FOOTNOTES:
[43] The Gazette was at this time of little more than eight weeks' standing. The dull leader was that in the Gazette of April 19, entitled "Masters and Men," and dealt entirely with Mr. Ruskin's letter on strikes. The "pace Mr. Kingsley" alludes, of course, to his "Ode to the North-East Wind."
[44] The leader had begun by speaking of Mr. Ruskin's previous letter as "embodying fallacies, pernicious in the highest degree," and concluded by remarking how "easily and unconsciously he glided into the true result of his principles."
[45] In reply, the Gazette denied "each of the three propositions to be true," on grounds shown in the quotations given in the following letter.
[From "The Pall Mall Gazette," April 26, 1865.]
WORK AND WAGES.
To the Editor of "The Pall Mall Gazette."
Sir: I accept your terms, and reply in the fewest words I can.
I. You "see no injustice in hiring a fly for 2s. 6d. for the first hour and 1s. 6d. for each succeeding one." Nor I either; so far from it, that I never give a cabman less than a shilling; which I doubt not is your practice also, and a very proper one. The cabmen make no objection, and you could not have given a neater instance of the proportion of payment to labor which you deny. You pay in the first hour for the various trouble involved in taking the man off his stand, and for a proportion of the time during which he has waited for the chance of your custom. That paid, you hire him by the formula which I state, and you deny.
II. "Danger and difficulty have attractions for some men." They have, and if, under the influence of those attractions, they choose to make you a present of their labor, for love (in your own terms,[46] "as you give a penny to a beggar"), you may accept the gift as the beggar does, without question of justice. But if they do not choose to give it you, they have a right to higher payment. My guide may perhaps, for love, play at climbing Mont Blanc with me; if he will not, he has a right to be paid more than for climbing the Breven.
III. "Mr. Ruskin can define justice, or any other word, as he chooses."
It is a gracious permission; but suppose justice be something more than a word! When you derived it jussum[47] (falsely, for it is not derived from jussum, but from the root of jungo), you forgot, or ignored, that the Saxons had also a word for it, by which the English workman still pleads for it; that the Greeks had a word for it, by which Plato and St. Paul reasoned of it; and that the Powers of Heaven have, presumably, an idea of it with which it may be well for "our interests" that your definition, as well as mine, should ultimately correspond, since their "definitions" are commonly not by a word but a blow.
But accepting for the nonce your own conception of it as "the fulfilment of a compulsory agreement" ("the wages" you say "which you force the men to take, and they can force you to pay"), allow me to ask your definition of force, or compulsion. As thus: (Case 1.) I agree with my friend that we will pay a visit to Mr. A. at two in the morning. My friend agrees with me that he will hold a pistol to Mr. A.'s head. Under those circumstances, I agree with Mr. A. that I shall remove his plate without expression of objection on his part. Is this agreement, in your sense, "jussum"? (Case 2.) Mr. B. goes half through the ice into the canal on a frosty morning. I, on the shore, agree with Mr. B. that I shall have a hundred pounds for throwing him a rope. Is this agreement validly "jussum"?
The first of these cases expresses in small compass the general nature of arrangements under compulsory circumstances over which one of the parties has entire control. The second, that of arrangements made under circumstances accidentally compulsory, when the capital is in one party's hands exclusively. For you will observe Mr. B. has no right whatever to the use of my rope: and that capital (though it would probably have been only the final result of my operations with respect to Mr. A.) makes me completely master of the situation with reference to Mr. B.
I am, Sir, your obliged servant,
John Ruskin[48]
Denmark Hill, Saturday, April 22, 1865.