Sir: You terminate to-day a discussion which seems to have been greatly interesting to your readers, by telling them the "broad fact, that England is no longer big enough for her inhabitants."[72]
Might you not, in the leisure of the recess, open with advantage a discussion likely to be no less interesting, and much more useful—namely, how big England may be made for economical inhabitants, and how little she may be made for wasteful ones? Might you not invite letters on this quite radical and essential question—how money is truly made, and how it is truly lost, not by one person or another, but by the whole nation?
For, practically, people's eyes are so intensely fixed on the immediate operation of money as it changes hands, that they hardly ever reflect on its first origin or final disappearance. They are always considering how to get it from somebody else, but never how to get it where that somebody else got it.
Also, they very naturally mourn over their loss of it to other people, without reflecting that, if not lost altogether, it may still be of some reflective advantage to them. Whereas, the real national question is not who is losing or gaining money, but who is making and who destroying it. I do not of course mean making money, in the sense of printing notes or finding gold. True money cannot be so made. When an island is too small for its inhabitants, it would not help them to one ounce of bread more to have the entire island turned into one nugget, or to find bank notes growing by its rivulets instead of fern leaves. Neither, by destroying money, do I mean burning notes, or throwing gold away. If I burn a five-pound note, or throw five sovereigns into the sea, I hurt no one but myself; nay, I benefit others, for everybody with a pound in his pocket is richer by the withdrawal of my competition in the market. But what I want you to make your readers discover is how the true money is made that will get them houses and dinners; and on the other hand how money is truly lost, or so diminished in value that all they can get in a year will not buy them comfortable houses, nor satisfactory dinners.
Surely this is a question which people would like to have clearly answered for them, and it might lead to some important results if the answer were acted upon. The riband-makers at Coventry, starving, invite the ladies of England to wear ribands. The compassionate ladies of England invest themselves in rainbows, and admiring economists declare the nation to be benefited. No one asks where the ladies got the money to spend in rainbows (which is the first question in the business), nor whether the money once so spent will ever return again, or has really faded with the faded ribands and disappeared forever. Again, honest people every day lose quantities of money to dishonest people. But that is merely a change of hands much to be regretted; but the money is not therefore itself lost; the dishonest people must spend it at last somehow. A youth at college loses his year's income to a Jew. But the Jew must spend it instead of him. Miser or not, the day must come when his hands relax. A railroad shareholder loses his money to a director; but the director must some day spend it instead of him. That is not—at least in the first fact of it—national loss. But what the public need to know is, how a final and perfect loss of money takes place, so that the whole nation, instead of being rich, shall be getting gradually poor. And then, indeed, if one man in spending his money destroys it, and another in spending it makes more of it, it becomes a grave question in whose hands it is, and whether honest or dishonest people are likely to spend it to the best purpose. Will you permit me, Sir, to lay this not unprofitable subject of inquiry before your readers, while, to the very best purpose, they are investing a little money in sea air?
Very sincerely yours,
J. Ruskin.
Denmark Hill, July 30.
FOOTNOTES:
[72] The discussion had been carried on in a series of letters from a great number of correspondents under the heading of "Marriage or Celibacy," its subject being the pecuniary difficulties in the way of early marriage. The Daily Telegraph of July 30 concluded the discussion with a leading article, in which it characterized the general nature of the correspondence, and of which the final words were those quoted by Mr. Ruskin.