Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2008 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/forsclavigeralet04ruskuoft FORS CLAVIGERA: LETTERS TO THE WORKMEN AND LABOURERS OF GREAT BRITAIN VOL. IV, Fors Clavigera LETTERS LXXIII to XCVI rf John Ruskin 16,9. P3.' ondon : George Allen HO May 1906 All riahts reserved CONTENTS OF VOL. IV LETTER PAGE LXXIII. COMMISSARIAT .... I LXXIV. FATHER LAW .... 19 I.XXV. STAR LAW ..... 37 LXXVL OUR BATTLE IS IMMORTAL 64 LXXVII. THE LORD THAT BOUGHT US 92 LXXVIII. THE SWORD OF MICHAEL . 105 LXXIX. LIFE CUARDS OK NEW LIFE 125 LXXX. THE TWO CLAVIGER.^ 147' LXXXI. THE FIRST EPISTLE OF JOHN 165 LXXXII. HEAVENLY CHOIRS 194 LXXXIII. HESIOD's MEASURE 234 LXXXIV. THE LAST WORDS OF THE VIRGIN 256 SECOND SERIES LXXXV. UNIQUE DOGMATISM . January, 1878 279 LXXXVi. LET US (ai.l) EAT AND DRINK February, 1S7S 294 LXXXVII. THE . SNOW-MANGER . March, 1878 312 LXXXVIII. ^' THE CONVENTS OF ST. QUENTIN March, 1880 337 Lxxxix. WHOSE FAULT IS IT? . September, 1880 359 xc. LOST JEWELS . May, 1883 377 VI CONTENTS LETTER PAGE XCI. DUST OF GOLD . September, 1883 . 392 XCII. ASHESTIEL . Noveinha; 1883 . 405 XCIII. INVOCATION Christmas, 1883. 426 XCIV. RETROSPECT March, 1884 439 xcv. FORS INFANTI^ . October, 1884 459 XCVI. ROSY VALE Christmas, 1884 . 487 INDEX . 509 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE for Diagram Leucothea's Hair . III Dust of Gold (By Kate Greenaway) Invocation [By Kate Greenaway) . 426 Retrospect {By Kate Greenaway) . 439 Neither doth she Spin (By Kate Greenaway) 457 Theuth's Earliest Lesson .... 45S FoRS Infantl-e {By Kate Greenaway) 459 Rosy Vale (By Kate Greenaway) Tofice 4S7 FORS CLAVIGERA LETTER LXXIII COMMISSARIAT Venice, 20th November, 1876. The day on which this letter will be published will, I trust, be the first of the seventh year of the time during which I have been permitted, month by month, to continue the series of Fors Clavigera. If I am spared to continue the letters beyond the seventh year, their second series will take a directly practical character, giving account of, and directing, the actual operations of St. George's Company ; and containing elements of instruction for its schools^ the scheme of which shall be, I will answer for it, plainly enough by the end of this year, under- stood. For, in the present volume, I intend speak- ing directly, in every letter, to the Yorkshire operatives, and answering every question they choose to put to me,—being very sure that they will omit few relevant ones. And first they must understand one more mean- ing I have in the title of the book. By calling it IV. A : 2 FORS CLAVIGERA the ' Nail bearer,' I mean not only that it fastens in sure place the truths it has to teach, (January, 1872, vol. i. p. 256,) but also, that it nails down, as on the barn-door of our future homestead, for permanent and picturesque exposition, the extreme follies of which it has to give warning : so that in expanded heraldry of beak and claw, the spread, or split, harpies and owls of modern philosophy may be for evermore studied, by the curious, in the parched skins of them. For instance, at once, and also for beginning of some such at present needful study, look back to page 398 of Fors, vol. ii., wherein you will find a para- graph thus nailed fast out of the Pall Mall Gazette —a paragraph which I must now spend a Httle more space of barn-door in delicately expanding. It is to the following effect, (I repeat, for the sake of readers who cannot refer to the earlier volumes) "The wealth of this world may be 'practically' regarded as infinitely great. It is not true that what one man appropriates becomes thereby use- less to others ; and it is also untrue that force or fraud, direct or indirect, are the principal, or indeed that they are at all common or important, modes of acquiring wealth." You will find this paragraph partly answered, though but with a sneer, in the following page, 399 ; but I now take it up more seriously, for it is needful you should see the full depth of its lying. The * wealth of this world ' consists broadly in : LETTER LXXIII 3 its healthy food-giving land, its convenient build- ing land, its useful animals, its useful minerals, its books, and works of art. The healthy food-giving land, so far from being infinite, is, in fine quality, limited to narrow belts of the globe. What properly belongs to you as Yorkshiremen is only Yorkshire. You by appro- priating Yorkshire keep other people from living in Yorkshire. The Yorkshire squires