intended simply to govern a Christian man's conduct to the poor and needy, and "such as have no helper," and cannot, without a violent twist (F), be construed into a general law determining forever and in all cases the legitimate use of capital. Indeed, on another occasion, and in a very memorable parable, the great Founder of Christianity recognizes, and impliedly sanctions, the practice of lending money at interest. "Thou oughtest," says the master, addressing his unprofitable servant, "thou oughtest"—εδει σε—"to have put my money to the exchangers; and then, at my coming, I should have received mine own with usury."

151. "St. Paul, no doubt, denounces the covetous." (G) But who is the πλεονἑκτης? Not the man who may happen to have money out on loan at a fair rate of interest; but, as Liddell and Scott give the meaning of the word, "one who has or claims more than his share; hence, greedy, grasping, selfish." Of such men, whose affections are wholly set on things of the earth, and who are not very scrupulous how they gratify them, it may, perhaps, not improperly be said (H) that they "have no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God." But here, again, it would be a manifest "wresting" of the words to make them apply to a case which we have no proof that the Apostle had in contemplation when he uttered them. Rapacity, greed of gain, harsh and oppressive dealing, taking unfair advantage of our own superior knowledge and another's ignorance, shutting up the bowels of compassion towards a brother who we see has need—all these and the like things are forbidden by the very spirit of Christianity, and are manifestly "not according to the will of God," for they are all of them forms of injustice or wrong. But money may be lent at interest without one of these bad passions being brought in to play, and in these cases I confess my inability to see where, either in terms or in spirit, such use of money is condemned either by the Christian code of charity, or by that natural law of conscience which we are told (I) is written on the hearts of men.

152. Let me take two or three simple instances by way of illustration. The following has happened to myself. All my life through—from the time when my income was not a tenth part of what it is now—I have felt it a duty, while endeavoring to discharge all proper claims, to live within that income, so to adjust my expenditure to it that there should be a margin on the right side. This margin, of course, accumulated, and reached in time, say, £1000. Just then, say, the London and North-Western Railway Company proposed to issue Debenture Stock, bearing four per cent. interest, for the purpose of extending the communications, and so increasing the wealth, of the country. Whom in the world am I injuring—what conceivable wrong am I doing—where or how am I thwarting "the Will of God"—if I let the Company have my £1000, and have been receiving from them £40 a year for the use of it ever since? Unless the money had been forthcoming from some quarter or other, a work which was absolutely necessary for the prosperity of the nation, and which finds remunerative employment (K) for an immense number of Englishmen, enabling them to bring up their families in respectability and comfort, would never have been accomplished. Will you tell me that this method of carrying out great commercial enterprises, sanctioned by experience (L) as the most, if not the only, practicable one, is "not according to the Will of God"?

153. Take another instance. In Lancashire a large number of cotton mills have been erected on the joint-stock principle with limited liability. The thing has been pushed too far probably, and at one time there was a good deal of unwholesome speculation in floating companies. But that is not the question before us; and the enterprises gave working men an opportunity of investing their savings, which was a great stimulus to thrift, and, so far, an advantage to the country. In a mill, which it would perhaps cost £50,000 to build and fit with machinery, the subscribed capital, which would be entitled to a division of profits after all other demands had been satisfied, would not amount probably to more than £20,000. The rest would be borrowed at rates of interest varying according to the conditions of the market. You surely would not maintain that those who lent their money for such a purpose, and were content with 5 or 6 per cent, for the use of it, thus enabling, in good times, the shareholders to realize 20 or 25 per cent, on their subscribed capital, were doing wrong either to the shareholders or anyone else, or could in any sense be charged with acting "not according to the will of God"?

