FORS CLAVIGERA.
LETTER LXVIII.
I find that the letter which I wrote in the Fors of May to those two children, generally pleases the parents and guardians of children. Several nice ones ask me to print it separately: I have done so; and commend it, to-day, to the attention of the parents and guardians also. For the gist of it is, that the children are told to give up all they have, and never to be vexed. That is the first Rule of St. George, as applied to children,—to hold their childish things for God, and never to mind losing anything.
But the parents and guardians are not yet, it seems to me, well aware that St. George’s law is the same for grown-up people as for little ones. To hold all they have,—all their grown-up things,—for God, and never to mind losing anything,—silver or gold, house or lands, son or daughter;—law seldom so much as even attempted to be observed! And, indeed, circumstances have changed, since I wrote that Fors, which have [[244]]caused me to consider much how curious it is that when good people lose their own son or daughter, even though they have reason to think, God has found what they have lost, they are greatly vexed about it: but if they only hear of other people’s losing their sons or daughters,—though they have reason to think God has not found them, but that the wild beasts of the wilderness have torn them,—for such loss they are usually not vexed in anywise. To-day, nevertheless, I am not concerned with the stewardship of these spirit-treasures, but only with the stewardship of money or lands, and proper manner of holding such by Christians. For it is important that the accepted Companions should now understand that although, in creed, I ask only so much consent as may include Christian, Jew, Turk, and Greek,—in conduct, the Society is to be regulated at least by the Law of Christ. It may be, that as we fix our laws in further detail, we may add some of the heavier yokes of Lycurgus, or Numa, or John the Baptist: and, though the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and turning water into wine, we may think it needful to try how some of us like living on locusts, or wild honey, or Spartan broth. But at least, I repeat, we are here, in England, to obey the law of Christ, if nothing more.
Now the law of Christ about money and other forms of personal wealth, is taught, first in parables, in which He likens himself to the masters of this world, and [[245]]explains the conduct which Christians should hold to Him, their heavenly Master, by that which they hold on earth, to earthly ones.
He likens himself, in these stories, several times, to unkind or unjust masters, and especially to hard and usurious ones. And the gist of the parables in each case is, “If ye do so, and are thus faithful to hard and cruel masters, in earthly things, how much more should ye be faithful to a merciful Master, in heavenly things?”
Which argument, evil-minded men wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, to their own destruction. And instead of reading, for instance, in the parable of the Usurer, the intended lesson of industry in the employment of God’s gifts, they read in it a justification of the crime which, in other parts of the same scripture, is directly forbidden. And there is indeed no doubt that, if the other prophetic parts of the Bible be true, these stories are so worded that they may be touchstones of the heart. They are nets, which sift the kindly reader from the selfish. The parable of the Usurer is like a mill sieve:—the fine flour falls through it, bolted finer; the chaff sticks in it.
Therefore, the only way to understand these difficult parts of the Bible, or even to approach them with safety, is first to read and obey the easy ones. Then the difficult ones all become beautiful and clear:—otherwise they remain venomous enigmas, with a Sphinx of [[246]]destruction provoking false souls to read them, and ruining them in their own replies.
Now the orders, “not to lay up treasures for ourselves on earth,” and to “sell that we have, and give alms,” and to “provide ourselves bags which wax not old,” are perfectly direct, unmistakable,—universal; and while we are not at all likely to be blamed by God for not imitating Him as a Judge, we shall assuredly be condemned by Him for not, under Judgment, doing as we were bid. But even if we do not feel able to obey these orders, if we must and will lay up treasures on earth, and provide ourselves bags with holes in them,—God may perhaps still, with scorn, permit us in our weakness, provided we are content with our earthly treasures, when we have got them, and don’t oppress our brethren, and grind down their souls with them. We may have our old bag about our neck, if we will, and go to heaven like beggars;—but if we sell our brother also, and put the price of his life in the bag, we need not think to enter the kingdom of God so loaded. A rich man may, though hardly, enter the kingdom of heaven without repenting him of his riches; but not the thief, without repenting his theft; nor the adulterer, without repenting his adultery; nor the usurer, without repenting his usury.
The nature of which last sin, let us now clearly understand, once for all.
Mr. Harrison’s letter, published in the Fors for June, [[247]]is perhaps no less valuable as an evidence of the subtlety with which this sin has seized upon and paralyzed the public mind, (so that even a man of Mr. Harrison’s general intelligence has no idea why I ask a question about it,) than as a clear statement of the present condition of the law, produced by the usurers who are ‘law-makers’ for England, though lawyers are not.
Usury is properly the taking of money for the loan or use of anything, (over and above what pays for wear and tear,) such use involving no care or labour on the part of the lender. It includes all investments of capital whatsoever, returning ‘dividends,’ as distinguished from labour wages, or profits. Thus anybody who works on a railroad as platelayer, or stoker, has a right to wages for his work; and any inspector of wheels or rails has a right to payment for such inspection; but idle persons who have only paid a hundred pounds towards the road-making, have a right to the return of the hundred pounds,—and no more. If they take a farthing more, they are usurers. They may take fifty pounds for two years, twenty-five for four, five for twenty, or one for a hundred. But the first farthing they take more than their hundred, be it sooner or later, is usury.
