LETTER 70

PROPERTY TO WHOM PROPER1

1. I HAVE been not a little pestered this month by the quantities of letters, which I can't wholly cure myself of the weakness of reading, from people who fancy that, like other political writers of the day, I print, on the most important subjects, the first thing that comes into my head: and may be made immediately to repent of what I have said, and generally to see the error of my ways, by the suggestions of their better judgment.

Letters of this sort do not surprise me if they have a Scottish postmark, the air of Edinburgh having always had a curiously exciting quality, and amazing power over weak heads; but one or two communications from modest and thoughtful English friends have seriously troubled me by the extreme simplicity of their objections to statements which, if not acceptable, I had at least hoped would have been intelligible to them.

2. I had, indeed, expected difficulty in proving to my readers the mischievousness of Usury; but I never thought to find confusion in their minds between Property itself, and its Interest. Yet I find this singular confusion at the root of the objections made by most of my cavilling correspondents: "How are we to live" (they say) "if, when we have saved a hundred pounds, we can't make a hundred and five of them, without any more trouble?"

Gentlemen and ladies all,-you are to live on your hundred pounds, saved; and if you want five pounds more,

["Property" and "The A B C of Property" were rejected titles for this Letter. For passages originally intended for the beginning of the Letter, see Appendix 17, Vol. XXIX. p. 570.]

You must go and work for five pounds more; just as a nan who hasn't a hundred pounds must work for the first

ive he gets.

The following sentence, written by a man of real economical knowledge, expresses, with more than usual precision, che common mistake: "I much fear if your definition of Usury be correct, which is to the effect that it is a sin to derive money from the possession of capital, or otherwise than by our own personal work. Should we follow this proposition to its final logical conclusion, we must preach communism pure and simple, and contend that property is theft,-which God forbid.”

To this correspondent I answered briefly, "Is my house not my property unless I let it for lodgings, or my wife not my property unless I prostitute her?"

3. But I believe it will be well, though I intended to enter on other matters this month, to repeat instead once more, in the shortest and strongest terms I can find, what I have now stated at least a hundred times' respecting the eternal nature and sanctity of "Property."

A man's "Property," the possession "proper" to himhis own, rightly so called, and no one else's on any pretence of their's-consists of,

A, The good things,

B, Which he has honestly got,

C, And can skilfully use.

That is the A B C of Property.

It

A. It must consist of good things-not bad ones. is rightly called therefore a man's "Goods," not a man's "Bads."

If you have got a quantity of dung lodged in your drains, a quantity of fleas lodged in your bed, or a quantity of nonsense lodged in your brains,—that is not "Property," but the reverse thereof; the value to you of your drains, bed, and brains being thereby diminished, not increased.

1 [See, for instance, Letters 5, 25, 28 (Vol. XXVII. pp. 90-95, 470, 521).]

Can you understand that much, my practical friend? B. It must be a good thing, honestly got. Nothing that you have stolen or taken by force, nor anything that your fathers stole or took by force, is your property. Nevertheless, the benignant law of Nature concerning any such holding, has always been quite manifestly that you may keep it if you can,-so only that you acknowledge that and none other to be the condition of tenure.†

Can you understand that much more, my practical friend? C. It must be not only something good, and not only something honestly got, but also something you can skilfully use.

For, as the old proverb, "You can't eat your pudding and have it," is utterly true in its bearing against Usury,so also this reverse of it is true in confirmation of property —that you can't "have" your pudding unless you can eat it. It may be composed for you of the finest plums, and paid for wholly out of your own pocket; but if you can't stomach it-the pudding is not for you. Buy the finest horse on four legs, he is not "proper" to you if you can't ride him. Buy the best book between boards,—Horace, or Homer, or Dante,-and if you don't know Latin, nor Greek, nor Christianity, the paper and boards are yours indeed, but the books-by no means.

You doubt this, my practical friend?

