On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2)

(I) "Which we are told." Can we then no more find for ourselves this writing on our hearts—or has it ceased to be legible?

164. (K) "Remunerative employment." I cannot easily express the astonishment with which I find a man of your Lordship's intelligence taking up the common phrase of "giving employment," as if, indeed, labor were the best gift which the rich could bestow on the poor. Of course, every idle vagabond, be he rich or poor, "gives employment" to some otherwise enough burdened wretch, to provide his dinner and clothes for him; and every vicious vagabond, in the destructive power of his vice, gives sorrowful occupation to the energies of resisting and renovating virtue. The idle child who litters its nursery and tears its frock, gives employment to the housemaid and seamstress; the idle woman, who litters her drawing-room with trinkets, and is ashamed to be seen twice in the same dress, is, in your Lordship's view, the enlightened supporter of the arts and manufactures of her country. At the close of your letter, my Lord, you, though in measured terms, indignantly dissent from my statement of the power of great cities for evil, and indeed I have perhaps been led, by my prolonged study of the causes of the Fall of Venice, into clearer recognition of some of these urban influences than may have been possible to your Lordship in the center of the virtues and proprieties which have been blessed by Providence in the rise of Manchester. But the Scriptural symbol of the power of temptation in the hand of the spiritual Babylon—"all kings have been drunk with the wine of her Fornication"—is perfectly literal in its exposition of the special influence of cities over a vicious, that is to say, a declining, people. They are the foci of its fornication, and the practical meaning is that the lords of the soil take the food and labor of the peasants, who are their slaves, and spend them especially in forms of luxury perfected by the definitely so-called "women of the town" who, whether East-cheap Doll, or West—much the reverse of cheap—Nell, are, both in the color which they give to the Arts, and in the tone which they give to the Manners, of the State, a literal plague, pestilence and burden to it, quite otherwise malignant and maleficent than the poor country lassie who loses her snood among the heather. And when, at last, real political economy shall exhibit the exact sources and consequences of the expenditure of the great capitals of civilization on their own indulgences, your Lordship will be furnished, in the statistics of their most splendid and most impious pleasure, with record of precisely the largest existing source of "remunerative employment"—(if that were all the poor had to ask for), next after the preparation and practice of war. I believe it is, indeed, probable that "facility of intercourse" gives the next largest quantity of occupation; and, as your Lordship rightly observes, to most respectable persons. And if the entire population of Manchester lost the use of its legs, your Lordship would similarly have the satisfaction of observing, and might share in the profits of providing, the needful machinery of porterage and stretchers. But observe, my Lord—and observe as a final and inevitable truth—that whether you lend your money to provide an invalided population with crutches, stretchers, hearses, or the railroad accommodation which is so often synonymous with the three, the tax on the use of these, which constitutes the shareholder's dividend, is a permanent burden upon them, exacted by avarice, and by no means an aid granted by benevolence.

165. (L) "Sanctioned by experience." The experience of twenty-three years, my Lord, and with the following result:—

"We have now had an opportunity of practically testing the theory. Not more than seventeen" (now twenty-three—I quote from a letter dated 1875) "years have passed since" (by the final abolition of the Usury laws) "all restraint was removed from the growth of what Lord Coke calls 'this pestilent weed,'" and we see Bacon's words verified—"the rich becoming richer, and the poor poorer, throughout the civilized world." Letter from Mr. R. Sillar, quoted in Fors Clavigera, No. 43.

(M) "Inevitable." Neither "impossible" nor "inevitable" were words of old Christian Faith. But see the closing paragraph of my letter.

(N) Before you call on me to substantiate this charge, my Lord, I should like to insert after the words, "steadily preaching," the phrase, "and politely explaining"—with the Pauline qualification, "whether by word, or our epistle."

166. (O) "The great cities of to-day are not worse than great cities always have been," I do not remember having said that they were, my Lord; I have never anticipated for Manchester a worse fate than that of Sardis or Sodom; nor have I yet observed any so mighty works shown forth in her by her ministers, as to make her impenitence less pardonable than that of Sidon or Tyre. But I used the particular expression which your Lordship supposes me to have overcharged in righteous indignation, "a boil breaking forth with blains on man and beast," because that particular plague was the one which Moses was ordered, in the Eternal Wisdom, to connect with the ashes of the Furnace—literally, no less than spiritually, when he brought the Israelites forth out of Egypt, from the midst of the Furnace of Iron. How literally, no less than in faith and hope, the smoke of "the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt," has poisoned the earth, the waters, and the living creatures, flocks and herds, and the babes that know not their right hand from their left—neither Memphis, Gomorrah, nor Cahors are themselves likely to recognize: but, as I pause in front of the infinitude of the evil that I cannot find so much as thought to follow—how much less words to speak!—a letter is brought to me which gives what perhaps may be more impressive in its single and historical example, than all the general evidence gathered already in the pages of Fors Clavigera.

167. "I could never understand formerly what you meant about usury, and about its being wrong to take interest. I said, truly, then that I 'trusted you,' meaning I knew that in such matters you did not 'opine'—and that innumerable things were within your horizon which had no place within mine.

"But as I did not understand I could only watch and ponder. Gradually I came to see a little—as when I read current facts about India—about almost every country, and about our own trade, etc. Then (one of several circumstances that could be seen more closely) among my mother's kindred in the north, I watched the ruin of two lives. They began married life together, with good prospects and sufficient means, in a lovely little nest among the hills, beyond the Rochdale smoke. Soon this became too narrow. 'A splendid trade,' more mills, frequent changes into even finer dwellings, luxurious living, ostentation, extravagance, increasing year by year, all, as now appears, made possible by usury—borrowed capital. The wife was laid in her grave lately, and her friends are thankful. The husband, with ruin threatening his affairs, is in a worse, and living, grave of evil habits."

"These are some of the loopholes through which light has fallen upon your words, giving them a new meaning, and making me wonder how I could have missed seeing it from the first. Once alive to it, I recognize the evil on all sides, and how we are entangled by it; and though I am still puzzled at one or two points, I am very clear about the principle—that usury is a deadly thing,"

Yes; and deadly always with the vilest forms of destruction both to soul and body.

168. It happens strangely, my Lord, that although throughout the seven volumes of Fors Clavigera, I never have set down a sentence without chastising it first into terms which could be literally as well as in their widest bearing justified against all controversy, you could perhaps not have found in the whole book, had your Lordship read it for the purpose, any saying quite so literally and terrifically demonstrable as this which you have chanced to select for attack. For, in the first place, of all the calamities which in their apparently merciless infliction paralyzed the wavering faith of mediæval Christendom, the "boil breaking forth into blains," in the black plagues of Florence and London, was the fatalest messenger of the fiends: and, in the second place, the broad result of the Missionary labors of the cities of Madrid, Paris, and London, for the salvation of the wild tribes of the New World, since the vaunted discovery of it, may be summed in the stem sentence—Death, by drunkenness and smallpox.

The beneficent influence of recent commercial enterprise in the communication of such divine grace, and divine blessing (not to speak of other more dreadful and shameful conditions of disease), may be studied to best advantage in the history of the two great French and English Companies, who have enjoyed the monopoly of clothing the nakedness of the Old World with coats of skins from the New.

The charter of the English one, obtained from the Crown in 1670, was in the language of modern Liberalism—" wonderfully liberal,"[130 - "The Polar World," p. 342, Longmans, 1874.] comprising not only the grant of the exclusive trade, but also of full territorial possession, to all perpetuity, of the vast lands within the watershed of Hudson's Bay. The Company at once established some forts along the shores of the great inland sea from which it derived its name, and opened a very lucrative trade with the Indians, so that it never ceased paying rich dividends to the fortunate shareholders, until towards the close of the last century.

Up to this time, with the exception of the voyage of discovery which Herne (1770-71) made under its auspices to the mouth of the Coppermine River, it had done but little for the promotion of geographical discovery in its vast territory.

