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THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF JOHN RUSKIN. 



By JOSIAH MONK. December 4th, 1888. 



Buskin's first and most necessary principle in political economy 

 is honesty, and he half quotes Pope's line that an " honest man is 

 the noblest work of God." He says some people may not agree 

 with this, but at least they must admit that he is among God's 

 best works, and, as things stand, a somewhat rare one. " Some 

 people " in their aspirations to be more than this have to some 

 extent lost sight of the propriety of being so much as that ; in 

 other words, we may have desired to become very religious, and 

 yet have lost faith in common honesty and in the working power 

 of it. If we cannot find honest men we cannot even make an 

 attempt to carry out the political economy of John Ruskin. 



Mr. Ruskin states that no political economy can be sound, nor 

 no code of social action right that leaves out the influence of 

 social affection ; and that the soul in man is his highest and 

 noblest force. Ruskin's attempt to introduce social affection or 

 soul into political economy has been attended with much pain 

 and trouble to those who have been or are now practising the 

 ordinary modern idea of poUtical economy. It calls up the soul- 

 less relations between employers and employed, and the wanton 

 speculation of individuals, and rings formed to withhold bread, 

 copper and cotton in the time of scarcity. This kind of self- 

 interest is always as if mankind were sworn enemies of each 

 other. In illustration of this Ruskm gives the following to show 

 that it need not be so. 



" If there is only a crust of bread in the house, and mother and 

 children are starving, their interests are not the same. If the 

 mother eats it, the children want it ; if the children eat it, the 

 mother must go hungry to her work. Yet it does not necessarily 

 follow that there will be ' antagonism ' between them ; that they 

 will fight for the crust and that the mother being the strongest will 

 get it and eat it. Even if this were so, and it were as just as it is 

 convenient to consider men as actuated by no other moral influ- 

 ences than those which affect rats or swine, the logical conditions 

 of the question are still undeterminable. Or, in other words 

 would you get the best results from this course of conduct ? The 

 largest quantity of the best kind of any work, will never be done 

 by men for pay or under pressure. It will be done only when the 

 motive force, which is the will or spirit of the man, is brought 

 to its greatest strength by its own proper fuel ; namely by the 

 affections." 



