about Responsibility, Free-will, and the like.' I settled all those matters for myself, before I was ten years old, by jumping up and down an awkward turn of four steps in my nursery-stairs, and considering whether it was likely that God knew whether I should jump only three, or the whole four at a time. Having settled it in my mind that He knew quite well, though I didn't, which I should do; and also whether I should fall or not in the course of the performance,-though I was altogether responsible for taking care not to,-I never troubled my head more on the matter, from that day to this. But my friends keep buzzing and puzzling about it, as if they had to order the course of the world themselves; and won't attend to me for an instant, if I ask why little girls have large shoes.

3. I don't suppose any man, with a tongue in his head, and zeal to use it, was ever left so entirely unattended to, as he grew old, by his early friends; and it is doubly and trebly strange to me, because I have lost none of my power of sympathy with them. Some are chemists; and I am always glad to hear of the last new thing in elements; some are palæontologists, and I am no less happy to know of any lately unburied beast peculiar in his bones; the lawyers and clergymen can always interest me with any story out of their courts or parishes;-but not one of them ever asks what I am about myself. If they chance to meet me in the streets of Oxford, they ask whether I am staying there. When I say, yes, they ask how I like it; and when I tell them I don't like it at all, and don't think little girls should have large shoes, they tell me I ought to read the Cours de Philosophie Positive. As if a man who had lived to be fifty-four, content with what philosophy was needful to assure him that salt was savoury, and pepper hot, could ever be made positive in his old age, in the impertinent manner of these youngsters. But positive

1 [For Ruskin on Free-will, see Vol. XVIII. p. 51 n.

his

2 [An injunction which Ruskin did not obey: see his avowal in Letter 67,

p. 663 (e).]

in a pertinent and practical manner, I have been, and shall be, with such stern and steady wedge of fact and act as time may let me drive into the gnarled blockheadism of the British mob.

4. I am free to confess I did not quite know the sort of creature I had to deal with, when I began,1 fifteen years ago, nor the quantity of ingenious resistance to practical reform which could be offered by theoretical reformers. Look, for instance, at this report of a speech of Mr. Bright's in the Times, on the subject of adulteration of food.*

"The noble lord has taken great pains upon this question, and has brought before the House a great amount of detail in connection with it. As I listened to his observations I hoped and believed that there was, though unintentional, no little exaggeration in them. Although there may be particular cases in which great harm to health and great fraud may possibly be shown, yet I think that general statements of this kind, implicating to a large extent the traders of this country, are dangerous, and are almost certain to be unjust. Now, my hon. friend (Mr. Pochin) who has just addressed the House in a speech showing his entire mastery of the question, has confirmed my opinion, for he has shown-and I dare say he knows as much of the matter as any present-that there is a great

* Of 6th March, not long ago, but I have lost note of the year.?

[That is, began his distinctively political work, in Unto this Last (1860).]

2 [Speech in the House of Commons on March 5, 1869, when Bright was President of the Board of Trade. Lord Eustace Cecil had moved, "That it is expedient that her Majesty's Government should give their earliest attention to the widespread and most reprehensible practices of using false weights and measures, and of adulterating food, drink, and drugs." Bright's speech, as here quoted by Ruskin from the Times, is given in the same words in "Hansard." Where Ruskin's first dots occur, the speaker recited Lord Eustace Cecil's motion. Where the second set of dots occur, Bright referred to a statement made by the Secretary of the Standards Commission reporting that the convictions for fraudulent weights and measures were few. The fact that this Commission was sitting was adduced as a reason against action. He pointed out that local authorities had power to institute proceedings against offenders, and that the rarity of such action tended to show that the evil had been much exaggerated. At the end of the speech, Bright explained that the Government could not take immediate action, invited private members to produce a Bill, said that previous legislation had been a failure, and added, "I regard these subjects as about the most difficult, and at the same time, I think, about the least advantageous to which any Party can devote itself." Froude had previously called attention to Bright's speech in an article in Fraser's Magazine for January 1870, entitled "England and her Colonies," now reprinted in Short Studies upon Great Subjects, 1891, vol. ii. pp. 196, 197. For other references to it, see Vol. XX. p. 111 n. ; and Fors, Letter 74, § 11 (Vol. XXIX. p. 39).]

