ten. He calls the science of political economy, soi-disant," based as he says it is, "on the idea that an advantageous code of social action may be determined irrespectively of the influence of social affection." On this he observes, "I neither impugn nor doubt the conclusions of the science, if its terms are accepted. I am simply uninterested in them, as I should be in those of a science of gymnastics which assumed that men had no skeletons. It might be shown on that supposition, that it would be advantageous to roll the students up into pellets, flatten them into cakes, or stretch them into cables; and that when these results were effected the re insertion of the skeleton would be attended with various inconveniences to their constitution. The reasonings might be admirable, and the conclusions true, and the science deficient only in applicability. Modern political economy stands on a precisely similiar basis. Assuming, not that the human being has no skeleton, but that it is all skeleton, it founds an ossifiant theory of progress on this negation of a soul. And having shown the utmost that may be made of bones, and constructed a number of interesting geometrical figures with death's heads and humeri, successfully proves the inconvenience of the reappearance of a soul among these corpuscular structures. I do not deny the truth of this theory; I simply deny its applicability to the present phase of the world." He claims that this "soi-disant science" of political economy treats the working man or the servant as though he were a machine whose motive power might be "steam, gravitation, magnetism, or any other agent of calculable force." "But," he says, "he being on "he being on the contrary an engine whose motive power is a soul, the force of this very peculiar agent as an unknown quantity, enters into all the political economist's equations, without his knowledge, and falsifies every one of his results. The largest quantity of work will not be done by this curious en

gine for pay, or under pressure, or by the help of any kind of fuel which may be applied by the chaldron. It will be done only when the motive, that is to say, the will, or spirit of the creature, is brought to its greatest strength by its own proper fuel; namely, by the affections."

This position is cardinal with him. But he does not claim originality for it. He claims rather a noble and ancient advocacy of it, that of Plato, and Aristotle, and Cicero, and Horace, and Moses, and Christ. "The Roots of Honor strike themselves into this soil, and they do not draw their substance, therefore, from selfishness, but from self-sacrifice, so that the merchant can never be honored as the soldier is, or the physician, till he holds his life and his fortune, upon due occasion, in jeopardy for his community and his country. If in case of national peril men are willing to put their bodies in the front rank of battle for the love of their country, men should also be willing to put their fortunes at the disposal of the national treasury, refusing interest.

In this connection still you must be asked to hear his conclusion to the chapter entitled "The Veins of Wealth." It is a marvellously beautiful bit of English, and its teachings should not be unpalatable.

"In fact it may be discovered that the true veins of wealth are purple - and not in the Rock, outcome and consummation of all wealth is in but in the Flesh-perhaps even that the final the producing of as many as possible fullbreathed, bright-eyed, and happy hearted human creatures. Our modern wealth, I think, has rather a tendency the other way-most political economists appearing to consider multitudes of human creatures not conducive to wealth, or at least conducive to it only by remaining in a dim-eyed and narrow-chested state of being. Nevertheless, it is open, I repeat, to serious question, which I leave to the reader's pondering, whether, among national manufactures, that of souls of a good quality may not turn out a quite leadingly lucrative one? Nay, in some far-away and yet undreamt-of hour, I can even imagine that England may cast all thoughts of possessive wealth back to the barbaric nations among whom they first arose; and that while the sands of Indus, and adamant of Golconda may yet stiffen the housings of the

charger and flash from the turban of the slave, she, as a Christain mother, may at least attain

to the virtues and the treasures of a heathen one, and be able to lead forth her sons, saying, -These are my Jewels."

In "Munera Pulveris" there is given his definitions of wealth, money, and riches. In the preface to this book he says with a sort of reckless candor as regards his own estimate of his own work, "The following pages contain, I believe, the first accurate analysis of the laws of political economy which have been published in England." He claims that the "Fine Arts" are products of the highest industry, and that no one unacquainted with them could make an exhaustive examination of the subject. More than once he makes rare sport of John Stuart Mill, flatly contradicting him, or reducing him to an interrogation point, or still worse to an absurdity, according as his mood and the occasion may direct. But Mill is only one of many for whose great names Mr. Ruskin has no reverence. He bunches the whole school of modern political economists together under the charge that they are, "without exception, incapable of apprehending the nature of intrinsic value at all."

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Emphasis is laid upon these definitions of wealth, money, and riches. Wealth consists of things in themselves valuable; inoney, of documentary claims to the possession of such things; and riches is a relative term, expressing the magnitude of the possessions of one person or society as compared with those of other persons It follows that "the or societies." study of wealth belongs to natural science; of money, to commercial science; and of riches, to moral science." It is infinitely and diabolically stupid in the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Goldwin Smith, and John Stuart Mill, and the press writers generally to imagine that the increase of money is the increase of wealth, or of prosperity. "If all the money in the world," he says, "notes and gold, were destroyed in an instant, it would leave the world neither richer nor poorer

than it was. But it would leave the individual inhabitants of it in different relations."

Riches being relative, the correlative is poverty. The question of getting rich is simply that of creating an inequality in one's own favor. The ways of doing this involve highly moral questions. In the case of the multi-millionaire, for instance, you have to ascertain not only how he came to be such, but how the correlative paupers, or pinched day-laborers all around him came to be such.

In the chapter on " Store Keeping" we are taught with much persuasion, and a good deal of reason, that the store-keeper has no right to speculate; but that he has a right to be paid for his trouble in transferring articles of value from the man who does not want them to the one who does.

In the chapter on "Commerce," his radical free trade principles get themselves well hinted at. Here characteristic quotations are due to the reader.

"It will be discovered in due course of time

and tide that international value is regulated just as inter-provincial or inter-parishional value 18. Coals and hops are exchanged between Northumberland and Kent on absolutely the same principles as iron and wine between Lancashire and Spain. The greater breadth of an of the sea increases the cost, but does not modify the principle of exchange; and a bargain writthe principle of ten in two languages will have no other economical results than a bargain written in one. The distances of nations are measured not by termined not by dialects but by enmities. seas but by ignorance; and their divisions de

One law of international value is maintainable

in any form; namely, that the farther your bound to be true in your dealing with him ; neighbor lives from you, the more you are because your power over him is greater in proportion to his ignorance, and his remedy more difficult in proportion to his distance"

Now we may call that with equal propriety international economy, or free-trade, or a Ruskinian rendering of the Golden Rule.

Here is an exceedingly choice bit of satire on the subject of debt and war. Professor Faucett, it seems, had been teaching English capitalists that the national indebtedness incurred by wars, and the consequent necessity of bor

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rowing laid upon the nation, was the proper and wholesome solution of the question of the investment of their capital. Led by this teaching, the capitalists, so Ruskin moralizes, "when they do not know what to do with their money, persuade the peasants in various countries, that the said peasants want guns to shoot each other with. The peasants accordingly borrow guns, out of the manufacture of which the capitalists get a percentage, and the men of science much amusement and credit. Then the peasants shoot a certain number of each other till they get tired; and burn each other's homes down in various places. Then they put the guns back in arsenals, towers, etc., in ornamental patterns; (and the victorious party puts also some ragged flags in the churches.) And then the capitalists tax both parties annually ever afterward to pay interest on the loan of the guns and gunpowder. And that is what capitalists call knowing what to do with their money;' and what commercial men generally call practical' as opposed to 'sentimental' political economy."

One other point of great moment must be named. Ruskin reinforces the Mosaic law against interest, or the Increasing of capital by lending it. interest is usury, and usury is theft. For a long time, he says, this problem of interest baffled him, but he wrought it out at last to his satisfaction with the help of a Mr. W. C. Sillar, though he greatly regrets the impatience that causes Mr. Sillar to regard usury as the capital crime in political economy. He thinks there are others worse that act with it. His definition of interest, apart from compensation for risk, is this: "The exponent of the comfort of accomplished labor, separated from its power, the power being what is lent." That is, the lender gets the comfort due to work without doing the work; he gets something for nothing. But there is an objection; without inter

est men would not save, and capital would not accumulate. Have men, then, not even the prudence of mice, "to hoard for use and not for usury, and lay by something for winter nights, in expectation rather of sharing than of lending the scrapings? My Savoyard squirrels would pass a pleasant time of it under the snowladen pine branches if they always declined to economise because no one would pay them interest on nuts. For further material upon this question reference must be made especially to the 68th "Fors." A half dozen lines from it must suffice as giving his own summary of the matter. "In all pos-^ sible or conceivable cases, the moment our capital is increased by having lent it, be it but in the estimation of a hair, that hair's breadth of increase is usury, just as much as stealing a farthing is theft, no less than stealing | a million."

Since rent is but a form of interest, the tenant should own the house when by his monthly payments of rent he has returned to the capitalist his principal with compensation for trouble and risk; but no increase of the capital itself, for that is usury.

