Unto This Last, and Other Essays on Political EconomyRuskin, John
General
Unto This Last, and Other Essays on Political Economy
Ruskin, John
Art; Economics
Finally, though, as above stated, every man possessing money has
usually also some property beyond what is necessary for his immediate
wants, and men possessing property usually also hold currency beyond
what is necessary for their immediate exchanges, it mainly determines
the class to which they belong, whether in their eyes the money is an
adjunct of the property, or the property of the money. In the first
case, the holder's pleasure is in his possessions, and in his money
subordinately, as the means of bettering or adding to them. In the
second, his pleasure is in his money, and in his possessions only as
representing it. In the first case, the money is as an atmosphere
surrounding the wealth, rising from it and raining back upon it; but
in the second, it is a deluge, with the wealth floating, and for the
most part perishing in it. The shortest distinction between the men is
that the one wishes always to buy and the other to sell.
Such being the great relations of the classes, their several
characters are of the highest importance to the nation; for on the
character of the store-holders depends the preservation, display, and
serviceableness of its wealth;--on that of the currency-holders its
nature, and in great part its distribution; and on both its
production.
The store-holders are either constructive, or neutral, or destructive;
and in subsequent papers we shall, with respect to every kind of
wealth, examine the relative power of the store-holder for its
improvement or destruction; and we shall then find it to be of
incomparably greater importance to the nation in whose hands the thing
is put, than how much of it is got; and that the character of the
holders may be conjectured by the quality of the store, for such and
such a thing; nor only asks for it, but if to be bettered, betters it:
so that possession and possessor reciprocally act on each other
through the entire sum of national possession. The base nation asking
for base things sinks daily to deeper vileness of nature and of use;
while the noble nation, asking for noble things, rises daily into
diviner eminence in both; the tendency to degradation being surely
marked by [Greek: ataxia], carelessness as to the hands in which
things are put, competition for the acquisition of them,
disorderliness in accumulation, inaccuracy in reckoning, and bluntness
in conception as to the entire nature of possession.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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