[62] W. R. G. had declared that the rich man (or his ancestors) got the money "by co-operation with the poor ... by, in fact, entering into a mutually beneficent partnership with them, and advancing them their share of the joint profits ... paying them beforehand, in a word."
[63] W. R. G. had written: "In nine cases out of ten, in the case of acquired wealth, we should probably find, were the pedigree traced fairly and far back enough, that the original difference between the now rich man and the now poor man was, that the latter habitually spent all his earnings, and the former habitually saved a portion of his in order that it might accumulate and fructify."
[Date and place of publication unknown.]
COMMERCIAL MORALITY.[64]
My dear Sir: Mr. Johnson's speech in the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, which you favor me by sending, appears to me the most important event that has occurred in relation to the true interests of the country during my lifetime. It begins an era of true civilization. I shall allude to it in the "Fors" of March, and make it the chief subject of the one following (the matter of this being already prepared).[65] It goes far beyond what I had even hoped to hear admitted—how much less enforced so gravely and weightily in the commercial world.
Believe me, faithfully yours,
J. Ruskin.
FOOTNOTES:
[64] This letter was received from Mr. Ruskin by a gentleman in Manchester, who had forwarded to him a copy of the speech made by Mr. Richard Johnson (President) at the fifty-fourth annual meeting of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, Feb. 1, 1875. Mr. Johnson's address dealt with the immorality of cheapness, the duties of merchants and manufacturers as public servants, and the nobility of trade as a profession which, when rightly and unselfishly conducted, would yield to no other "in the dignity of its nature and in the employment that it offers to the highest faculties of man."
[65] In "Fors Clavigera," March, 1875, Mr. Johnson's speech is named (p. 54) as "the first living words respecting commerce which I have ever known to be spoken in England, in my time," but the discussion of it is postponed.