4. Try a child with a stick of barley-sugar;-tell him it is his, but he mustn't eat it; his face will express to you the fallaciousness of that principle of property in an unmistakable manner. But by the time he grows as old and

* I suppose myself, in the rest of this letter, to be addressing a "business man of the nineteenth century."

†Thus, in the earlier numbers of Fors, I have observed more than once,? to the present landholders of England, that they may keep their lands-if they can! Only let them understand that trial will soon be made, by the Laws of Nature, of such capacity in them.

1 [Compare Munera Pulveris, § 14 (Vol. XVII. p. 154).]

2 [For references to the land question in the earlier numbers of Fors, see Vol. XXVII. pp. 30, 191, 233, 291, 368, 379-380, 471.]

stupid as you, perhaps he will buy barley-sugar that he can't taste, to please the public.

"I've no pleasure in that picture of Holman Hunt's,' said a highly practical man of business to a friend of mine the other day, "nor my wife neither, for that matter; but I always buy under good advice as to market value; and one's collection isn't complete without one."

I am very doubtful, my stupid practical friend, whether you have wit enough to understand a word more of what I have got to say this month. However, I must say it on the chance. And don't think I am talking sentiment or metaphysics to you. This is the practicallest piece of lessoning you ever had in your days, if you can but make it out; that you can only possess wealth according to your own capacity of it. An ape can only have wealth of nuts, and a dog of bones,* an earth-worm of earth, a charnel-worm of flesh, a West-end harlot of silk and champagne, an East-end harlot of gauze and gin, a modern average fine lady of such meat and drink, dress, jewels, and furniture, as the vile tradesmen of the day can provide, being limited even in the enjoyment of these, for the greater part of what she calls "hers," she wears or keeps, either for the pleasure of others, if she is good, or for their mortification, if she is wicked, but assuredly not for herself. When I buy a missal, or a picture, I buy it for myself, and expect everybody to say to me, What a selfish brute you are! But when a lady walks about town with three or four yards of silk tied in a bundle behind her, she doesn't see it herself, or benefit by it herself: she carries it for the benefit of beholders.

When she has put all her

* A masterless_dog, I should have written, but wanted to keep my sentence short and down to my practical friend's capacity. For if the dog have the good fortune to find a master, he has a possession thenceforth, better than bones; and which, indeed, he will, at any moment, leave, not his meat only, but his life for.1

1 [Compare, above, p. 21.]

diamonds on in the evening, tell her to stay at home and enjoy them in radiant solitude; and the child, with his for bidden barley-sugar, will not look more blank. She carries her caparison either for the pleasure or for the mortifica tion of society; and can no more enjoy its brilliancy by herself than a chandelier can enjoy having its gas lighted.

5. We must leave out of the question, for the moment, the element of benevolence which may be latent in toilette; for the main economical result of the action of the great law that we can only have wealth according to our capacity, in modern Europe at this hour, is that the greater part of its so-called wealth is composed of things suited to the capa city of harlots and their keepers,-(including in the general term harlot, or daughter of Babylon, both the unmarried ones, and the married ones who have sold themselves for money), as of watches, timepieces, tapestries, china, and any kind of pictures or toys good for bedrooms and boudoirs; but that, of any wealth which harlots and keepers of harlots have no mind to, Europe at present takes no cognizance whatsoever.

Now, what the difference may be in the quality of property which honest and dishonest women like is-for you, my practical friend-quite an unfathomable question; but you can at least understand that all the china, timepieces, and lewd pictures, which form the main "property of Paris and her imitators, are verily, in the commercial sense of the word, property; and would be estimated as such by any Jew in any bankruptcy court; yet the harlots don't lend their china or timepieces, on usury, nor make an income out of their bed-hangings,-do they? So that you see it is perfectly possible to have property, and a very costly quantity of it, without making any profit of such capital!

* It is a very subtle and lovely one, not to be discussed hurriedly.

1 [Ruskin did not return to the question.]

2

[Psalms cxxxvii. 8; Isaiah xlvii. 1. Compare, above, p. 502.]