169. Meanwhile, the Canadian (French) fur traders had become so hateful to the Indians, that these savages formed a conspiracy for their total extirpation. Fortunately for the white men, the smallpox broke out about this time among the redskins, and swept them away as the fire consumes the parched grass of the prairies. Their unburied corpses were torn by the wolves and wild dogs, and the survivors were too weak and dispirited to be able to undertake anything against the foreign intruders. The Canadian fur traders now also saw the necessity of combining their efforts for their mutual benefit, instead of ruining each other by an insane competition; and consequently formed in 1783 a society which, under the name of the North-West Company of Canada, ruled over the whole continent from the Canadian lakes to the Rocky Mountains, and in 1806 it even crossed the barrier and established its forts on the northern tributaries of the Columbia river. To the north it likewise extended its operations, encroaching more and more upon the privileges of the Hudson's Bay Company, which, roused to energy, now also pushed on its posts further and further into the interior, and established, in 1812, a colony on the Red River to the south of Winnipeg Lake, thus driving, as it were, a sharp thorn into the side of its rival. But a power like the North-West Company, which had no less than 50 agents, 70 interpreters, and 1120 "voyageurs" in its pay, and whose chief managers used to appear at their annual meetings at Fort William, on the banks of Lake Superior, with all the pomp and pride of feudal barons, was not inclined to tolerate this encroachment; and thus, after many quarrels, a regular war broke out between the two parties, which, after two years' duration, led to the expulsion of the Red River colonists, and the murder of their governor Semple. This event took place in the year 1816, and is but one episode of the bloody feuds which continued to reign between the two rival Companies until 1821.

170. The dissension's of the fur traders had most deplorable consequences for the redskins; for both Companies, to swell the number of their adherents, lavishly distributed spirituous liquors—a temptation which no Indian can resist. The whole of the meeting-grounds of the Saskatchewan and Athabasca were but one scene of revelry and bloodshed. Already decimated by the smallpox, the Indians now became the victims of drunkenness and discord, and it was to be feared that if the war and its consequent demoralization continued, the most important tribes would soon be utterly swept away.

At length wisdom prevailed over passion, and the enemies came to a resolution which, if taken from the very beginning, would have saved them both a great deal of treasure and many crimes. Instead of continuing to swing the tomahawk, they now smoked the calumet, and amalgamated in 1821, under the name of "Hudson's Bay Company," and under the wing of the Charter.

The British Government, as a dowry to the impoverished couple, presented them with a license of exclusive trade throughout the whole of that territory which, under the name of the "Hudson's Bay and North-West territories," extends from Labrador to the Pacific, and from the Red River to the Polar Ocean.

171. Such, my Lord, have been the triumphs of the modern Evangel of Usury, Competition, and Private Enterprise, in a perfectly clear instance of their action, chosen I hope with sufficient candor, since "History," says Professor Hind, "does not furnish another example of an association of private individuals exerting a powerful influence over so large an extent of the earth's surface and administering their affairs with such consummate skill, and unwavering devotion to the original objects of their incorporation."

That original object being, of course, that poor naked America, having yet in a manner two coats, might be induced by these Christian merchants to give to him that had none?

In like manner, may any Christian householder, who has two houses or perchance two parks, ever be induced to give to him that hath none? My temper and my courtesy scarcely serve me, my Lord, to reply to your assertion of the "inevitableness" that, while half of Great Britain is laid out in hunting-grounds for sport more savage than the Indians, the poor of our cities must be swept into incestuous heaps; or into dens and caves which are only tombs disquieted, so changing the whiteness of Jewish sepulchers into the blackness of Christian ones, in which the hearts of the rich and the homes of the poor are alike as graves that appear not;—only their murmur, that sayeth "it is not enough," sounds deeper beneath us every hour; nay, the whole earth, and not only the cities of it, sends forth that ghastly cry; and her fruitful plains have become slime-pits, and her fair estuaries, gulfs of death; for us, the Mountain of the Lord has become only Golgotha, and the sound of the new song before the Throne is drowned in the rolling death-rattle of the nations, "Oh Christ; where is thy victory?"

These are thy glorious works, Mammon parent of Good,—and this the true debate, my Lord of Manchester, between the two Angels of your Church,—whether the "Dreamland" of its souls be now, or hereafter,—now, the firelight in the cave, or hereafter, the sunlight of Heaven.

