Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 401, March 1849

Money – Capital.– We class these together because they are intimately connected. Capital is not money, but there would have been little accumulation of capital but for the use of money.

The youthful student of political economy meets with no chapter in his books of science so amusing, and so thoroughly convincing, as that which shows him the utility of money, and the reasons which have led almost all nations to prefer the precious metals for their instruments of exchange. Without some such instrument, what is to be done? A man has made a hat, and wants a pound of butter. He cannot divide his hat: what would be half a hat? Besides, the man who has the butter does not want the hat. But the precious metals come in marvellously to his aid. They are divisible into the smallest portions; they are durable, will not spoil by keeping; they are of steady value, and will not much depreciate: if the man of butter does not want them, he can always find somebody that does; no fear but that they will easily pass from hand to hand, as each one wishes to barter them for whatever he may want.

It is generally said, that it is the steadiness of their value that constituted one chief reason for the selection of gold and silver for the purposes of money. This is undoubtedly true; but it is also true (and we do not remember to have heard this previously remarked) that the use of the precious metals for money has tended to preserve and perpetuate that steadiness of value. Had gold and silver remained as simple articles of merchandise, they would probably have suffered considerable fluctuations in their value from the caprice of fashion and the altered taste of society. In themselves, they were chiefly articles of luxury; the employment of them for money made them objects of indispensable utility.

Money there must be. Yet mark how its introduction tends to destroy equality, to favour accumulation, to raise the hill and sink the valley. If men bartered article against article, they would generally barter in order to consume. But when one of them barters for gold, he can lay it by; he can postpone at his pleasure the period of consumption; he can postpone it for the benefit of his issue. The piece of gold was bought originally with the sweat of his brow; who shall say that a year, ten years, fifty years hence, he may not traffic it again for the sweat of the brow? The pieces of gold accumulate, his children possess them, and now a generation appears on the face of the earth who have not toiled, who do not toil all their lives, who are sustained in virtue of the labours of their ancestor. Their fathers saved, and they enjoy; or they employ a part of the accumulation in the purchase of the labour of others, by which means their riches still further increase. The pyramid rises. But the descendants of those fathers who had consumed the product of their labour, they bring no postponed claim into the market. These are they who must sell their labour. They must work for the children of those who had saved. Our pyramid broadens at the base. This perpetual value given to money has enabled the man of one generation to tax all ensuing generations with the support of his offspring. Hence much good; for hence the leisure that permits the cultivation of the mind, that fosters art, and refinement, and reflection: we have to notice here only how inevitably it builds the pyramid.

And now two classes are formed, distinct and far asunder – the capitalist, and he who works for wages. Comes the social reformer, and he would restore the equality between them. But how? We will fuse, says one, the two classes together: they shall carry on their manufacture in a joint partnership: all shall be partners – all shall be workmen. But even M. Prudhon will tell us that, if the profits of the great capitalist were divided equally amongst all the artisans he employs, each one would find his gains increased by a very little; and it is morally certain that profits equal to those he had obtained would never accrue from a partnership of many hundreds of workmen. The wealth of the country would, therefore, be put in jeopardy, and all the course of its industry and property deranged, for no end whatever. At all events, exclaims another, we will reduce the inequality which we cannot expunge, and put down the enormous and tyrannical capitalist: we will have a law limiting the fortune of each individual to so many hundreds or thousands; or, if we allow a man to earn and appropriate unlimited wealth, we will take care that it shall be dispersed at his death, – not even to his son shall he be permitted to bequeath more than a certain sum. But all schemes of this kind can tend only to equalise the fortunes of the first class – those who employ labour; they do not affect, in the least, the condition of the second class – the employed. These will not obtain better wages from smaller capitalists than from larger. A third – it is M. Prudhon himself – will have a new law of value established, and a new law of property. It is labour only that shall give title to property, and the exchangeable value of every article shall be regulated according to the labour it may be said to contain: propositions, however, which do not help us in the least degree, for capital is itself the produce of labour; its claims, therefore, are legitimate; and the very problem given is to arbitrate between the claims of capital and labour.

