113. Now I want you to observe here, in a definite case, the working of your beautiful modern political economy of "supply and demand." Here is a man who could have "supplied" you with good and entertaining art,—say for fifty good years,—if you had paid him enough for his day's work to find him and his children peacefully in bread. But you like having your prints as cheap as possible—you triumph in the little that your laugh costs—you take all you can get from the man, give the least you can give to him,—and you accordingly kill him at thirty-nine; and thereafter have his children to take care of, or to kill also, whichever you choose; but, now, observe, you must take care of them for nothing, or not at all; and what you might have had good value for, if you had given it when it would have cheered the father's heart, you now can have no return for at all, to yourselves; and what you give to the orphans, if it does not degrade them, at least afflicts, coming, not through their father's hand, its honest earnings, but from strangers.
Observe, farther, whatever help the orphans may receive, will not be from the public at all. It will not be from those who profited by their father's labors; it will be chiefly from his fellow-laborers; or from persons whose money would have been beneficially spent in other directions, from whence it is drawn away to this need, which ought never to have occurred,—while those who waste their money without doing any service to the public will never contribute one farthing to this distress.
114. Now it is this double fault in the help—that it comes too late, and that the burden of it falls wholly on those who ought least to be charged with it—which would be corrected by that institution of overseers of which I spoke to you in the twelfth of these letters, saying, you remember, that they were to have farther legal powers, which I did not then specify, but which would belong to them chiefly in the capacity of public almoners, or help-givers, aided by their deacons, the reception of such help, in time of true need, being not held disgraceful, but honorable; since the fact of its reception would be so entirely public that no impostor or idle person could ever obtain it surreptitiously.
115. (11th April.) I was interrupted yesterday, and I am glad of it, for here happens just an instance of the way in which the unjust distribution of the burden of charity is reflected on general interests; I cannot help what taint of ungracefulness you or other readers of these letters may feel that I incur, in speaking, in this instance, of myself. If I could speak with the same accurate knowledge of any one else, most gladly I would; but I also think it right that, whether people accuse me of boasting or not, they should know that I practise what I preach. I had not intended to say what I now shall, but the coming of this letter last night just turns the balance of the decision with me. I enclose it with the other; you see it is one from my bookseller, Mr. Quaritch, offering me Fischer's work on the Flora of Java, and Latour's on Indian Orchidaceæ, bound together, for twenty guineas. Now, I am writing a book on botany just now, for young people, chiefly on wild flowers, and I want these two books very much; but I simply cannot afford to buy them, because I sent my last spare twenty guineas to Mr. Shields yesterday for this widow. And though you may think it not the affair of the public that I have not this book on Indian flowers, it is their affair finally, that what I write for them should be founded on as broad knowledge as possible; whatever value my own book may or may not have, it will just be in a given degree worth less to them, because of my want of this knowledge.
116. So again—for having begun to speak of myself I will do so yet more frankly—I suppose that when people see my name down for a hundred pounds to the Cruikshank Memorial, and for another hundred to the Eyre Defense Fund, they think only that I have more money than I know what to do with. Well, the giving of those subscriptions simply decides the question whether or no I shall be able to afford a journey to Switzerland this year, in the negative; and I wanted to go, not only for health's sake, but to examine the junctions of the molasse sandstones and nagelfluh with the Alpine limestone, in order to complete some notes I meant to publish next spring on the geology of the great northern Swiss valley; notes which must now lie by me at least for another year; and I believe this delay (though I say it) will be really something of a loss to the traveling public, for the little essay was intended to explain to them, in a familiar way, the real wonderfulness of their favorite mountain, the Righi; and to give them some amusement in trying to find out where the many-colored pebbles of it had come from. But it is more important that I should, with some stoutness, assert my respect for the genius and earnest patriotism of Cruikshank, and my much more than disrespect for the Jamaica Committee, than that I should see the Alps this year, or get my essay finished next spring; but I tell you the fact, because I want you to feel how, in thus leaving their men of worth to be assisted or defended only by those who deeply care for them, the public more or less cripple, to their own ultimate disadvantage, just the people who could serve them in other ways; while the speculators and money-seekers, who are only making their profit out of the said public, of course take no part in the help of anybody. And even if the willing bearers could sustain the burden anywise adequately, none of us would complain; but I am certain there is no man, whatever his fortune, who is now engaged in any earnest offices of kindness to these sufferers, especially of the middle class, among his acquaintance, who will not bear me witness that for one we can relieve, we must leave three to perish. I have left three, myself, in the first three months of this year. One was the artist Paul Gray, for whom an appeal was made to me for funds to assist him in going abroad out of the bitter English winter. I had not the means by me, and he died a week afterwards. Another case was that of a widow whose husband had committed suicide, for whom application was made to me at the same time; and the third was a personal friend, to whom I refused a sum which he said would have saved him from bankruptcy. I believe six times as much would not have saved him; however, I refused, and he is ruined.
117. And observe, also, it is not the mere crippling of my means that I regret. It is the crippling of my temper, and waste of my time. The knowledge of all this distress, even when I can assist it,—much more when I cannot,—and the various thoughts of what I can and cannot, or ought and ought not, to do, are a far greater burden to me than the mere loss of the money. It is peremptorily not my business—it is not my gift, bodily or mentally, to look after other people's sorrow. I have enough of my own; and even if I had not, the sight of pain is not good for me. I don't want to be a bishop. In a most literal and sincere sense, "nolo episcopari." I don't want to be an almoner, nor a counselor, nor a Member of Parliament, nor a voter for Members of Parliament. (What would Mr. Holyoake say to me if he knew that I have never voted for anybody in my life, and never mean to do so!) I am essentially a painter and a leaf dissector; and my powers of thought are all purely mathematical, seizing ultimate principles only—never accidents; a line is always, to me, length without breadth; it is not a cable or a crowbar; and though I can almost infallibly reason out the final law of anything, if within reach of my industry, I neither care for, nor can trace, the minor exigencies of its daily appliance. So, in every way, I like a quiet life; and I don't like seeing people cry, or die; and should rejoice, more than I can tell you, in giving up the full half of my fortune for the poor, provided I knew that the public would make Lord Overstone also give the half of his, and other people who were independent give the half of theirs; and then set men who were really fit for such office to administer the fund, and answer to us for nobody's perishing innocently; and so leave us all to do what we chose with the rest, and with our days, in peace.
Thus far of the public's fault in the matter. Next, I have a word or two to say of the sufferers' own fault—for much as I pity them, I conceive that none of them do perish altogether innocently. But this must be for next letter.
LETTER XX.
OF IMPROVIDENCE IN MARRIAGE IN THE MIDDLE CLASSES; AND OF THE ADVISABLE RESTRICTIONS OF IT.