Sesame and Lilies

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{12} Respecting the increase of rent by the deaths of the poor, for
evidence of which see the preface to the Medical Officer's report to
the Privy Council, just published, there are suggestions in its
preface which will make some stir among us, I fancy, respecting
which let me note these points following:-

There are two theories on the subject of land now abroad, and in
contention; both false.

The first is that, by Heavenly law, there have always existed, and
must continue to exist, a certain number of hereditarily sacred
persons to whom the earth, air, and water of the world belong, as
personal property; of which earth, air, and water, these persons
may, at their pleasure, permit, or forbid, the rest of the human
race to eat, to breathe, or to drink. This theory is not for many
years longer tenable. The adverse theory is that a division of the
land of the world among the mob of the world would immediately
elevate the said mob into sacred personages; that houses would then
build themselves, and corn grow of itself; and that everybody would
be able to live, without doing any work for his living. This theory
would also be found highly untenable in practice.

It will, however, require some rough experiments and rougher
catastrophes, before the generality of persons will be convinced
that no law concerning anything--least of all concerning land, for
either holding or dividing it, or renting it high, or renting it
low--would be of the smallest ultimate use to the people, so long as
the general contest for life, and for the means of life, remains one
of mere brutal competition. That contest, in an unprincipled
nation, will take one deadly form or another, whatever laws you make
against it. For instance, it would be an entirely wholesome law for
England, if it could be carried, that maximum limits should be
assigned to incomes according to classes; and that every nobleman's
income should be paid to him as a fixed salary or pension by the
nation; and not squeezed by him in variable sums, at discretion, out
of the tenants of his land. But if you could get such a law passed
to-morrow, and if, which would be farther necessary, you could fix
the value of the assigned incomes by making a given weight of pure
bread for a given sum, a twelvemonth would not pass before another
currency would have been tacitly established, and the power of
accumulated wealth would have re-asserted itself in some other
article, or some other imaginary sign. There is only one cure for
public distress--and that is public education, directed to make men
thoughtful, merciful, and just. There are, indeed, many laws
conceivable which would gradually better and strengthen the national
temper; but, for the most part, they are such as the national temper
must be much bettered before it would bear. A nation in its youth
may be helped by laws, as a weak child by backboards, but when it is
old it cannot that way strengthen its crooked spine.

And besides; the problem of land, at its worst, is a bye one;
distribute the earth as you will, the principal question remains
inexorable,--Who is to dig it? Which of us, in brief word, is to do
the hard and dirty work for the rest, and for what pay? Who is to
do the pleasant and clean work, and for what pay? Who is do no
work, and for what pay? And there are curious moral and religious
questions connected with these. How far is it lawful to suck a
portion of the soul out of a great many persons, in order to put the
abstracted psychical quantities together and make one very beautiful
or ideal soul? If we had to deal with mere blood instead of spirit,
(and the thing might literally be done--as it has been done with
infants before now)--so that it were possible, by taking a certain
quantity of blood from the arms of a given number of the mob, and
putting it all into one person, to make a more azure-blooded
gentleman of him, the thing would of course be managed; but
secretly, I should conceive. But now, because it is brain and soul
that we abstract, not visible blood, it can be done quite openly,
and we live, we gentlemen, on delicatest prey, after the manner of
weasels; that is to say, we keep a certain number of clowns digging
and ditching, and generally stupefied, in order that we, being fed
gratis, may have all the thinking and feeling to ourselves. Yet
there is a great deal to be said for this. A highly-bred and
trained English, French, Austrian, or Italian gentleman (much more a
lady), is a great production,--a better production than most
statues; being beautifully coloured as well as shaped, and plus all
the brains; a glorious thing to look at, a wonderful thing to talk
to; and you cannot have it, any more than a pyramid or a church, but
by sacrifice of much contributed life. And it is, perhaps, better
to build a beautiful human creature than a beautiful dome or
steeple--and more delightful to look up reverently to a creature far
above us, than to a wall; only the beautiful human creature will
have some duties to do in return--duties of living belfry and
rampart--of which presently.

{13} Since this was written, the answer has become definitely--No;
we having surrendered the field of Arctic discovery to the
Continental nations, as being ourselves too poor to pay for ships.

{14} I state this fact without Professor Owen's permission: which
of course he could not with propriety have granted, had I asked it;
but I consider it so important that the public should be aware of
the fact, that I do what seems to me right, though rude.

{15} That was our real idea of "Free Trade"--"All the trade to
myself." You find now that by "competition" other people can manage
to sell something as well as you--and now we call for Protection
again. Wretches!

{16} I meant that the beautiful places of the world--Switzerland,
Italy, South Germany, and so on--are, indeed, the truest cathedrals-
-places to be reverent in, and to worship in; and that we only care
to drive through them: and to eat and drink at their most sacred
places.

{17} I was singularly struck, some years ago, by finding all the
river shore at Richmond, in Yorkshire, black in its earth, from the
mere drift of soot-laden air from places many miles away.

{18} One of the things which we must very resolutely enforce, for
the good of all classes, in our future arrangements, must be that
they wear no "translated" articles of dress. See the preface.