Rent and Property in Land.– This is the last topic we shall mention. The absolute necessity of property in land, in order that the soil should be cultivated, (that is, under any condition in which humanity has hitherto presented itself,) is a palpable truism. Yet property in land leads to the exaction of rent – leads to the same division which we have seen marked out by so many laws between two classes of society – those who may enjoy leisure, and those who must submit to labour; classes which are generally distinguished as the rich and poor, never, we may observe in passing, as the happy and unhappy, for leisure may be as great a curse as labour.

It is true that large estates in land exist before corresponding accumulations of capital have been made in commerce, for land is often seized by the mere right of conquest; but still these large possessions would certainly arise as a nation increased its wealth. The man who has cultivated land successfully will add field to field; and he who has gained a large sum of money by commerce, or manufacture, will purchase land with it. The fact therefore, that, in the early period of a nation's history, the soil has been usurped by conquest, or by the sheer right of the strongest, interferes not at all with the real nature of that property; as, independently of this accident of conquest, land would have become portioned in the same unequal manner by the operation of purely economical causes. Just in the same way, the fact that warlike nations have subjected their captives to slavery – imposed the labours of life on slaves – cannot be said to have had any influence in originating the existence, at the present time, of a class of working people.

Thus every law of political economy, having, as it were, its two poles, upwards and downwards, helps to erect our pyramid. Religion, education, charity, permeate the whole mass, and labour to rectify the apparent injustice of fortune. Admirable is their influence: but yet we cannot build on any other model than this.

"Nay, but we can!" exclaim the Communists; and forthwith they project a complete demolition of the old pyramid, and the erection of a series of parallelogram palaces, all level with the earth, and palace every inch of them.

We have said that M. Prudhon is a formidable adversary of these Communists – the more formidable from the having himself no great attachment to "things as they are." His exposition of the manifold absurdities and self-contradictions into which they fall, may possibly render good service to his countrymen. Especially we were glad to see, that on the subject of marriage he is quite sound. No one could more distinctly perceive, or more forcibly state, the intimate connexion that lies between property and marriage. "Mais, c'est surtout dans la famille que se decouvre le sens profond de la propriété. La famille et la propriété marchent de front, appuyées l'une sur l'autre, n'ayant l'une et l'autre de signification, et de valeur, que par le rapport qui les unit. Avec la propriété commence le rôle de la femme. Le ménage – cette chose toute idéale, et que l'on s'efforce en vain de rendre ridicule – le ménage est le royaume de la femme, le monument de la famille. Otez le ménage, otez cette pierre du foyer, centre d'attraction des époux, il reste des couples, il n'y a plus de familles." – (Vol. ii. 253.)

In this country, happily, it would be superfluous – a mere slaying of the slain – to expose the folly of these Utopias. Utopias indeed! – that would deprive men of personal liberty, of domestic affection, of everything that is most valued in life, to shut them up in a strange building which is to be palace, prison, and workhouse, all in one; which must have a good deal of the workhouse, if it has anything of the palace, and will probably have more of the prison in it than either.

Briefly, the case may be stated thus: – The cost of such a community would be liberty, marriage, enterprise, hope, and generosity – for, under such an institution, what could any man have to give or receive? The gain would be task-work for all, board and lodging for all, and a shameless sensuality; the working-bell, the dinner-bell, and the curfew. It would be a sacrifice of all that is high, ennobling, and spiritual, to all that is material, animal, and vile.

But if men think otherwise of the fraternal community – if they think that, because philanthropy presides, or seems to preside, over its formation, that therefore philanthropy will continue to animate all its daily functions – why do they not voluntarily unite and form this community? They are fond of quoting the example of the early Christians; these were really under the influence of a fraternal sentiment, and acted on it: let them do likewise, there is nothing to prevent them. But no: the French Socialist sees in imagination a whole state working for him; he has no idea of commencing by practising the stern virtues of industry, and abstinence, and fortitude. His mode of thinking is this – a certain being called Society is to do everything for him– at the cost, perhaps, of some slight service rendered upon his part. If he is poor, it is society that keeps him so; if he is vicious, it is society that makes him so – upon society rest all our crimes, and devolve all our duties.

There lies the great mischief of promulgating these impracticable theories of Communism. All is taught as being done for the individual. The egregious error is committed of trusting all to a certain organisation of society, which is to be a substitute for the moral efforts of individual man. Patience, fortitude, self-sacrifice, a high sense of imperative duty, are supposed to be rendered unnecessary in a scheme of things which, if it were possible, would require these virtues in a pre-eminent degree. The virtuous enthusiast would find himself, indeed, utterly mistaken – the stage which he thought prepared for the exhibition of the serenest virtues, would be a scene given up to mere animal life: but still, if he limited himself to the teaching of these virtues – of a godlike temperance, and a perpetual self-negation – it is not probable, indeed, that he would find many disciples; neither is it easy to see that any great mischief could ensue. Every community, where possessions have been in common, which has at all succeeded, has been sustained by religious zeal – the most potent of all sentiments, and one extraneous to the framework of society. French Communism is the product of idleness and sensuality, provoked into ferocity by commercial distress; clamouring for means of self-indulgence from the state, and prepared to extort its claim by any amount of massacre.

Thus we have shown that the work of M. Prudhon, with its contradictions, or laws of good and of evil, tends but to illustrate the inevitable rise and unalterable nature of our social pyramid. This was our object, and here must end our present labours on M. Prudhon. If our readers are disappointed that they have not heard more of his own schemes for the better construction of society – that they have not learned more of the mystery concealed under the famous paradox that has been blown about by all the winds of heaven —la propriété c'est le vol!– we can only say that we have not learned more ourselves. Moreover, we are fully persuaded he has nothing to teach. All his strength lies in exposing evils he cannot remedy, and destroying the schemes of greater quacks than himself. That property itself is not the subject of his attack, but the mode in which that property is determined, is all that we can gather. The value of every object of exchange is to be determined by the labour bestowed upon it; and the property in it, we presume, is to be decreed to him whose labour has been bestowed. But capital has been justly defined as accumulated labour; he who supplies capital supplies labour. We are brought back, therefore, to the old difficulty of adjusting (by any other standard than the relative proportion which capital and labour bear at any time in the market) the claims of capital and labour. Any such equitable adjustment, by a legislative interference, we may safely pronounce to be impossible.

THE GREEN HAND

A "SHORT" YARN. – PART II

We left the forecastle group of the "Gloucester" disappointed by the abrupt departure of their story-teller, Old Jack, at so critical a thread of his yarn. As old Jacobs went aft on the quarter-deck, where the binnacle-lamp before her wheel was newly lighted, he looked in with a seaman's instinct upon the compass-boxes, to see how the ship headed; ere ascending to the poop, he bestowed an approving nod upon his friend the steersman, hitched up his trousers, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand in a proper deference to female society, and then proceeded to answer the captain's summons. The passengers, in a body, had left the grand cabin to the bustling steward and his boys, previously to assembling there again for tea – not even excepting the little coterie of inveterate whist-players, and the pairs of inseparable chess-men, to whom an Indian voyage is so appropriately the school for future nice practice in etiquette, war, and commerce. Everybody had at last got rid of sea-sickness, and mustered for a promenade; so that the lofty poop of the Indiaman, dusky as it was, and exposed to the breeze, fluttered with gay dresses like the midway battlement of a castle by the waves, upon which its inmates have stolen out from some hot festivity. But the long heave from below, raising her stern-end slowly against the western space of clear-obscure, in the manner characteristic of a sea abaft the beam, and rolling her to either hand, exhibited to the eyes on the forecastle a sort of alto-relievo of figures, amongst whom the male, in their blank attempts to appear nautical before the ladies, were distinguished from every other object by their variety of ridiculous postures. Under care of one or two bluff, good-humoured young mates – officers polished by previous opportunities of a kind unknown either to navy-men or mere "cargo-fenders," along with several roguish little quasi-midshipmen – the ladies were supported against the poop-rail, or seated on the after-gratings, where their contented dependence not only saved them from the ludicrous failures of their fellow-passengers, but gained them, especially the young ones, the credit of being better sailors. An accompaniment was contributed to this lively exercise on the part of the gentlemen promenaders, which otherwise, in the glimmering sea-twilight, would have been striking in a different sense; by the efforts, namely, of a little band of amateur musicians under the break of the poop, who, with flute, clarionet, bugles, trombone, and violin, after sundry practisings by stealth, had for the first time assembled to play "Rule Britannia." What, indeed, with the occasional abrupt checks, wild flourishes, and fantastic variations caused by the ship's roll; and what with the attitudes overhead, of holding on refractory hats and caps, of intensely resisting and staggering legs, or of sudden pausing above the slope which one moment before was an ascent, there was additional force in the designation quaintly given to such an aspect of things by the fore-mast Jacks – that of "a cuddy jig." As the still-increasing motion, however, shook into side-places this central group of cadets, civilians, and planters adrift, the grander features of the scene predominated: the broad mass of the ship's hull – looming now across and now athwart the streak of sinking light behind – drawn out by the weltering outline of the waters; the entire length of her white decks, ever and anon exposed to view, with their parallel lines, their nautical appurtenances, the cluster of hardy men about the windlass, the two or three "old salts" rolling to and fro along the gangway, and the variety of forms blending into both railings of the poop. High out of, and over all, rose the lofty upper outline of the noble ship, statelier and statelier as the dusk closed in about her – the expanse of canvass whitening with sharper edge upon the gloom; the hauled-up clues of the main-course, with their huge blocks, swelling and lifting to the fair wind – and the breasts of the topsails divided by their tightened bunt-lines, like the shape of some full-bosomed maiden, on which the reef-points heaved like silken fringes, as if three sisters, shadowy and goddess-like, trod in each other's steps towards the deeper solitude of the ocean; while the tall spars, the interlacing complicated tracery, and the dark top-hamper showing between, gave graceful unity to her figure; and her three white trucks, far overhead, kept describing a small clear arc upon the deep blue zenith as she rolled: the man at the wheel midway before the doors of the poop-cabin, with the light of the binnacle upon his broad throat and bearded chin, was looking aloft at a single star that had come out beyond the clue of the main-topsail.

The last stroke of "six bells" or seven o'clock, which had begun to be struck on the ship's bell when Old Jack broke off his story, still lingered on the ear as he brought up close to the starboard quarter-gallery, where a little green shed or pent-house afforded support and shelter to the ladies with the captain. The erect figure of the latter, as he lightly held one of his fair guests by the arm, while pointing out to her some object astern, still retained the attitude which had last caught the eyes of the forecastle group. The musical cadets had just begun to pass from "Rule Britannia" to "Shades of Evening;" and the old sailor, with his glazed hat in his hand, stood waiting respectfully for the captain's notice. The ladies, however, were gazing intently down upon the vessel's wake, where the vast shapes of the waves now sank down into a hollow, now rose seething up into the rudder-trunk, but all marked throughout with one broad winding track, where the huge body of the ship had swiftly passed. From foaming whiteness it melted into yesty green, that became in the hollow a path of soft light, where the sparks mingled like golden seed; the wave-tops glimmered beyond: star-like figures floated up or sank in their long undulations; and the broad swell that heaped itself on a sudden under the mounting stern bore its bells, and bubbles, and flashes, upwards to the eye. When the ship rose high and steady upon it, and one saw down her massy taffrail, it looked to a terrestrial eye rather like some mystic current issuing from the archway under a tall tower, whose foundations rocked and heaved: and so said the romantic girl beside the captain, shuddering at the vividness of an image which so incongruously brought together the fathomless deep and the distant shores of solid old England. The eye of the seaman, however, suggested to him an image more akin to the profession, as he directed his fair companion's attention to the trough of the ship's furrow, where, against the last low gleam of twilight, and by the luminous wake, could be seen a little flock of black petrels, apparently running along it to catch what the mighty ploughshare had turned up; while a gray gull or two hovered aslant over them in the blue haze. As he looked round, too, to aloft, he exchanged glances with the old sailor who had listened – an expression which even the ladies understood. "Ah! Jacobs," – said the captain, "get the lamp lighted in my cabin, and the tea-kettle aft. With the roll she has on her, 'twill be more ship-shape there than in the cuddy." "Ay, ay, sir," said the old seaman. "How does she head just now, Jacobs?" "Sou'-west and by south, sir." "She'd lie easier for the ladies though," said the captain, knowing his steward was a favourite with them, "were the wind a point or two less fair. Our old acquaintance Captain Williamson, of the Seringapatam now, Jacobs, old-fashioned as he was, would have braced in his lee-yards only to steady a lady's tea-cup." "Ay, your honour," replied Jacobs, and his weather eye twinkled, "and washed the fok'sle under, too! But ye know, sir, he'd got a reg'lar-built Nabob aboard, and a beauty besides!" "Ah, Mr Jacobs!" exclaimed the romantic young lady, "what was that? Is it one of your stories?" "Well, your ladyship, 'tis a bit of a yarn, no doubt, and some'at of a cur'ous one." "Oh!" said another of the captain's fair protégées, "I do love these 'yarns,' as you call them; they are so expressive, so – and all that sort of thing!" "Nonsense, my love," said her mother; "you don't understand them, and 'tis better you should not, – they are low, and contain a great many bad words, I fear." "But think of the imagination, aunt," rejoined the other girl, "and the adventures! Oh, the ocean of all places for that! Were it not for sea-sickness, I should dote upon it! As for the storm just now, look how safe we are, – and see how the dear old ship rises up from the billows, with all her sails so delightfully mysterious one over another!" "Bless your heart, ma'rm, yes," responded Old Jack, chuckling; "you talks just like a seaman, beggin' your pardon. As consarns the tea, sir, I make bould to expect