332 KEPOET— 1891. 



forgets that the homage addressed to himself is only respect 

 paid through him to the millions over whom he reigns. Nor 

 are democratic rulers free from the danger of a similar miscon- 

 ception. In like manner, money, instead of being thought of 

 and treated as the representative of labour, passing from hand 

 to hand, is looked upon as something possessing intrinsic 

 value of its own. Money itself is not a sacred thing at all. It 

 is the labour for the life-sustaining food that it represents : 

 that is the holy thing which, sanctified by inspiration and in- 

 telligence, is brought into practical usefulness by "the sweat 

 of the brow " — a type and a precedent of that lal)our which is 

 unto life eternal, and the issue of which is encysted in the 

 words, " Give us this day our daily bread." 



Tliis misappreheiision of the nature of money has caused 

 the greater part of the troubles of human existence, because 

 the overwhelming fact that " a man's life consisteth not in the 

 abundance of the things which he possesseth " has been lost 

 sight of. As a consequence, war, rapine, murder, aggression, 

 dishonesty by strategy and by overt action, have prevailed, till 

 the doctrine that might makes right is accepted far and near, 

 the frequency of the wrong having obscured its enormity not 

 only in the eyes of those who inflict it, but also of those 

 w^ho suffer from it. It was found that to toil, though healthy, 

 was tedious ; and the results of toil, however honest, were too 

 tardy to satisfy the ambitions of those who, forgetting the thing 

 signified- — the labour — fell down and worshipped the eidolon — 

 the money — so that he was a true witness who summarised 

 " covetousness " as "idolatry." Whether this fact were 

 written in the Bible or no, it is as the frontlet on every 

 eyebrow emblazoned by the wealth begotten of the ill-requited 

 labour of others, till at length a Huxley could with truth aver 

 that " it was better to have been born in heathen Fiji than in 

 the slums of Christian London." The ethics of the misuse of 

 money are graphically set forth in the story of the unjust 

 steward. That worthy, unwilling to avail himself of the fair 

 distribution of food by labour, alleged that he could not dig ; 

 that it was beneath the ambition of a thief to beg : he there- 

 fore introduced the still-practised "division of the spoils" 

 between himself and those who became his willing tools. 



We have before us the food and the pebbles — the one the 

 prime factor of life, the other the agent of distribution — each 

 awaiting the performance of its office. Food is more heavy to 

 move ; pebbles less so, especially when their number is certified 

 on a strip of papyrus, similar in effect to the silver-certificates 

 of to-day. Let it be supposed that when the Pharaoh had, 

 by means of the pebbles, taxed out of his fellaheen the 

 corn that he wanted for himself and his retainers — such as 

 public works, civil service, army and navy, &c.— then these 



