Compare George Herbert, The Church Porch, Stanza 28. ↩
“ὁ Ζεὺς δήπου πένεται.”—Arist. Plut. 582. It would but weaken the grand words to lean on the preceding ones:“ὅτι τοῦ Πλούτου παρέχω βελτίονας ἄνδρας, καὶ τὴν γνώμην, καὶ τὴν ἰδέαν.” ↩
Zech. 5:11. See note on the passage, at pp. 191–2. ↩
Labour which is entirely good of its kind, that is to say, effective, or efficient, the Greeks called “weighable,” or ἄξιος, translated usually “worthy,” and because thus substantial and true, they called its price τιμή, the “honourable estimate” of it (honorarium): this word being founded on their conception of true labour as a divine thing, to be honoured with the kind of honour given to the gods; whereas the price of false labour, or of that which led away from life, was to be, not honour, but vengeance; for which they reserved another word, attributing the exaction of such price to a peculiar goddess called Tisiphone, the “requiter (or quittance-taker) of death;” a person versed in the highest branches of arithmetic, and punctual in her habits; with whom accounts current have been opened also in modern days. ↩
The most accurately nugatory labour is, perhaps, that of which not enough is given to answer a purpose effectually, and which, therefore, has all to be done over again. Also, labour which fails of effect through non-cooperation. The curé of a little village near Bellinzona, to whom I had expressed wonder that the peasants allowed the Ticino to flood their fields, told me that they would not join to build an effectual embankment high up the valley, because everybody said “that would help his neighbours as much as himself.” So every proprietor built a bit of low embankment about his own field; and the Ticino, as soon as it had a mind, swept away and swallowed all up together. ↩
Observe, I say, “rearing,” not “begetting.” The praise is in the seventh season, not in σπορητός, nor in φυταλιὰ, but in ὀπώρα. It is strange that men always praise enthusiastically any person who, by a momentary exertion, saves a life; but praise very hesitatingly a person who, by exertion and self-denial prolonged through years, creates one. We give the crown “ob civem servatum,”—why not “ob civem natum”? Born, I mean, to the full, in soul as well as body. England has oak enough, I think, for both chaplets. ↩
When Mr. Mill speaks of productive consumption, he only means consumption which results in increase of capital, or material wealth. See I iii 4, and I iii 5. ↩
So also in the vision of the women bearing the ephah, before quoted, “the wind was in their wings,” not wings “of a stork,” as in our version; but “milvi,” of a kite, in the Vulgate, or perhaps more accurately still in the Septuagint, “hoopoe,” a bird connected typically with the power of riches by many traditions, of which that of its petition for a crest of gold is perhaps the most interesting. The “Birds” of Aristophanes, in which its part is principal, is full of them; note especially the “fortification of the air with baked bricks, like Babylon,” l. 550; and, again, compare the Plutus of Dante, who (to show the influence of riches in destroying the reason) is the only one of the powers of the Inferno who cannot speak intelligibly; and also the cowardliest; he is not merely quelled or restrained, but literally “collapses” at a word; the sudden and helpless operation of mercantile panic being all told in the brief metaphor, “as the sails, swollen with the wind, fall, when the mast breaks.” ↩
The value of raw material, which has, indeed, to be deducted from the price of the labour, is not contemplated in the passages referred to, Mr. Mill having fallen into the mistake solely by pursuing the collateral results of the payment of wages to middlemen. He says:—“The consumer does not, with his own funds, pay the weaver for his day’s work.” Pardon me; the consumer of the velvet pays the weaver with his own funds as much as he pays the gardener. He pays, probably, an intermediate shipowner, velvet merchant, and shopman; pays carriage money, shop rent, damage money, time money, and care money; all these are above and beside the velvet price (just as the wages of a head gardener would be above the grass price); but the velvet is as much produced by the consumer’s capital, though he does not pay for it till six months after production, as the grass is produced by his capital, though he does not pay the man who mowed and rolled it on Monday, till Saturday afternoon. I do not know if Mr. Mill’s conclusion—“the capital cannot be dispensed with, the purchasers can”—has yet been reduced to practice in the City on any large scale. ↩
Which, observe, is the precise opposite of the one under examination. The hardware theory required us to discharge our gardeners and engage manufacturers; the velvet theory requires us to discharge our manufacturers and engage gardeners. ↩
It is one very awful form of the operation of wealth in Europe that it is entirely capitalists’ wealth which supports unjust wars. Just wars do not need so much money to support them; for most of the
