I. "The fare has nothing to do with the labor in preparing the fly for being hired."—Nor, of course, the price of any article with the labor expended in preparing it for being sold? This will be a useful note to the next edition of "Ricardo." [The price depends on the relative forces of the buyer and the seller. The price asked by the seller no doubt depends on the labor expended. The price given by the buyer depends on the degree in which he desires to possess the thing sold, which has nothing to do with the labor laid out on it.]
The answer to your instances[51] is that all just price involves an allowance for average necessary, not for unnecessary, labor. The just price of coals at Newcastle does not involve an allowance for their carriage to Newcastle. But the just price of a cab at a stand involves an allowance to the cabman for having stood there. [Why? who is to determine what is necessary?]
II. "This admits the principle of Bargaining." No, Sir; it only admits the principle of Begging. If you like to ask your guide to give you his legs for nothing, or your workman his arms for nothing, or your shopkeeper his goods for nothing, and they consent, for love, or for play—you are doubtless both dignified and fortunate; but there is no question of trade in the matters; only of Alms. [We mean by Alms money or goods given merely from motives of benevolence, and without return. In the case supposed the guide goes one mile to please himself, and ten more for hire, which satisfies him. How does he give Alms? He goes for less money than he otherwise would require, because he likes the job, not because his employer likes it. The Alms are thus given by himself to himself.]
III. It is true that "every one can affix to words any sense he chooses." But if I pay for a yard of broadcloth, and the shopman cuts me three-quarters, I shall not put up with my loss more patiently on being informed that Bishop Butler meant by justice something quite different from what Bentham meant by it, or that to give for every yard three-quarters, is the rule of that establishment. [If the word "yard" were as ambiguous as the word "justice," Mr. Ruskin ought to be much obliged to the shopman for defining his sense of it, especially if he gave you full notice before he cut the cloth.]
Further, it is easy to ascertain the uses of words by the best scholars—[Nothing is more difficult. To ascertain what Locke meant by an "idea," or Sir W. Hamilton by the word "inconceivable," is no easy task.]—and well to adopt them, because they are sure to be founded on the feelings of gentlemen.—[Different gentlemen feel and think in very different ways. Though we differ from Mr. Ruskin, we hope he will not deny this.] Thus, when Horace couples his tenacem propositi with justum, he means to assert that the tenacity is only noble which is justified by uprightness, and shows itself by insuffer-ance of the jussa "prava jubentium" And although Portia does indeed accept your definition of justice from the lips of Shylock, changing the divine, "who sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not" into the somewhat less divine "who sweareth to his neighbor's hurt and changeth not;" and though she carries out his and your conception of such justice to the uttermost, the result is not, even in Shylock's view of it, "for the interest of both parties."
IV. To your two final questions "exhausting" (by no means, my dear Sir, I assure you) "the points at issue,"[52] I reply in both cases, "No." And to your plaintive "why should they do so?" while, observe, I do not admit it to be a monstrous requirement of men that they should sometimes sacrifice their own interests, I would for the present merely answer that I have never found my own interests seriously compromised by my practice, which is, when I cannot get the fair price of a thing, not to sell it, and when I cannot give the fair price of a thing, not to buy it. The other day, a dealer in want of money offered me a series of Hartz minerals for two-thirds of their value. I knew their value, but did not care to spend the entire sum which would have covered it. I therefore chose forty specimens out of the seventy, and gave the dealer what he asked for the whole.
In the example you give, it is not the interest of the guide to take his fifty francs rather than nothing; because all future travellers, though they could afford the hundred, would then say, "You went for fifty; we will give you no more." [Does a man say to a broker, "You sold stock yesterday at 90; I will pay no more to-day"?] And for me, if I am not able to pay my hundred francs, I either forego Mont Blanc, or climb alone; and keep my fifty francs to pay at another time, for a less service, some man who also would have got nothing otherwise, and who will be honestly paid by what I give him, for what I ask of him.
I am, Sir, your obliged servant,
John Ruskin.
Saturday, 29th April, 1865.