deal of exaggeration in the opinions which have prevailed in many parts of the country, and which have even been found to prevail upon the matter in this House. Now, I am prepared to show, that the exaggeration of the noble lord-I do not say intentionally, of course; I am sure he is incapable of that-is just as great in the matter of weights and measures as in that of adulteration. Probably he is not aware that in the list of persons employing weights that are inaccurate-I do not say fraudulent-no distinction is drawn between those who are intentionally fraudulent and those who are accidentally inaccurate, and that the penalty is precisely the same, and the offence is just as eagerly detected, whether there be a fraud or merely an accident. Now, the noble lord will probably be surprised when I tell him that many persons are fined annually, not because their weights are too small, but because they are too large. In fact, when the weights are inaccurate, but are in favour of the customer, still the owner and user of the weight is liable to the penalty, and is fined. . . . My own impression with regard to this adulteration is that it arises from the very great, and perhaps inevitable, competition in business; and that to a great extent it is promoted by the ignorance of customers. As the ignorance of customers generally is diminishing, we may hope that before long the adulteration of food may also diminish. The noble lord appears to ask that something much more extensive and stringent should be done by Parliament. The fact is, it is vain to attempt by the power of Parliament to penetrate into and to track out evils such as those on which the noble lord has dwelt at such length. It is quite impossible that you should have the oversight of the shops of the country by inspectors, and that you should have persons going into shops to buy sugar, pickles, and Cayenne pepper, to get them analyzed, and then raise complaints against shopkeepers, and bring them before the magistrates. If men in their private businesses were to be tracked by Government officers and inspectors every hour of the day, life would not be worth having, and I recommend them to remove to another country, where they would not be subject to such annoyance."

5. Now, I neither know, nor does it matter to the public, what Mr. Bright actually said; but the report in the Times is the permanent and universally influential form of his sayings: and observe what the substance is, of these three or four hundred Parliamentary words, so reported.

First. That an evil which has been exaggerated ought not to be prevented.

Secondly. That at present we punish honest men as much as rogues; and must always continue to do so if we punish anybody.

Thirdly. That life would not be worth having if one's weights and measures were liable to inspection.

XXVIII.

B

2

I can assure Mr. Bright that people who know what life means, can sustain the calamity of the inspection of their weights and measures with fortitude. I myself keep a tea-and-sugar shop.' I have had my scales and weights inspected more than once or twice, and am not in the least disposed to bid my native land good-night on that account. That I could bid it nothing but good-night— never good-morning, the smoke of it quenching the sun, and its parliamentary talk, of such quality as the above, having become darkness voluble,3 and some of it worse even than that, a mere watchman's rattle, sprung by alarmed constituencies of rascals when an honest man comes in sight, -these are things indeed which should make any man's life little worth having, unless he separate himself from the scandalous crowd; but it must not be in exile from his country.

6. I have not hitherto stated, except in general terms, the design to which these letters point, though it has been again and again defined, and it seems to me explicitly enough-the highest possible education, namely, of English men and women living by agriculture in their native land. Indeed, during these three past years I have not hoped to do more than make my readers feel what mischiefs they have to conquer. It is time now to say more clearly what I want them to do.

The substantial wealth of man consists in the earth he cultivates, with its pleasant or serviceable animals and plants, and in the rightly produced work of his own hands. I mean to buy, for the St. George's Company, the first pieces of ground offered to me at fair price (when the subscriptions enable me to give any price),-to put them as rapidly as possible into order, and to settle upon them as many families as they can support, of young and healthy persons, on the condition that they do the best they can for

1 [See Letter 48, § 4 (below, p. 204).]

3

2 [Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, i. 13.]

Ruskin in his copy marked these lines for special emphasis.]

their livelihood with their own hands, and submit themselves and their children to the rules written for them.

I do not care where the land is, nor of what quality. I would rather it should be poor, for I want space more than food. I will make the best of it that I can, at once, by wage-labour, under the best agricultural advice. It is easy now to obtain good counsel, and many of our landlords would willingly undertake such operations occasionally, but for the fixed notion that every improvement of land should at once pay, whereas the St. George's Company is to be consistently monastic in its principles of labour, and to work for the redemption of any desert land, without other idea of gain than the certainty of future good to others. I should best like a bit of marsh land of small value, which I would trench into alternate ridge and canal, changing it all into solid land, and deep water, to be farmed in fish. If, instead, I get a rocky piece, I shall first arrange reservoirs for rain, then put what earth is sprinkled on it into workable masses; and ascertaining, in either case, how many mouths the gained spaces of ground will easily feed, put upon them families chosen for me by old landlords, who know their people, and can send me cheerful and honest ones, accustomed to obey orders, and live in the fear of God. Whether the fear be Catholic, or Church-ofEngland, or Presbyterian, I do not in the least care, so that the family be capable of any kind of sincere devotion;' and conscious of the sacredness of order. If any young couples of the higher classes choose to accept such rough life, I would rather have them for tenants than any others.

Tenants, I say, and at long lease, if they behave well: with power eventually to purchase the piece of land they live on for themselves, if they can save the price of it; the rent they pay, meanwhile, being the tithe of the annual produce, to St. George's fund. The modes of the cultivation

1 [For other passages in which Ruskin insists on sincerity of belief as more important than form of creed, see below, p. 79; and Letter 30, § 3 (Vol. XXVII. p. 547 and n.).]