154. Take yet one case more. A farmer asks his landlord to drain his land. "Gladly," says his squire, "if you will pay me five per cent on the outlay." In other words, "if you will let me share the increased profits to this extent." The bargain is agreeable to both sides; the productiveness of the land is largely increased; who is wronged? Surely such a transaction could not fairly be described as "not according to the will of God"; surely, unless the commerce and productive industries of the country are to be destroyed, and, with the destruction, its population is to be reduced to what it was in the days of Elizabeth, these and similar transactions—which can be kept entirely clear of the sin of covetousness, and rest upon the well-understood basis of mutual advantage, each and all being gainers by them—are not only legitimate, but inevitable (M). And now that I have taken up your challenge, and, so far as my ability goes, answered it, may I, without staying to inquire how far your charge against the clergy can be substantiated, that they "generally patronize and encourage all the iniquity of the world by steadily preaching away the penalties of it" (N), be at least allowed to demur to your wholesale denunciation of the great cities of the earth, which you say "have become loathsome centers of fornication and covetousness, the smoke of their sin going up into the face of Heaven, like the furnace of Sodom, and the pollution of it rotting and raging through the bones and souls of the peasant people round them, as if they were each a volcano, whose ashes brake out in blains upon man and beast."¹²⁷ Surely, Sir, your righteous indignation at evil has caused you to overcharge your language. No one can have lived in a great city, as I have for the last ten years, without being aware of its sins and its pollutions. But unless you can prevent the aggregation of human beings into great cities, these are evils which must necessarily exist; at any rate, which always have existed. The great cities of to-day are not worse than great cities always have been (O). In one capital respect, I believe they are better. There is an increasing number of their citizens who are aware of these evils, and who are trying their best, with the help of God, to remedy them. In Sodom there was but one righteous man who "vexed his soul" at the unlawful deeds that he witnessed day by day, on every side; and he, apparently, did no more than vex his soul. In Manchester, the men and women, of all ranks and persuasions, who are actively engaging in some Christian or philanthropic work, to battle against these gigantic evils, are to be reckoned by hundreds. Nowhere have I seen more conspicuous instances of Christian effort, and of single-hearted devotion to the highest interests of mankind. And though, no doubt, if these efforts were better organized, more might be achieved, and elements, which one could wish absent, sometimes mingle with and mar the work, still a great city, even "with the smoke of its sin going up into the face of Heaven," is the noblest field of the noblest virtues, because it gives the amplest scope for the most varied exercise of them.

If you will teach us clergy how better to discharge our office as ministers of a Kingdom of Truth and Righteousness, we shall all owe you a deep debt of gratitude; which no one will be more forward to acknowledge than, my dear Sir, yours faithfully and with much respect,

J. Manchester.

John Ruskin, Esq.

155. The foregoing letter, to which I would fain have given my undivided and unwearied attention, reached my hands, as will be seen by its date, only in the close of the year, when my general correspondence always far overpasses my powers of dealing with it, and my strength—such as now is left me—had been spent, nearly to lowest ebb, in totally unexpected business arising out of the threatened mischief at Venice. But I am content that such fragmentary reply as, under this pressure, has been possible to me, should close the debate as far as I am myself concerned. The question at issue is not one of private interpretation; and the interests concerned are too vast to allow its decision to be long delayed.

The Bishop will, I trust, not attribute to disrespect the mode of reply in the form of notes attached to special passages, indicated by inserted letters, which was adopted in Fors Clavigera in all cases of important correspondence, as more clearly defining the several points under debate.

156. (A) "The challenge appears to have been delivered." May I respectfully express my regret that your lordship should not have read the letter you have honored me by answering. The number of Fors referred to does not deliver—it only reiterates—the challenge given in the Fors for January 1st, 1875, with reference to the prayer "Have mercy upon all Jews, Turks, infidels, and heretics, and so fetch them home, blessed Lord, to Thy flock, that they may be saved among the remnant of the true Israelites," in these following terms: "Who are the true Israelites, my Lord of Manchester, on your Exchange? Do they stretch their cloth, like other people?—have they any underhand dealings with the liable-to-be-damned false Israelites—Rothschilds and the like? or are they duly solicitous about those wanderers' souls? and how often, on the average, do your Manchester clergy preach from the delicious parable, savoriest of all Scripture to rogues (at least since the eleventh century, when I find it to have been specially headed with golden title in my best Greek MS.) of the Pharisee and Publican,—and how often, on the average, from those objectionable First and Fifteenth Psalms?"

