4. Lastly,--that for the old and destitute, comfort and home should be provided; which provision, when misfortune had been by the working of such a system sifted from guilt, would be honourable instead of disgraceful to the receiver. For (I repeat this passage out of my _Political Economy of Art_, to which the reader is referred for farther detail[29]) "a labourer serves his country with his spade, just as a man in the middle ranks of life serves it with sword, pen, or lancet: if the service is less, and, therefore the wages during health less, then the reward, when health is broken, may be less, but not, therefore, less honourable; and it ought to be quite as natural and straightforward a matter for a labourer to take his pension from his parish, because he has deserved well of his parish, as for a man in higher rank to take his pension from his country, because he has deserved well of his country." [29] "The Political Economy of Art:" Addenda, p. 93. To which statement, I will only add, for conclusion, respecting the discipline and pay of life and death, that, for both high and low, Livy's last words touching Valerius Publicola, "_de publico est elatus_,"[30] ought not to be a dishonourable close of epitaph. [30] "P. Valerius, omnium consensu princeps belli pacisque artibus, anno post moritur; gloria ingenti, copiis familiaribus adeo exiguis, ut funeri sumtus deesset: de publico est elatus. Luxere matronae ut Brutum."--Lib. II. c. xvi. These things, then, I believe, and am about, as I find power, to explain and illustrate in their various bearings; following out also what belongs to them of collateral inquiry. Here I state them only in brief, to prevent the reader casting about in alarm for my ultimate meaning; yet requesting him, for the present to remember, that in a science dealing with so subtle elements as those of human nature, it is only possible to answer for the final truth of principles, not for the direct success of plans: and that in the best of these last, what can be immediately accomplished is always questionable, and what can be finally accomplished, inconceivable. _Denmark Hill, 10th May, 1862._ ESSAY I. THE ROOTS OF HONOUR. Among the delusions which at different periods have possessed themselves of the minds of large masses of the human race, perhaps the most curious--certainly the least creditable--is the modern _soi-disant_ science of political economy, based on the idea that an advantageous code of social action may be determined irrespectively of the influence of social affection.