say the whole of Yorkshire belongs to them, and will not let any part of Yorkshire become useful to anybody else, but by enforcing payment of rent for the use of it ; nor will the farmers who rent it allow its produce to become useful to anybody else but by demanding the highest price they can get for the same. The convenient building land of the world is so far from being infinite, that, in London, you find a woman of eight-and-twenty paying one-and- ninepence a week for a room in which she dies of suffocation with her child in her arms ; Fors, December, 1872, (vol. i. p. 496); and, in Edinburgh, you find people paying two pounds twelve shillings a year for a space nine feet long, five broad, and six high, ventilated only by the chimney ; Fors, April, 1874, (vol. ii. p. 345); and compare March, 1873, (vol. ii. p. 65). The useful animals of the world are not infinite the finest horses are very rare ; and the squires who ride them, by appropriating them, prevent you and me from riding them. If you and I and 4 FORS CLAVIGERA the rest of the mob took them from the squires, we could not at present probably ride them ; and unless we cut them up and ate them, we could not divide them among us, because they are not infinite. The useful minerals of Yorkshire are iron, coal, and marble, — in large quantities, but not infinite quantities by any means ; and the masters and managers of the coal mines, spending their coal on making useless things out of the iron, prevent the poor all over England from having fires, so that only afford close stoves, (if those they can now !) Fors, March, 1873, (vol. ii. p. 71). The books and works of art in Yorkshire are not infinite, nor even in England. Mr. Fawkes' Turners are many, but not infinite at all, and as long as they are at Farnley they can't be at Sheffield. My own thirty Turners are not infinite, and as long as they are at Oxford, can't be at Sheffield. You won't find, I believe, another such thirteenth-century Bible as I have given you, in all Yorkshire ; and so far from other books being infinite, there's hardly a woman in England, now, who reads a clean one, because she can't afford to have one but by borrowing. So much for the infinitude of wealth. For the mode of obtaining it, all the land in England was first taken by force, and is now kept by force. Some day, I do not doubt, you will yourselves seize it by force. Land never has been, nor can be, got, nor kept, otherwise, when the population on it was LETTER LXXIII 5 as large as it could maintain. The establishment of laws respecting its possession merely defines and directs the force by which it is held : and fraud, so far from being an unimportant mode of acquiring wealth, is now the only possible one; our merchants say openly that no man can become rich by honest dealing. And it is precisely because fraud and force are the chief means of becoming rich, that a writer for the Pall Mall Gazette was found capable of writing this passage. No man could by mere overflow of his natural folly have written it. Only in the settled purpose of maintaining the interest of Fraud and Force ; only in fraudfully writing for the concealment of Fraud, and frantically writing for the help of unjust Force, do literary men become so senseless. The wealth of the world is not infinite, then, my Sheffield friends ; and moreover, it is most of it unjustly divided, because it has been gathered by fraud, or by dishonest force, and distributed at the will, or lavished by the neglect, of such iniquitous gatherers. And you have to ascertain definitely, if you will be wise Yorkshiremen, how much of it is actually within your reach in Yorkshire, and may be got without fraud, by honest force. Com- pare propositions 5 and 6, October, 1872, (vol. i. PP- 437» 438). It ought to be a very pleasant task to you, this ascertaining how much wealth is within your reach in Yorkshire, if, as I see it stated in the article of the Times on Lord Beaconsfield's speech at the 6 FORS CLAVIGERA Lord Mayor's dinner, quoted in Galignani of the lOth of November, 1876: "The immense accession of wealth which this country has received through the development of the railway system and the establishment of free trade, makes the present war expenditure," etc., etc., etc. What it does in the way of begetting and feeding Woolwich Infants is affair not at present your ; your business is to find out what it does, and what you can help it to do, in making it prudent for you to beget, and easy for you to feed, Yorkshire infants.