Again, when we build a house, and let it, we have a right to as much rent as will return us the wages of our labour, and the sum of our outlay. If, as in ordinary cases, not labouring with our hands or head, [[248]]we have simply paid—say £1000—to get the house built, we have a right to the £1000 back again at once, if we sell it; or, if we let it, to £500 rent during two years, or £100 rent during ten years, or £10 rent during a hundred years. But if, sooner or later, we take a pound more than the thousand, we are usurers.
And thus in all other possible or conceivable cases, the moment our capital is ‘increased’ by having lent it, be it but in the estimation of a hair, that hair’s-breadth of increase is usury, just as much as stealing a farthing is theft, no less than stealing a million.
But usury is worse than theft, in so far as it is obtained either by deceiving people, or distressing them; generally by both: and finally by deceiving the usurer himself, who comes to think that usury is a real increase, and that money can grow of money; whereas all usury is increase to one person only by decrease to another; and every grain of calculated Increment to the Rich, is balanced by its mathematical equivalent of Decrement to the Poor. The Rich have hitherto only counted their gain; but the day is coming, when the Poor will also count their loss,—with political results hitherto unparalleled.
For instance, my good old hairdresser at Camberwell came to me the other day, very uncomfortable about his rent. He wanted a pound or two to make it up; and none of his customers wanted their hair cut. I gave him the pound or two,—with the result, I [[249]]hope my readers have sagacity enough to observe, of distinct decrement to me, as increment to the landlord; and then inquired of him, how much he had paid for rent, during his life. On rough calculation, the total sum proved to be between 1500 and 1700 pounds. And after paying this sum,—earned, shilling by shilling, with careful snippings, and studiously skilful manipulation of tongs,—here is my poor old friend, now past sixty, practically without a roof over his head;—just as roofless in his old age as he was in the first days of life,—and nervously wandering about Peckham Rye and East Norwood, in the east winter winds, to see if, perchance, any old customers will buy some balm for their thinning locks—and give him the blessed balm of an odd half-crown or two, to rent shelter for his own, for three months more.
Now, supposing that £1500 of his had been properly laid out, on the edification of lodgings for him, £500 should have built him a serviceable tenement and shop; another £500 have met the necessary repairing expenses for forty years; and at this moment he ought to have had his efficient freehold cottage, with tile and wall right weatherproof, and a nice little nest-egg of five hundred pounds in the Bank, besides. But instead of this, the thousand pounds has gone in payment to slovenly builders, each getting their own percentage, and doing as bad work as possible, under the direction of landlords paying for as little as possible [[250]]of any sort of work. And the odd five hundred has gone into the landlord’s pocket. Pure increment to him; pure decrement to my decoratively laborious friend. No gain ‘begotten’ of money; but simple subtraction from the pocket of the labouring person, and simple addition to the pocket of the idle one.
I have no mind to waste the space of Fors in giving variety of instances. Any honest and sensible reader, if he chooses, can think out the truth in such matters for himself. If he be dishonest, or foolish, no one can teach him. If he is resolved to find reason or excuse for things as they are, he may find refuge in one lie after another; and, dislodged from each in turn, fly from the last back to the one he began with. But there will not long be need for debate—nor time for it. Not all the lying lips of commercial Europe can much longer deceive the people in their rapidly increasing distress, nor arrest their straight battle with the cause of it. Through what confused noise and garments rolled in blood,—through what burning and fuel of fire, they will work out their victory,—God only knows, nor what they will do to Barabbas, when they have found out that he is a Robber, and not a King. But that discovery of his character and capacity draws very near: and no less change in the world’s ways than the former fall of Feudalism itself.
In the meantime, for those of us who are Christians, our own way is plain. We can with perfect ease ascertain [[251]]what usury is; and in what express terms forbidden. I had partly prepared, for this Fors, and am able to give, as soon as needful, an analysis of the terms ‘Increase’ and ‘Usury’ throughout the Old and New Testaments. But the perpetual confusion of the English terms when the Greek and Latin are clear, (especially by using the word ‘increase’ in one place, and ‘generation’ in another, at the English translator’s pleasure,) renders the matter too intricate for the general reader, though intensely interesting to any honest scholar. I content myself, therefore, with giving the plain Greek and plain English of Leviticus xxv. 35 to 37.[1]
Ἐὰν δὲ πένηται ὁ ἀδελφός σου, καὶ ἀδυνατήσῃ ταῖς χερσὶν αὐτοῦ παρὰ σοὶ, ἀντιλήψῃ αὐτοῦ ὡς προσηλύτου καὶ παροίκου, καὶ ζήσεται ὁ ἀδελφός σου μετὰ σοῦ.
Οὐ λήψῃ παρ’ αὐτοῦ τόκον, οὐδὲ ἐπὶ πλήθει, καὶ φοβηθήσῃ τὸν θεόν σου· ἐγὼ κύριος· καὶ ζήσεται ὀ ἀδελφός σου μετὰ σοῦ.
Τὸ ἀργύριόν σου οὐ δώσεις αὐτῷ τόκῳ, καὶ ἐπὶ πλεονασμῷ οὐ δώσεις αὐτῲ βρώματά σου·
“And if thy brother be poor, and powerless with his hands, at thy side, thou shalt take his part upon thee, to help him,[2] as thy proselyte and thy neighbour; [[252]]and thy brother shall live with thee. Thou shalt take no usury of him, nor anything over and above, and thou shalt fear thy God. I am the Lord, and thy brother shall live with thee. Thou shalt not give him thy money, for usury; and thou shalt not give him thy food, for increase.”
There is the simple law for all of us;—one of those which Christ assuredly came not to destroy, but to fulfil: and there is no national prosperity to be had but in obedience to it.
How we usurers are to live, with the hope of our gains gone, is precisely the old temple of Diana question. How Robin Hood or Cœur de Lion were to live without arrow or axe, would have been as strange a question to them, in their day. And there are many amiable persons who will not directly see their way, any more than I do myself, to an honest life; only, let us be sure that this we are leading now is a dishonest one; and worse, (if Dante and Shakspeare’s mind on the matter are worth any heed, of which more in due time,) being neither more nor less than a spiritual manner of cannibalism, which, so long as we persist in, every word spoken in Scripture of those who “eat my people as they eat bread,” is spoken directly of us.[3] It may be an encouragement to some [[253]]of us—especially those evangelically bred—in weaning ourselves slowly from such habits, to think of our dear old converted friend, Friday. We need not fear our power of becoming good Christians yet, if we will: so only that we understand, finally and utterly, that all gain, increase, interest, or whatever else you call it or think it, to the lender of capital, is loss, decrease, and dis-interest, to the borrower of capital. Every farthing we, who lend the tool, make, the borrower of the tool loses. And all the idiotical calculations of what money comes to, in so many years, simply ignore the debit side of the book, on which the Labourer’s Deficit is precisely equal to the Capitalist’s Efficit. I saw an estimate made by some blockhead in an American paper, the other day, of the weight of gold which a hundred years’ ‘interest’ on such and such funds would load the earth with! Not even of wealth in that solid form, could the poor wretch perceive so much of the truth as that the gold he put on the earth above, he must dig out of the earth below! But the mischief in real life is far deeper on the [[254]]negative side, than the good on the positive. The debt of the borrower loads his heart, cramps his hands, and dulls his labour. The gain of the lender hardens his heart, fouls his brain, and puts every means of mischief into his otherwise clumsy and artless hands.
But here, in good time, is one example of honest living sent me, worth taking grave note of.
In my first inaugural lecture on Art at Oxford, given in the theatre, (full crowded to hear what first words might be uttered in the University on so unheard-of a subject,) I closed by telling my audience—to the amusement of some, the offence of others, and the disapproval of all,—that the entire system of their art-studies must be regulated with a view to the primal art, which many of them would soon have to learn, that of getting their food out of the Ground, or out of the Sea.
Time has worn on; and, last year, a Christ-Church man, an excellent scholar, came to talk with me over his brother’s prospects in life, and his own. For himself, he proposed, and very earnestly, considering his youth and gifts, (lying, as far as I could judge, more towards the rifle-ground than in other directions,) to go into the Church: but for his brother, he was anxious, as were all his relatives;—said brother having broken away from such modes of living as the relatives held orthodox, and taken to catching and potting of salmon on the Columbia River; having farther transgressed all the proprieties of civilized society by providing himself violently with the [[255]]‘capital’ necessary for setting up in that line of business, and ‘stealing a boat.’ How many boats, with nine boilers each in them, the gentlemen of Her Majesty’s navy construct annually with money violently abstracted out of my poor pockets, and those of other peaceful labourers,—boats not to catch salmon with, or any other good thing, but simply to amuse themselves, and blow up stokers with,—civilized society may perhaps in time learn to consider. In the meantime, I consoled my young St. Peter as well as I could for his brother’s carnal falling away; represented to him that, without occasional fishing for salmon, there would soon be no men left to fish for; and that even this tremendous violation of the eighth commandment, to the extent of the abstraction of a boat, might not perchance, with due penitence, keep the young vagabond wholly hopeless of Paradise; my own private opinion being that the British public would, on the whole, benefit more by the proceedings of the young pirate, if he provided them annually with a sufficient quantity of potted salmon, than by the conscientious, but more costly, ministry of his brother, who, provided with the larger boat-apparatus of a nave, and the mast of a steeple, proposed to employ this naval capital only in the provision of potted talk.
And finding that, in spite of the opinion of society, there were still bowels of mercies in this good youth, yearning after his brother, I got him to copy for me some of the brother’s letters from the Columbia River, [[256]]confessing his piratical proceedings, (as to which I, for one, give him a Christian man’s absolution without more ado;) and account of his farther life in those parts—life which appears to me, on the whole, so brave, exemplary, and wise, that I print the letters as chief article of this month’s correspondence; and I am going to ask the boy to become a Companion of St. George forthwith, and send him a collar of the Order, (as soon as we have got gold to make collars of,) with a little special pictorial chasing upon it, representing the Miraculous Draught of Fishes. [[257]]