Legend
< The British Association (continued from page 10-23) >
bastinadoed and condemned to wear the wooden collar in the public market-place, but for the general conviction of his insanity. Mr. Ruskin is as bad as Pooh Pooh. For instance, he lays down the following as his first and chief canon of political economy.
That it is the duty of every man to work for an honest living.
Mr. Ruskin holds that the above is the first religious duty of man, and urges that if his religion does not teach him the above his religion is necessarily rotten at its foundation.
His next point is:
That if what a man gels his living by doing is of no real service to his fellow creatures, he is not getting an honest living at all.
In such case Mr. Ruskin argues that he is simply the means of getting money out of honest people’s pockets into his own.
Every man, says the Teacher, should analyse for himself how much of his time is employed in real honest public service. Mr. Ruskin, who is a large landowner, holds that those who get an income from land, without rendering in work the full value of the income to the public in return, either in the management or improvement of the land, or in some other way, do not get their money honestly.
Mr. Ruskin applies the same principles to usury, He argues that it is a bad and an immoral thing to charge any interest for the loan of money. He does not deny that the man who lends money on interest docs not often confer a service on the borrower, but the principle at the root of the matter is that if it costs a man nothing to do a fellow creature good he ought not to expect to be paid for doing his duty. In fact, any pious Heathen, much less a Christian, would be glad of the opportunity to do good to another, without loss to himself. Of course, a generous man will go farther, and put himself to self-sacrifice to aid another.
I do not as yet see the accuracy of Mr. Ruskin’s ideas on this question of interest. Theoretically, money is concentrated labour. A man who lives honestly turns the produce of his labour into money; when he chooses to expend the money he reconverts it into labour, just as by the law and practice of the conservation of energy heat may be converted into mechanical power, and mechanical power into heat, A savage by labour makes bows and arrows, which remain in his possession as “money,” or the results of labour. He lends them, and the borrower partly wears them out. Why should the borrower not pay for the wear and tear? It may be argued that money does not wear out. But it does, for the lender takes risk, and sometimes makes bad debts over his loans. Therefore the lending does cost him something. Why should he not be paid for risking loss of property?
The aim of civilised society should be to take care that money always represents an equivalent value of honest work done. Gradually the moral sense of society is changing, and it is to be hoped that in time it will be considered that the only honourable state of existence is one in which the individual possesses no more wealth than he has earned by honest work.
At the St. George’s Museum, Mr. Swan, the Curator, presented me with a pamphlet, from which I was surprised to learn how much attention the Fathers of the Church had given to this question of interest, as exemplified by the following extracts:—
St. Augustine on Psalm xxxvi. 26 says:—“If you lend your money to a man from whom you expect more than you gave—not money alone, but anything else, whether it be wheat, wine, oil, or any other article—if you expect to receive any more than you gave you are a usurer, and in that respect reprehensible, not praiseworthy.”
St. Jerome on Ezekiel xviii. 410 says:—“Some persons imagine that usury obtains only in money; but the Scriptures, foreseeing this, have exploded every increase, so that you cannot receive more than you gave.”
St. Ambrose, on the book of Tobias, xiv. 390, says: —“Many persons evading the precepts of the law, when they give money to merchants, require the usury, not in money, but take some of their goods in payment of the usury, therefore let them hoar what saith the law: ‘You shall not,’ it says, ‘receive the usury of food, nor of anything else ’ (Deut. xxii. 19). The victuals is usury, the cloth is usury, whatever is added to the principal is usury, whatever name you give it is usury.”
Basil the Great, on Psalm xv., says Ezekiel, in the eighteenth chapter, classes usury, or receiving more than the principal, with the greatest crimes.
The Catechism of the Romish Church defines that “to receive any more than the sum lent is rapine— the counsel that we are expressly commanded by our Lord not to expect any more than the sum lent: to receive this increase is a sin against the seventh commandment; to expect it is against the tenth. As the usurers, or interest men, both expect and receive more than the capital, or sum lent, are they not habitual violators of the express commands of God?”
Mr. Ruskin s great point is, that were his ideas about rent and interest acted upon by everybody, the whole nation, would be happier and better, and many people prevented from leading idle lives. He therefore formed the St. George’s Guild to put his ideas into practice. The Guild is established to purchase, or to obtain by gift, as much land as posable; the rent of the land and of the buildings upon it are entirely devoted to the benefit of the people who are working upon the land; none of it goes to any private person. The St. George’s Museum is one of the public benefits kept up by the application of the rents. It has been established four years, and has over sixty or seventy students, most of whom come long distances. There are facilities in the Museum for learning mineralogy, zoology, and botany; each object on view is selected to illustrate a special step in each science; thus the learners are not confused by a multiplicity of objects; the few on view are good, and some of them of great value. The whole collection is contained in one small room. A few specimens of artistic work adorn the walls; more especially attractive is a copy of a portion of the painting of St. George and the Dragon, in St. Mark’s Cathedral, Venice. There is a look of intense earnestness on the face of St. George; he seems to be one who has a determined purpose in life, or, as a Sheffield artisan said when lie saw it, “That fellow means business.”
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