172. How, my Lord, am I to receive, or reply to, the narrow concessions of your closing sentence? The Spirit of Truth was breathed even from the Athenian Acropolis, and the Law of Justice thundered even from the Cretan Sinai; but for us, He who said, "I am the Truth," said also, "I am the Way, and the Life;" and for us, He who reasoned of Righteousness, reasoned also of Temperance and Judgment to come. Is this the sincere milk of the Word, which takes the hope from the Person of Christ, and the fear from the charge of His apostle, and forbids to English heroism the perilous vision of Immortality? God be with you, my Lord, and exalt your teaching to that quality of Mercy which, distilling as the rain from Heaven—not strained as through channels from a sullen reservoir-may soften the hearts of your people to receive the New Commandment, that they Love one another. So, round the cathedral of your city, shall the merchant's law be just, and his weights true; the table of the money-changer not overthrown, and the bench of the money-lender unbroken.

And to as many as walk according to this rule, Peace shall be on them, and Mercy, and upon the Israel of God.

173. With the preceding letter must assuredly end—for the present, if not forever—my own notes on a subject of which my strength no longer serves me to endure the stress and sorrow; but I may possibly be able to collect, eventually, into more close form, the already manifold and sufficient references scattered through Fors Clavigera: and perhaps to reprint for the St. George's Guild the admirable compendium of British ecclesiastical and lay authority on the subject, collected by John Blaxton, preacher of God's Word at Osmington in Dorsetshire, printed by John Norton under the title of "The English Usurer," and sold by Francis Bowman, in Oxford, 1631. A still more precious record of the fierce struggle of usury into life among Christians, and of the resistance to it by Venice and her "Anthony,"[131 - "The dearest friend to me, the kindest man,The best conditioned and unwearied spirit,In doing courtesies; and one in whomThe ancient Roman honor more appears,Than any that draws breath in Italy."This is the Shakespearian description of that Anthony, whom the modern British public, with its new critical lights, calls a "sentimentalist and speculator!"—holding Shylock to be the real hero, and innocent victim of the drama.] will be found in the dialogue "della Usura," of Messer Speron Sperone (Aldus, in Vinegia, MDXIII.), followed by the dialogue "del Cathaio," between "Portia, sola, e fanciulla, fame, e cibo, vita, e morte, di ciascuno che la conosce," and her lover Moresini, which is the source of all that is loveliest in the Merchant of Venice. Readers who seek more modern and more scientific instruction may consult the able abstract of the triumph of usury, drawn up by Dr. Andrew Dickson White, President of Cornell University ("The Warfare of Science," H. S. King & Co., 1877), in which the victory of the great modern scientific principle, that two and two make five, is traced exultingly to the final overthrow of St. Chrysostom, St. Jerome, St. Bernard, St. Thomas Aquinas, Luther, and Bossuet, by "the establishment of the Torlonia family in Rome." A better collection of the most crushing evidence cannot be found than this, furnished by an adversary; a less petulant and pompous, but more earnest voice from America, "Usury the Giant Sin of the Age," by Edward Palmer (Perth Amboys, 1865), should be read together with it. In the meantime, the substance of the teaching of the former Church of England, in the great sermon against usury of Bishop Jewell, may perhaps not uselessly occupy one additional page of the Contemporary Review:—

174. "Usury is a kind of lending of money, or corne, or oyle, or wine, or of any other thing, wherein, upon covenant and bargaine, we receive againe the whole principall which we delivered, and somewhat more, for the use and occupying of the same; as if I lend 100 pound, and for it covenant to receive 105 pound, or any other summe, greater then was the summe which I did lend: this is that which we call usury: such a kind of bargaining as no good man, or godly man ever used. Such a kind of bargaining as all men that ever feared God's judgments have alwaies abhorred and condemned. It is filthy gaines, and a worke of darkenesse, it is a monster in nature: the overthrow of mighty kingdoms, the destruction of flourishing States, the decay of wealthy cities, the plagues of the world, and the misery of the people: it is theft, it is the murthering of our brethren, its the curse of God, and the curse of the people. This is Usury. By these signes and tokens you may know it. For wheresoever it raigneth all those mischiefes ensue.

