The following is an example: The "just" price of a guide up Mont Blanc is (suppose) 100 francs. I have only 50 francs to spare. May I without injustice offer the 50 francs to a guide, who would otherwise get nothing, and may he without injustice accept my offer? If not, I lose my excursion, and he loses his opportunity of earning 50 francs. Why should this be?
In addition to the above interpolations, the Gazette appended a note to this letter, in which it declared its definition of justice to be a quotation from memory of Austin's definition adopted by him from Hobbes, and after referring Mr. Ruskin to Austin for the moral bearings of the question, concluded by summing up its views, which it doubted if Mr. Ruskin understood, and insisting on the definition of "justice" as "conformity with any rule whatever, good or bad," and on that of good rules as "those which promote the general happiness of those whom they affect." (See the next letter.)
[From "The Pall Mall Gazette," May 9, 1865.]
WORK AND WAGES.
To the Editor of "The Pall Mall Gazette."
Sir: I am under the impression that we are both getting prosy, or, at all events, that no one will read either my last letter, or your comments upon it, in the places in which you have so gracefully introduced them. For which I am sorry, and you, I imagine, are not.
It is true that differences of feeling may exist among gentlemen; yet I think that gentlemen of all countries agree that it is rude to interrupt your opponent while he is speaking; for a futile answer gains no real force by becoming an interjection; and a strong one can abide its time. I will therefore pray you, in future, if you publish my letters at all, to practice towards them so much of old English manners as may yet be found lingering round some old English dinner-tables; where, though we may be compelled by fashion to turn the room into a greenhouse, and serve everything cold, the pièces de résistance are still presented whole, and carved afterwards.
Of course it is open to you to reply that I dislike close argument. Which little flourish being executed, and if you are well breathed—en garde, if you please.
I. Your original position was that wages (or price) bear no relation to hardship of work. On that I asked you to join issue. You now admit, though with apparent reluctance, that "the price asked by the seller, no doubt, depends on the labor expended."