Prose remains of Arthur Hugh Clough, with a selection from his letters and a memoir

by Arthur Hugh Clough

So might some one put it. And far more near to the truth do I deem it would be to declare, that whoever is born into the world has a just claim to demand therein and therefrom work and wages for work; is bound to do his part in the labour, and entitled to expect his proportion in the fruits; even as in some Alacran shipwreck; each newcomer, sævis projectus ab undis (it is the old Lucretian image), may be called upon to share in the toils, and may demand to share in the food; and no old citizen of the rocks shall dare to say, We may monopolise the work alike and the pay; we have hands enough for the work, and we will have no new mouth for the victuals;—far truer, though not the whole truth, I think would this be than the fairest human-law theory of sacred indefeasible monopoly vested in hereditary lords of creation. We have heard of the old oppression of ‘the lord’s mill.’ Even so, if a capitalist now should buy all the cotton factories of the land, and then say, ‘I have you in my power, and you must pay me what price I will,’ would modern society bear it? How much more when, not for cotton-twist, but for meat and drink and all things, there is one sole machine, not made with hands, not capable of duplication, this terraqueous globe that moves incommunicably tied to one unchanging orbit?

Nor need we fear to acknowledge this principle freely. There is enough sense of fairness in the world to let the sacred institution of property find itself a basis secure and unassailed in that other great principle, ‘If a man will not work, neither let him eat.’ Let that apostolic limitation of that primitive-Christian state of things where ‘they had all things common’ be our guide and interpreter. Let us find in it the Christian exposition of the old covenant eighth commandment. So far, as without encouraging present idleness and improvidence, without encroaching unduly on provisions for posterity, it were possible to equalise the distribution of labour, so far were that equalisation a duty. And, as it is, when we punish the starving man who steals the loaf, it is not because either the baker or we have an exclusive right to it, but because society at all hazards must avoid putting a premium on laziness.

It is of course utterly foreign to my meaning to do anything but find a secure basis for the rights of property; to impugn them were idle. But as legal justice must be corrected by equity, so must justice as administered by the laws of property be modified by the equity of a higher though less definite rule; and as the distinction between legal and equitable justice was considered worthy of observation, so too let not this be despised. Let it be fairly felt that what we call bounty and charity is not, as we fain would persuade ourselves, a matter of gratuitous uncalled-for condescension—as of God to men, or men to meaner animals, as of children feeding the robins, or ladies watering their flowers, but on the contrary a supplementary but integral part of fair dealing; the payment of a debt of honour. Let however this conviction be treated as it may, it cannot at least be denied that in great calamities a higher law, ‘a law within the law,’ steps in to supersede that of property. What we should feel to be right on an Alacran reef is, in its measure, applicable to a Skibbereen famine; to appropriate is to steal. As a matter of pure justice and not of generosity, England is bound to share her last crust with Ireland, and the rich men to fare as the poor.

Some things perhaps might be found to modify this: of that anon: meantime have we not a nearer objection in the fact of Irish idleness and Irish improvidence? To this I shall only answer that the failure of the potato crop was surely a matter beyond the province of human foresight, and that with respect to the labouring classes it may be greatly questioned whether they have ever yet been any thing like fairly tried.

And now then some one will tell us—that society has higher objects than the preservation of the lives of individual members. A great heritage of civilisation, of law, and thought, and religion has come to our hands: shame upon this generation, if for the sake of prolonging to some wretched and short-lived beings their brief tenure of misery, we sacrifice our father’s hard-won gains. Better that many perish than that the nation lose a Bacon, a Burke, or a Shakspeare. There are things worse than starving. True indeed it is, and in this, or something like this, is founded the justification of inequality of ranks. True indeed, and truly well worth the knowing. As ignorant and unrefined parents stint themselves to secure knowledge and refinement for their children, so the laborious poor of the land support, at their painful cost, the aristocracy of the rich and educated. And so long as it is indeed an aristocracy—forgetful though it may be and unfilial too—they do it, and do it with joy, as of a parent. But if cultivation be so great a thing, has it no such ingredients as mercy and justice? Enjoyment is good; and refined enjoyment better than coarse. Wine is better than gin; and the ale-house inferior to the opera: vilius argentum est auro, but also virtutibus aurum. As it is the pure service of God, so may it not be also the true cultivation of man, ‘to visit the orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world’? If there are things worse than starving, there are also things better than eating and drinking.

And as this our English aristocracy draws its recruits almost exclusively from the newly rich, what, may we ask, is the most fitting lesson it should inculcate upon them, what discipline and what drill should it place them under? Shall it meet them half-way with the precept of, Expense and ostentation? Shall it say, Your business as a member of the best part of the English nation is to entertain, to give good dinners, and see the world, to have houses larger than you want, servants more than you want, carriages more than you use, horses more than you have work for? Is this to be the talismanic tradition handed down from chivalrous days to the new generation; is this the torch of wisdom and honour which our feudal aristocracy transmits to the new one that succeeds it? Is this all which they can give us whose boast it is to belong to the historic being of England—to be the conducting medium through which the past sends its electric power into the present, Eating and drinking, and (we must remember that, I suppose) a dash of gentlemanly manner?

To what result then do we come? To something like this.

First of all, that the welfare of the nation does undoubtedly require the existence of a class free for the most part to follow their own devices; that it is right that there should be men with time at their disposal, and money in their purses, and large liberty in public opinion; men who, though thousands and tens of thousands perish by starvation, stoically meanwhile in books and in study, in reading, and thinking, and travelling, and—it would seem too, enjoying, in hunting, videlicet, and shooting, in duets, and dancing, by ball-going and grousing, by déjeuners and deer-stalking, by foie-gras and Johannisberger, by February strawberries and December green peas, by turbot, and turtle, and venison, should pioneer the route of the armies of mankind; should, an intrepid forlorn hope, lead the way up the breach of human destiny to the citadel of truth; and, devoted priests and prophets, solve some more than ‘Asian mystery’ by pilgrimage to the Palestine of Cockaigne! But that however essential be these higher classes, still there remains the question, Is there not a holier land than Cockaigne; is not temperance as efficient a sapper and miner as wine of Burgundy; is not labour better than enjoyment; is it not higher cultivation ‘to do justice and mercy, and walk humbly,’ than to ‘eat and drink and be drunken’; and though thought and study be glorious, may we not combine ‘plain living and high thinking’; though science, and art, and philosophy be divine, is not charity ‘yet a more excellent way’?

In the second place, looking backward through our discussion, we recur to the thought that property is scarcely, by law or gospel, that inalienable personal, individual thing, which we that have it would believe it to be. As in the dangers and distresses of society great characters are for the first time seen, and as soon as seen are recognised, while rank, and wealth, and titles are forgotten; even so in calamities and horrors the old laws of meum and tuum shrink to nothing, while a loftier principle reveals itself and no man gainsays it.

The sons of deceased public servants—yea, the living workers themselves—possess no indefeasible title to those lands, and goods, and monies, which they call their earnings. Their lands come to them saddled with indefinite rent-charges, reservations, and reversional interests—the poor and the needy that are, and that shall be, have a lien on their monies and their chattels. Beyond the reach of all statutes of limitation there are bills that must be liquidated, creditors that must not be deferred. Many yet shall come in from the highways and hedges, and join in the meal with us that came early: a posthumous brother is yet to be born, to share and share alike in our father’s bequests.