What appalling, and possibly beneficient, revolutions such economy would work among our big millionaires and our small shop-keepers and farmers must be left for the most part to the imaginations of such as are capable of dreaming on such subjects. But before leaving the question, here is an application of the multiplication table to help the dreams. One million dollars at compound interest, at six per cent., doubles in less than twelve years. In less than twenty-four years it is four millions; in less than thirty-six, eight; in less than forty-eight, sixteen; in less than sixty, thirty-two; in less than seventy-two, sixty-four; in less than eighty-four, one hundred and twenty-eight; in less than ninety-six, two hundred and fifty-six millions! Now while this million is becoming two hundred and fifty-six millions,

what are the father and son and grandson doing? Either scraping along on the interest of some other hoarded million or more, or else living as misers and compounding it likewise. Be sure they are not earning a cent, or adding a nickel to the national wealth. Such mathematics has the effect at the very least of turning one back for a second reading of the 68th "Fors," and also of the 25th chapter of Leviticus, verses 25 to 38. At any rate our political economy seems to be running about as follows: monopoly, speculation, interest, multi-millionaires, multi-millions of the poor and of paupers, and of people that are pinched.

As to Ruskin's influence. He is considered an enigma by some; a charlatan by some; an "irresponsible joker" by some; and a prophet, all but inspired, by increasing numbers. His father was a wine merchant, and was horrified at his son's political heresies. Carlyle was delighted when Ruskin raised his voice, for hitherto he had felt himself alone in the wilderness, like a veritable John the Baptist, crying aloud and sparing not; now he had found more than an echo. The estimate of the editor of The London Daily Chronicle has already been quoted at length to the effect that Ruskin is the greatest and most scientific of political economists. We are told that the sale of his books is increasing year by year. In many places there are Ruskin clubs, and one is reported, the members of which rise at seven o'clock in the morning to read his works. A writer in the National Review, for February, '95, says that the old political economy stands not where it did, and that Ruskin and Carlyle have been dissolvent forces. Most of the practical things for which Ruskin pleaded while others hooted, such as government training-schools for youth, government work-shops for the unemployed, compulsory labor for the idle, and government provision for the old and destitute, have either been incorporated, in one way or another,

into the social workings of England, (so Mr. E. T. Cook says in the article referred to,) or have passed from the region of "Ruskinian sentiment" to that of parliamentary debate. The state is beginning to look to her "soldiers of the plowshare" as well as to her "soldiers of the sword." The agitation for a living wage has its inception in Ruskin's teachings, and not a little of the land question agitation also may be traced to him, for he says the land should belong to him who can and will use it. 'Property to whom proper."

In 1885, Tennyson, Browning, Lowell, Holmes, Bishops Lightfoot and Westcott, many University Professors, and the Head Masters of many schools united in the presentation of a complimentary address to Ruskin. The following paragraph conveys their estimate of him:

"Those of us who have made special study of economic and social subjects desire to convey to you our deep sense of the value of your work in these subjects, pre-eminently in its enforcement of the doctrines: (1). That political economy can furnish sound laws to national life and work only when it respects the dignity and moral worth of man. (2). That the wide use of wealth in developing a complete human life is of incomparably greater moment, both to men and nations, than its production or accumulation, and can alone give these any vital significance. (3). That honourable performance of duty is more truly just than rigid enforcement of right, and that not in competition but in helpfulness, not in self assertion, but in reverence, is to be found the power of life."

With the assurance of such names the writer of this little paper promises "veins of wealth," not of money surely, nor of riches in the vulgar sense, to such as will go down into the Ruskin mine, and dig there. Our conclusion shall be our great man's own conclusion of "Unto this Last:"

"And if, on due and honest thought over these things, it seems that the kind of existence to which men are now summoned by every plea of pity and claim of right, may, for some time at least, not be a luxurious one;-consider whether, even supposing it guiltless, luxury would be desired by any of us, if we saw clearly at our sides the suffering that accompanies it in the world. Luxury is indeed possible in the future-innocent and exquisite; luxury for all by the help of all. But luxury at present can only be enjoyed by the ignorant. The cruellest man living could not sit at his feast unless he sat blindfold. Raise the veil bodi

ly; face the light; and if yet the light of the eye can only be through tears, and the light of the body through sackcloth, go thou forth weeping, bearing precious seed, until the time come, and the kingdom, when Christ's gift of bread and bequest of peace shall be UNTO THIS LAST even as unto thee; and when, for earth's severed multitudes of the wicked and the weary, there shall be holier reconciliation than that of the narrow home and calm economy, where the wicked cease-not from trouble, but from troubling-and the weary are at rest.” W. J. Lhamon.