The real trouble is not in the interest, but in the great fortunes. That an upper limit for wealth would be a blessing to the rich, and a solid gain to the nation at large, has long been my conviction. Ruskin says it is also his “long fixed conviction that one of the most important conditions of a healthful system of social economy, would be the restraint of the properties and incomes of the upper classes within certain fixed limits. The temptation to use every energy in the accumulation of wealth being thus removed, another and a higher ideal of the duties of advanced life would be necessarily created in the national mind. By withdrawal of those who had attained the prescribed limits of wealth from commercial competition, earlier worldly success, and earlier marriage, with all its beneficent moral results, would become possible to the young; while the older men of active intellect, whose sagacity is now lost or warped in the furtherance of their own meanest interest, would be induced unselfishly to occupy themselves in the superintendence of public institutions or furtherance of public advantage. And out of this class it would be found natural and prudent always to choose the members of the legislative body of the Commons; and to attach to the order also some peculiar honours, in the possession of which such complacency would be felt as would more than replace the unworthy satisfaction of being supposed richer than others, which to many men is the principal charm of their wealth. And although no law of this purport would ever be imposed on themselves by the actual upper classes, there is no hindrance to its being gradually brought into force from beneath, without any violent or impatient proceedings.”[97] As a type of Ruskin’s satirical humour in controversy we will indulge ourselves with an extract from his argument with the late Bishop of Manchester on usury. Ruskin publicly challenged Dr. Fraser to the encounter. The Bishop had somewhat sensibly remarked that religious sanctions ought not to be imposed in cases which they never originally contemplated, referring to Leviticus on usury. Ruskin replies: