I have given you, this month, the last of the pictures I want you to see from Padua;—Giotto’s Image of Justice—which, you observe, differs somewhat from the Image of Justice we used to set up in England, above insurance offices, and the like. Bandaged close about the eyes, our English Justice was wont to be, with a pair of grocers’ scales in her hand, wherewith, doubtless, she was accustomed to weigh out accurately their shares to the landlords, and portions to the labourers, and remunerations to the capitalists. But Giotto’s Justice has no bandage about her eyes, (Albert Durer’s has them round open, and flames flashing from them,) and weighs, not with scales, but with her own hands; and weighs not merely the shares, or remunerations of men, but the worth of them; and finding them worth this or that, gives them what they deserve—death, or honour. Those are her forms of “Remuneration.”
Are you sure that you are ready to accept the decrees of this true goddess, and to be chastised or rewarded by her, as is your due, being seen through and through to your hearts’ core? Or will you still abide by the level balance of the blind Justice of old time; or rather, by the oblique balance of the squinting Justice of our modern geological Mud-Period?—the mud, at present, becoming also more slippery under the feet—I beg pardon, the belly—of squinting Justice, than was once expected; becoming, indeed, (as it is announced, even by Mr. W. P. Price, M.P., chairman at the last half-yearly meeting of the Midland Railway Company,) quite “delicate ground.”
The said chairman, you will find, by referring to the ‘Pall Mall Gazette’ of August 17th, 1871, having received a letter from Mr. Bass on the subject of the length of time that the servants of the company were engaged in labour, and their inadequate remuneration, made the following remarks:—“He (Mr. Bass) is treading on very delicate ground. The remuneration of labour, the value of which, like the value of gold itself, depends altogether on the one great universal law of supply and demand, is a question on which there is very little room for sentiment. He, as a very successful tradesman, knows very well how much the success of commercial operations depends on the observance of that law; and we, sitting here as your representatives, cannot altogether close our eyes to it.”
Now it is quite worth your while to hunt out that number of the ‘Pall Mall Gazette’ in any of your free libraries, because a quaint chance in the placing of the type has produced a lateral comment on these remarks of Mr. W. P. Price, M.P.
Take your carpenter’s rule, apply it level under the words, “Great Universal Law of Supply and Demand,” and read the line it marks off in the other column of the same page. It marks off this, “In Khorassan one-third of the whole population has perished from starvation, and at Ispahan no less than 27,000 souls.”
Of course you will think it no business of yours if people are starved in Persia. But the Great “Universal” Law of Supply and Demand may some day operate in the same manner over here; and even in the Mud-and-Flat-fish period, John Bull may not like to have his belly flattened for him to that extent.
You have heard it said occasionally that I am not a practical person. It may be satisfactory to you to know, on the contrary, that this whole plan of mine is founded on the very practical notion of making you round persons instead of flat. Round and merry, instead of flat and sulky. And my beau-ideal is not taken from “a mechanical point of view,” but is one already realized. I saw last summer, in the flesh, as round and merry a person as I ever desire to see. He was tidily dressed—not in brown rags, but in green velveteen; he wore a jaunty hat, with a feather in it, a little on one side; he was not drunk, but the effervescence of his shrewd good-humour filled the room all about him; and he could sing like a robin. You may say “like a nightingale,” if you like, but I think robin’s singing the best, myself; only I hardly ever hear it now, for the young ladies of England have had nearly all the robins shot, to wear in their hats, and the bird-stuffers are exporting the few remaining to America.
This merry round person was a Tyrolese peasant; and I hold it an entirely practical proceeding, since I find my idea of felicity actually produced in the Tyrol, to set about the production of it, here, on Tyrolese principles; which, you will find, on inquiry, have not hitherto implied the employment of steam, nor submission to the great Universal Law of Supply and Demand, nor even Demand for the local Supply of a “Liberal” government. But they do imply labour of all hands on pure earth and in fresh air. They do imply obedience to government which endeavours to be just, and faith in a religion which endeavours to be moral. And they result in strength of limbs, clearness of throats, roundness of waists, and pretty jackets, and still prettier corsets to fit them.
I must pass, disjointedly, to matters which, in a written letter, would have been put in a postscript; but I do not care, in a printed one, to leave a useless gap in the type. First, the reference in page 11 of last number to the works of Mr. Zion Ward, is incorrect. The passage I quoted is not in the “Letter to a Friend,” price twopence, but in the “Origin of Evil Discovered,” price fourpence. (John Bolton, Steel House Lane, Birmingham.) And, by the way, I wish that booksellers would save themselves, and me, some (now steadily enlarging) trouble, by noting that the price of these Letters to friends of mine, as supplied by me, the original inditer, to all and sundry, through my only shopman, Mr. Allen, is sevenpence per epistle, and not fivepence half-penny; and that the trade profit on the sale of them is intended to be, and must eventually be, as I intend, a quite honestly confessed profit, charged to the customer, not compressed out of the author; which object may be easily achieved by the retail bookseller, if he will resolvedly charge the symmetrical sum of Tenpence per epistle over his counter, as it is my purpose he should. But to return to Mr. Ward; the correction of my reference was sent me by one of his disciples, in a very earnest and courteous letter, written chiefly to complain that my quotation totally misrepresented Mr. Ward’s opinions. I regret that it should have done so, but gave the quotation neither to represent nor misrepresent Mr. Ward’s opinions; but to show, which the sentence, though brief, quite sufficiently shows, that he had no right to have any.