SECTION III.

ADDRESSES TO ALL CLASSES OF SOCIETY IN SUPPORT

OF COMMUNISTIC PRINCIPLES.

CHAPTER XLVIII.-TO THE RICH.

"Woe unto you that are rich! for ye have received your consolation. Woe unto you that are full! for ye shall hunger. Woe unto you that laugh now! for ye shall mourn and weep. Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you! for so did their fathers to the false prophets. Give to every man that asketh of thee; and of him that taketh away thy goods ask them not again."-ST. LUKE vi.

WHY

HY is money valued so highly, and why is wealth so greedily sought after? The rich answer, "Because it gives us power to accomplish great things." Some social reformer contends, however, in opposition to this general belief, that the power of money is, on the whole, overestimated, if not entirely questionable. He maintains that "the greatest things which have been done for the world have not been accomplished by rich men, or by subscription lists, but by men generally of small pecuniary means. Christianity was propagated over half the world by men of the poorest class; and the greatest thinkers, discoverers, inventors, and artists have been men of moderate wealth, many of them little raised above the condition of manual labourers, in point of worldly circumstances."

"Riches are oftener an impediment than a stimulus to action; and in many cases they are quite as much a misfortune as a blessing. The youth who inherits wealth is apt

to have life made too easy for him, and he soon grows sated with it, because he has nothing left to desire. Having no special object to struggle for, he finds time hang heavily on his hands; he remains morally and spiritually asleep; and his position in society is often no higher than that of a polypus over which the tide floats."

Instructive is, in this respect, the misuse of accumulatel or inherited wealth by the ancients. Tiberius at his death left £23,624,000; which Caligula, whom the former adopted as heir to the throne, spent in less than twelve months. Out of his wealth, Cæsar purchased the friendship of Curio for £500,000, and that of Lucius Paulus for £300,000. At the time of the assassination of Julius Cæsar, Antony Iwas in debt to the amount of £3,000,000; he owed this sum on the Ides of March, and it was paid by the Kalends of April; he squandered £147,000,000. Appius squandered in debauchery £500,000, and finding on examination of the state of his affairs that he only had £80,000, poisoned himself, because he considered that sum insufficient for his maintenance. Cleopatra, at an entertainment she gave to Antony, dissolved in vinegar a pearl worth £80,000, and he swallowed it. Amongst these instances of the misuse of money by the ancients are to be found four prototypes, namely, that of the waste of the public treasury by Caligula; that of bribery by Julius Cæsar; that of debauchery by Appius, and that of extravagance by Cleopatra. How innumerable, and varying only in degree, are the imitations of these ancient spendthrifts in modern times!

These reflections made on the misuse of money will, however, be partly set aside as referring to the profligacy of individual and isolated cases; and the rich will on the contrary maintain that the power of money and capital is manifest in the great works and undertakings of modern times,—in the construction of railways; building of numerous large steamers, some of them, like the Great Eastern of the most gigantic proportions; the erection of huge factories and warehouses; the laying of submarine cables, etc. This assertion made for the defence of capital is refuted by the somewhat paradoxical fact that the great Chinese wall, with its thousand miles of extent, was not built by the power of capital and risk of specu

lation. It is even doubtful if really any money existed in those days of yore that witnessed the raising of that mighty bulwark which the ancient civilization of Southern China erected against the inroads of the barbarians from the north. It must be surmised that this period lies anterior to the Christian era. The gigantic labour spent by the ancient Chinese on this truly national work has been estimated by Mr. Seward, an American gentleman who visited those celebrated remains of antiquity, to be equal to the labour that has been required for the construction of the whole of 100,000 miles of railroads in the United States of America. And what difference is there, we would ask, between those colossal works of the ancient Chinese and the modern Americans? With respect to their destination and usefulness, scarcely any; for whilst the Americans built railways for the advancement of civilization, the Chinese built their Myriad Mile Wall, as they call it, for the protection of civilized life. The difference lies chiefly in the fact that the Americans built their 100,000 miles of railroads on base money speculation, whilst the Chinese raised the 1,000 miles of brickwork from a noble sense of patriotism with which the Chinese Government of that period was inspired, in order to protect their people from spoliation and plunder by the northern barbarians.

It is further alleged in defence of the personal employment of individual wealth, that private speculation and enterprise are the most powerful levers of civilization.

In answer to this allegation we would refer to the great undertakings that various European states and cities have carried out at their own expense and under their own direction and management. Of this kind are the state railways, telegraphs, mines, and salt-works in many foreign countries; the erection of fortifications, like that of the city of Paris; the construction of docks, harbours, lighthouses, and breakwaters; the lighting of towns, like that of Manchester by the Corporation Gasworks; the construction of ironclad ships in Government dockyards, etc. The success of all these undertakings by Government agency, and under state control or corporate management, has greatly shaken the belief in the exclusive superiority of private enterprise and individual speculation. The management of money itself, as instanced by the Govern

ment Savings Banks in England, is placed into the hands of the state, and is eminently successful.

These instances of state enterprises superseding private speculation seem to prove that the secret of all successful undertakings lies in a well-regulated administration. The defence of money-capital is, however, still sustained by the argument that in order to have an efficient staff of administrators, directors, and managers of banks and railways, for instance, they must be well paid; which, again, illustrates the power of money. This assertion seems, however, not to be borne out by facts, for it is found that the officials who manage the Government Savings Banks are greatly underpaid, especially if their salary is compared with the immense sums of money which are realized by the directors, partners, and managers of private banks; and although the work in both Government and private banks is the same, the disparity in remuneration may be seen in a most striking manner by the senior partner of Coutt's bank in the Strand retiring with a competency of £600,000, whilst the manager of the Government Savings Bank will never be able to amass as many shillings.

The defence of capital is, however, far from being abandoned; for the rich will venture to assert that without a prospect of gain and acquisition of wealth, no great effort in arts, sciences, and literature would ever be made. The assumption may, however, unhesitatingly be met by a flat denial; and the author solemnly protests in the name of all great artists, scientific and literary men, on whose behalf he declares that their love of art and science, and their aspirations to fame and celebrity, are too great to allow pecuniary motives to influence their exertions. It would be an insult to all great men to believe that they were chiefly actuated by sordid motives in the composition of their immortal works. If there were any aiming at the acquisition of perishable wealth, rather than imperishable fame, such would be the exceptions, and not the rule. Facts from biographical history also support the truth that there is something higher than the love of money that inspires the artist, the poet, the philosopher, the historian. Those who are influenced by the unworthy motives of gain, produce nothing that will merit the attribute of immortality.

W. L. Sargant, the author of "The Science of Social