{19} This abbreviation of the penalty of useless labour is
curiously coincident in verbal form with a certain passage which
some of us may remember. It may perhaps be well to preserve beside
this paragraph another cutting out of my store-drawer, from the
'Morning Post,' of about a parallel date, Friday, March 10th, 1865:-
"The SALONS of Mme. C-, who did the honours with clever imitative
grace and elegance, were crowded with princes, dukes, marquises, and
counts--in fact, with the same MALE company as one meets at the
parties of the Princess Metternich and Madame Drouyn de Lhuys. Some
English peers and members of Parliament were present, and appeared
to enjoy the animated and dazzlingly improper scene. On the second
floor the supper tables were loaded with every delicacy of the
season. That your readers may form some idea of the dainty fare of
the Parisian demi-monde, I copy the menu of the supper, which was
served to all the guests (about 200) seated at four o'clock. Choice
Yquem, Johannisberg, Laffitte, Tokay, and champagne of the finest
vintages were served most lavishly throughout the morning. After
supper dancing was resumed with increased animation, and the ball
terminated with a CHAINE DIABOLIQUE and a CANCAN D'ENFER at seven in
the morning. (Morning service--'Ere the fresh lawns appeared, under
the opening eyelids of the Morn.-') Here is the menu:- 'Consomme de
volaille e la Bagration: 16 hors-d'oeuvres varies. Bouchees e la
Talleyrand. Saumons froids, sauce Ravigote. Filets de boeuf en
Bellevue, timbales milanaises, chaudfroid de gibier. Dindes
truffees. Pates de foies gras, buissons d'ecrevisses, salades
venetiennes, gelees blanches aux fruits, gateaux mancini, parisiens
et parisiennes. Fromages glaces. Ananas. Dessert.'"

{20} Please observe this statement, and think of it, and consider
how it happens that a poor old woman will be ashamed to take a
shilling a week from the country--but no one is ashamed to take a
pension of a thousand a year.

{21} I am heartily glad to see such a paper as the 'Pall Mall
Gazette' established; for the power of the press in the hands of
highly educated men, in independent position, and of honest purpose,
may indeed become all that it has been hitherto vainly vaunted to
be. Its editor will therefore, I doubt not, pardon me, in that, by
very reason of my respect for the journal, I do not let pass
unnoticed an article in its third number, page 5, which was wrong in
every word of it, with the intense wrongness which only an honest
man can achieve who has taken a false turn of thought in the outset,
and is following it, regardless of consequences. It contained at
the end this notable passage:-

"The bread of affliction, and the water of affliction,--aye, and the
bedsteads and blankets of affliction, are the very utmost that the
law ought to give to OUTCASTS MERELY AS OUTCASTS." I merely put
beside this expression of the gentlemanly mind of England in 1865, a
part of the message which Isaiah was ordered to "lift up his voice
like a trumpet" in declaring to the gentlemen of his day: "Ye fast
for strife, and to smite with the fist of wickedness. Is not this
the fast that I have chosen, to deal thy bread to the hungry, and
that thou bring the poor THAT ARE CAST OUT (margin, 'afflicted') to
THY house?" The falsehood on which the writer had mentally founded
himself, as previously stated by him, was this: "To confound the
functions of the dispensers of the poor-rates with those of the
dispensers of a charitable institution is a great and pernicious
error." This sentence is so accurately and exquisitely wrong, that
its substance must be thus reversed in our minds before we can deal
with any existing problem of national distress. "To understand that
the dispensers of the poor-rates are the almoners of the nation, and
should distribute its alms with a gentleness and freedom of hand as
much greater and franker than that possible to individual charity,
as the collective national wisdom and power may be supposed greater
than those of any single person, is the foundation of all law
respecting pauperism." (Since this was written the 'Pall Mall
Gazette' has become a mere party paper--like the rest; but it writes
well, and does more good than mischief on the whole.)

{22} [Greek text which cannot be reproduced]

{23} I ought, in order to make this assertion fully understood, to
have noted the various weaknesses which lower the ideal of other
great characters of men in the Waverley novels--the selfishness and
narrowness of thought in Redgauntlet, the weak religious enthusiasm
in Edward Glendinning, and the like; and I ought to have noticed
that there are several quite perfect characters sketched sometimes
in the backgrounds; three--let us accept joyously this courtesy to
England and her soldiers--are English officers: Colonel Gardiner,
Colonel Talbot, and Colonel Mannering.

{24} Coventry Patmore. You cannot read him too often or too
carefully; as far as I know he is the only living poet who always
strengthens and purifies; the others sometimes darken, and nearly
always depress and discourage, the imagination they deeply seize.

{25} Observe, it is "Nature" who is speaking throughout, and who
says, "while she and I together live."

{26} "Joan of Arc: in reference to M. Michelet's 'History of
France.'" De Quincey's Works. Vol. iii. p. 217.

{27} I wish there were a true order of chivalry instituted for our
English youth of certain ranks, in which both boy and girl should
receive, at a given age, their knighthood and ladyhood by true
title; attainable only by certain probation and trial both of
character and accomplishment; and to be forfeited, on conviction, by
their peers, of any dishonourable act. Such an institution would be
entirely, and with all noble results, possible, in a nation which
loved honour. That it would not be possible among us, is not to the
discredit of the scheme.

{28} See note {19}

{29} That no reference should be made to religious questions.

{30} I have sometimes been asked what this means. I intended it to
set forth the wisdom of men in war contending for kingdoms, and what
follows to set forth their wisdom in peace, contending for wealth.

{31} See "The Two Paths,"--paragraph beginning "You know I said of
that great and pure..."

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