the'll be a shift o' wind directly, and a slant deck, as soon as we get fair into the stream, rid o' this bit of a bubble the tail of it kicks up hereabouts." "Bear a hand, then, Jacobs," said the captain, "and see all right below for the party in the cabin, – we shall be down in a few minutes." The captain stood up on the quarter-gallery, to peer round into the dusk and watch the lifting of the main-royal; but the next minute he called to the ladies, and their next neighbours, to look towards the larboard bow, and see the moon rise. A long edge of gray haze lay around the eastern horizon, on which the dark rim of the sea was defined beyond the roll of the waves, as with the sweep of a soft brush dipped in indigo; while to westward it heaved up, weltering in its own watery light against the gloom. From behind this low fringe of vapour was silently diffusing, as it were, a pool of faint radiance, like a brook babbling from under ice; a thread of silver ran along the line of haze, growing keener at one point, until the arch of the moon shot slowly up, broad and fair; the wave-heads rising between were crested here and there with light; the bow of the ship, the bellies of her fore-canvass, her bowsprit with the jibs hanging idly over it, and the figure-head beneath, were tinged by a gentle lustre, while the hollow shadows stole out behind. The distant horizon, meanwhile, still lay in an obscure streak, which blended into the dark side of the low fog-bank, so as to give sea and cloud united the momentary appearance of one of those long rollers that turn over on a beach, with their glittering crest: you would expect to see next instant what actually seemed to take place – the whole outline plashing over in foam, and spreading itself clearly forward, as soon as the moon was free. With the airy space that flowed from her came out the whole eastern sea-board, liquid and distinct, as if beyond either bow of the lifting Indiaman one sharp finger of a pair of compasses had flashed round, drawing a semicircle upon the dull background, still cloudy, glimmering, and obscure. From the waves that undulated towards her stern, the ship was apparently entering upon a smoother zone, where the small surges leapt up and danced in moonshine, resembling more the current of some estuary in a full tide. To north-westward, just on the skirts of the dark, one wing of a large, soft-gray vapour was newly smitten by the moon-gleam; and over against it on the south-east, where the long fog-bank sank away, there stretched an expanse of ocean which, on its farthest verge, gave out a tint of the most delicate opal blue. The ship, to the south-westward of the Azores, and going large before the trade-wind, was now passing into the great Gulf Stream which there runs to the south-east; even the passengers on deck were sensible of the rapid transition with which the lately cold breeze became warmer and fitful, and the motion of the vessel easier. They were surprised, on looking into the waves alongside, to perceive them struggling, as it were, under a trailing net-work of sea-weed; which, as far as one could distinctly see, appeared to keep down the masses of water like so much oil – flattening their crests, neutralising the force of the wind, and communicating a strangely sombre green to the heaving element. In the winding track of the ship's wake the eddies now absolutely blazed: the weeds she had crushed down rose to the surface again in gurgling circles of flame, and the showers of sparks came up seething on either side amongst the stalks and leaves: but as the moonlight grew more equally diffused it was evident she was only piercing an arm of that local weed-bed here formed, like an island, in the bight of the stream. Farther ahead were scattered patches and bunches of the true Florida Gulf-weed, white and moss-like; which, shining crisp in the level moonlight, and tipping the surges as it floated past, gave them the aspect of hoary-bearded waves, or the garlanded horses of Neptune. The sight still detained the captain's party on deck, and some of the ladies innocently thought these phenomena indicative of the proximity of land.