"Whence springeth usury? Soone shewed. Even thence whence theft, murder, adultery, the plagues, and destruction of the people doe spring. All these are the workes of the divell, and the workes of the flesh. Christ telleth the Pharisees, You are of your father the divell, and the lusts of your father you will doe. Even so may it truely be sayd to the usurer, Thou art of thy father the divell, and the lusts of thy father thou wilt doe, and therefore thou hast pleasure in his workes. The divell entered into the heart of Judas, and put in him this greedinesse, and covetousnesse of game, for which he was content to sell his master. Judas's heart was the shop, the divell was the foreman to worke in it. They that will be rich fall into tentation and snares, and into many foolish and noysome lusts, which drowne men in perdition and destruction. For the desire of money is the roote of all evil. And St. John saith, Whosoever committeth sinne is of the Divell, 1 Joh. 3-8. Thus we see that the divell is the planter, and the father of usury.

"What are the fruits of usury? A. 1. It dissolveth the knot and fellowship of mankind. 2. It hardeneth man's heart. 3. It maketh men unnaturall, and bereaveth them of charity, and love to their dearest friends. 4. It breedeth misery and provoketh the wrath of God from heaven. 5. It consumeth rich men, it eateth up the poore, it maketh bankrupts, and undoeth many householders. 6. The poore occupiers are driven to flee, their wives are left alone, their children are hopelesse, and driven to beg their bread, through the unmercifull dealing of the covetous usurer.

175. "He that is an usurer, wisheth that all others may lacke and come to him and borrow of him; that all others may lose, so that he may have gaine. Therefore our old forefathers so much abhorred this trade, that they thought an usurer unworthy to live in the company of Christian men. They suffered not an usurer to be witnesse in matters of Law. They suffer him not to make a Testament, and to bestow his goods by will. When an usurer dyed, they would not suffer him to be buried in places appointed for the buriall of Christians. So highly did they mislike this unmercifull spoyling and deceiving our brethren.

"But what speak I of the ancient Fathers of the Church? There was never any religion, nor sect, nor state, nor degree, nor profession of men, but they have disliked it. Philosophers, Greekes, Latins, lawyers, divines, Catholikes, heretics; all tongues and nations have ever thought an usurer as dangerous as a theefe. The very sense of nature proves it to be so. If the stones could speak they would say as much. But some will say all kindes of usury are not forbidden. There may be cases where usury may stand with reason and equity, and herein they say so much as by wit may be devised to paint out a foule and ugly idoll, and to shadow themselves in manifest and open wickednesse. Whatsoever God sayeth, yet this or this kind of usury, say they, which is done in this or this sort, is not forbidden. It proffiteth the Commonwealth, it relieveth great numbers, the poore should otherwise perish, none would lend them. By like good reason, there are some that defend theft and murder; they say, there may be some case where it is lawful to kill or to steale; for God willed the Hebrews to rob the Ægyptians, and Abraham to kill his owne sonne Isaac. In these cases the robbery and the killing of his sonne were lawfull. So say they. Even so by the like reason doe some of our countrymen maintayne concubines, curtizans, and brothel-houses, and stand in defence of open stewes. They are (say they) for the benefit of the country, they keepe men from more dangerous inconveniences; take them away, it will be worse. Although God say, there shall be no whore of the daughters of Israel, neither shall there be a whorekeeper of the sonnes of Israel: yet these men say all manner of whoredom is not forbidden. In these and these cases it is not amisse to alow it."

"As Samuel sayd to Saul, so may we say to the usurer, Thou hast devised cases and colours to hide thy shame, but what regard hath God to thy cases? What careth He for thy reasons? the Lord would have more pleasure, if when thou heareth His voyce thou wouldest obey Him. For what is thy device against the counsell, and ordinance of God? What bold presumption is it for a mortall man to controule the commandments of immortall God? And to weigh his heavenly wisdome in the ballance of humane foolishnesse? When God sayth, Thou shalt not take usury, what creature of God art thou which canst take usury? When God maketh it unlawfull, what art thou, oh man, that sayst, it is lawfull? This is a token of a desperate mind. It is found true in thee, that Paul sayd, the love of money is the root of all ill. Thou art so given over unto the wicked Mammon, that thou carest not to doe the will of God."