(B) "I have no idea why I had the honor of being specially mentioned by name." By diocese, my Lord; not name, please observe; and for this very simple reason: that I have already fairly accurate knowledge of the divinity of the old schools of Canterbury, York, and Oxford; but I looked to your Lordship as the authoritative exponent of the more advanced divinity of the school of Manchester, with which I am not yet familiar.

157. (C) "What do you mean by usury?" What I mean by that word, my Lord, is surely of no consequence to anyone but my few readers, and fewer disciples. What David and his Son meant by it I have prayed your Lordship to tell your flock, in the name of the Church which dictates daily to them the songs of the one, and professes to interpret to them the commands of the other.

And although I can easily conceive that a Bishop at the court of the Third Richard might have paused in reply to a too curious layman's question of what was meant by "Murder"; and can also conceive a Bishop at the court of the Second Charles hesitating as to the significance of the word "Adultery"; and farther, in the present climacteric of the British Constitution, an elder of the Church of Glasgow debating within himself whether the Commandment which was severely prohibitory of Theft might not be mildly permissive of Misappropriation;—at no time, nor under any conditions, can I conceive any question existing as to the meaning of the words τοκος, fœnus; usura, or usury: and I trust that your Lordship will at once acquit me of wishing to attach any other significance to the word than that which it was to the full intended to convey on every occasion of its use by Moses, by David, by Christ, and by the Doctors of the Christian Church, down to the seventeenth century.

Nor, even since that date, although the commercial phrase "interest" has been adopted in order to distinguish an open and unoppressive rate of usury from a surreptitious and tyrannical one, has the debate of lawfulness or unlawfulness ever turned seriously on that distinction. It is neither justified by its defenders only in its mildness, nor condemned by its accusers only in its severity. Usury in any degree is asserted by the Doctors of the early Church to be sinful, just as theft and adultery are asserted to be sinful, though neither may have been accompanied with violence; and although the theft may have been on the most splendid scale, and the fornication of the most courtly refinement.

So also, in modern days, though the voice of the Bank of England in Parliament declares a loan without interest to be a monster,¹²⁸ and a loan made below the current rate of interest, a monster in its degree, the increase of dividends above that current rate is not, as far as I am aware, shunned by shareholders with an equally religious horror.

158. But—this strange question being asked—I give its simple and broad answer in the words of Christ: "The taking up that thou layedst not down;"—or, in explained and literal terms, usury is any money paid, or other advantage given, for the loan of anything which is restored to its possessor uninjured and undiminished. For simplest instance, taking a cabman the other day on a long drive, I lent him a shilling to get his dinner. If I had kept thirteen pence out of his fare, the odd penny would have been usury.

Or again. I lent one of my servants, a few years ago, eleven hundred pounds, to build a house with, and stock its ground. After some years he paid me the eleven hundred pounds back. If I had taken eleven hundred pounds and a penny, the extra penny would have been usury.

I do not know whether by the phrase, presently after used by your Lordship, "religious sanctions," I am to understand the Law of God which David loved, and Christ fulfilled, or whether the splendor, the commercial prosperity, and the familiar acquaintance with all the secrets of science and treasures of art, which we admire in the City of Manchester, must in your Lordship's view be considered as "cases" which the intelligence of the Divine Lawgiver could not have originally contemplated. Without attempting to disguise the narrowness of the horizon grasped by the glance of the Lord from Sinai, nor the inconvenience of the commandments which Christ has directed those who love Him to keep, am I too troublesome or too exigent in asking from one of those whom the Holy Ghost has made our overseers, at least a distinct chart of the Old World as contemplated by the Almighty; and a clear definition of even the inappropriate tenor of the orders of Christ: if only that the modern scientific Churchman may triumph more securely in the circumference of his heavenly vision, and accept more gratefully the glorious liberty of the free-thinking children of God?