Thus far, the theology of Old England. Let it close with the calm law, spoken four hundred years before Christ, α μἡ κατἑθον, μἡ ανἑλη.

USURY.[132 - Introduction to a pamphlet entitled "Usury and the English Bishops," or more fully, "Usury, its pernicious effects on English agriculture and commerce: An allegory dedicated without permission to the Bishops of Manchester, Peterborough and Rochester" (London: A. Southey, 146, Fenchurch Street, 1885). By R. J. Sillar. (See Fors Clavigera, vol. v. Letter 56.)—Ed.]

A PREFACE

176. In the wise, practical, and affectionate sermon, given from St. Mary's pulpit last autumn to the youth of Oxford, by the good Bishop of Carlisle, his Lordship took occasion to warn his eagerly attentive audience, with deep earnestness, against the crime of debt; dwelling with powerful invective on the cruelty and selfishness with which, too often, the son wasted in his follies the fruits of his father's labor, or the means of his family's subsistence; and involved himself in embarrassments which, said the Bishop, "I have again and again known to cause the misery of all subsequent life."

The sin was charged, the appeal pressed, only on the preacher's undergraduate hearers. Beneath the gallery, the Heads of Houses sate, remorseless; nor from the pulpit was a single hint permitted that any measures could be rationally taken for the protection, no less than the warning, of the youth under their care. No such suggestion would have been received, if even understood, by any English congregation of this time;—a strange and perilous time, in which the greatest commercial people of the world have been brought to think Usury the most honorable and fruitful branch, or rather perennial stem, of commercial industry.

177. But whose the fault that English congregations are in this temper, and this ignorance? The saying of mine,[133 - "Everything evil in Europe is primarily the fault of her Bishops."] which the author of this book quotes in the close of his introduction, was written by me with a meaning altogether opposite, and far more forcible, than that which it might seem to bear to a careless interpreter.[134 - "I knew, in using it, perfectly well what you meant." (Note by Mr. Sillar.)] In the present state of popular revolt against all conception and manner of authority, but more especially spiritual authority, the sentence reads as if it were written by an adversary of the Church,—a hater of its Prelacy,—an advocate of universal liberty of thought and license of crime: whereas the sentence is really written in the conviction (I might say knowledge, if I spoke without deference to the reader's incredulity) that the Pastoral Office must forever be the highest, for good or evil, in every Christian land; and that when it fails in vigilance, faith, or courage, the sheep must be scattered, and neither King nor law avail any more to protect them against the fury of their own passions, nor any human sagacity against the deception of their own hearts.

178. Since, however, these things are instantly so, and the Bishops of England have now with one accord consented to become merely the highly salaried vergers of her Cathedrals, taking care that the choristers do not play at leapfrog in the Churchyard, that the Precincts are elegantly iron-railed from the profane parts of the town, and that the doors of the building be duly locked, so that nobody may pray in it at improper times,—these things being so, may we not turn to the "every-man-his-own-Bishop" party, with its Bible Society, Missionary zeal, and right of infallible private interpretation, to ask at least for some small exposition to the inhabitants of their own country, of those Scriptures which they are so fain to put in the possession of others; and this the rather, because the popular familiar version of the New Testament among us, unwritten, seems to be now the exact contrary of that which we were once taught to be of Divine authority.

179. I place, side by side, the ancient and modern versions of the seven verses of the New Testament which were the beginning, and are indeed the heads, of all the teaching of Christ:—

Ancient

Blessed are the Poor in
Spirit, for their's is the
kingdom of Heaven.

Blessed are they that mourn,
for they shall be comforted.

Blessed are the meek, for
they shall inherit the
earth.

Blessed are they which do
hunger for righteousness,
for they shall be filled.

Blessed are the merciful, for
they shall obtain mercy.