Wanganui Chronicle, and TURAKINA & RANGITIKEI MESSENGER. TUESDAY, 21ST JANUARY, 1868.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume XII, Issue 820, 21 January 1868, Page 2

Wanganui Chronicle, and TURAKINA & RANGITIKEI MESSENGER. TUESDAY, 21ST JANUARY, 1868.

Tradesmen and people in business complain just now of the difficulty of collecting money due to them, and getting the two sides to balance properly. The times are somewhat out of joint, and there are good and sufficient reasons why it should be so. At the present date we are passing through one of those seasons of reaction from a state of great prosperity which, either from want of forethought or through over-speculation and extravagance, seem to recur with almost periodical regularity. It is a misfortune, but there is nothing wonderful —nothing to dismay any one—in such a condition of things. Men cannot eat their cake and have it at the same time. Even when the trader is realising 50 per cent, he will infallibly get poor if lie spends more than he makes. And one fine morning he wakes up to the reality, and so do many more who have been following and probably bettering or worsening his examr' 0 > t,liere is immedia, general pulling in and a general tightness. This is to the commercial world, we may say, what small-pox is to the human body. It might have been prevented or modified by vaccination, but the patient declined to undergo that operation, and he therefore must submit to the natural course of the disease. The virus is there, and it will work its own cure. The weak and the foolish will succumb before it ; the strong and the wise will pass through the ordeal unscathed. When the wind begins to pipe among the ship’s gearing aloft, the prudent sailor takes down Lis higher sails and most likely reefs his mainsail, so that he slips along comfortably until the gale blows over. The prudent man of business will adopt an analogous course. Such a time as this, however, is frequently chosen to talk a great deal of political gcpnomy, falsely so called. The ricli man

gets what are termed “bargains,” and he finds it vastly convenient and very consolatory to get hold of a code of laws which sanctions his money-getting procedure. “The idea,” says John Ruskin, the most true although the least popular of writers on this subject, “that directions can be given for the gaining of wealth, irrespectively of the consideration of its moral sources, or that any general or technical law of purchase and gain can be set down for national practice, is perhaps the most insolently futile of all that ever beguiled men through their vices. So far as I know, there is not in history a record of anything so disgraceful to the human intellect as the modern idea that the commercial text ‘Buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest, represents, or under any circumstances could represent, an available principle of national economy. Buy in the cheapest market ? yes ; but what made your market cheap ? Charcoal may be cheap among your roof timbers after a fire, and bricks may be cheap in your streets after an earthquake ; but fire and earthquake may not therefore be mt.jnna.l benefits. Sell in the dearest 1 yes, You sold your breacPvveii r l J i 1 -uliy i yK®^ ro <^ a dying man who gave his last coin for it, and will never need bread more, or to a rich man who to-morrow will buy your farm over your head ; or to a soldier on his way to pillage the bank in which you have put your fortune ? None of these things you can know. One thing only can you know, namely, whether this dealing of yours is a just and faithful one, which is all you need concern yourself about respecting it ; sure thus to have done your own part in bringing about ultimately in the world a state of things which will not issue in pillage and death. And thus every question concerning these things merges itself ultimately in the great question of justice.’ Yss, justice,— which means, truth, rectitude, kindness, consideration for others, —can alone form the basis of political or any other economy worth bestowing a thought upon.

The contrary idea, almost unconsciously we verily believe, has too long been dinned into the public ear. Let us on the present occasion try to translate this system of political economy, by the light of Mr Ruskin’s elucidation, into various business transactions, which are only too likely to take place amongst ourselves, from time to time, in current circumstances ; and as the matter is important let us try to do so, like the country gentleman in Locksley Hall, “ to the purpose, easy things to understand. > “I may surely buy,” A says to us, “as cheap as I can, and sell as dear as possible, for every one with whom I deal is the best judge of his own interests.” Now, it is always that a piece of reasoning leads one to a conclusion so comfortable. Yet it is more comfortable than correct, although it can hardly be wondered at that many a man should be perfectly satisfied with reasoning which seems so fair, when the conclusion is so inviting.

Admit two things : that the parties are equally solvent that they are equally shrewd—and then as a mere piece of dry mechanism A’s principle may stand tolerably upright. It will then be diamond trying to cut diamond. But hard times bear more hardly upon some people than and among men who meet on unequal terms that principle will bear A out in cruel oppression. A familiar illustration may explain what we mean. A settler offers to a cattle-buyer a portion of his stock. His manner or something else tells the buyer' that he is under the necessity of finding money. He asked a fair, by no means an exorbitant, price for his cattle. According to the honest judgment of the other the price asked would afford the settler a fair remuneration a.nd also leave him a fair profit. But the buyer knows or guesses that money is at the moment of more than ordinary value to the settler. On this conviction he refuses the price asked, and offers one that will double his own profit but will leave the other not only without profit, but with a positive loss. The other hesitates, reasons, entreats, but at last reluctantly yields. He has no other resource. The buyer exults in a good “bargain,” in plain English that he has done neither more nor less than take advantage of his neighbour’s necessity to deprive that neighbour of money and transfer it to his own pocket. “ But 1 am not bound,” he indignantly exclaims, “to look after another man’s interests. It won’t pay. fmre! ” On that point there is room for a reasonable difference of opinion. You saw you had the man in a position where he must either submit to the leas you imposed upon him or risk a loss still heavier. And so you took advantage of him, thinking it very clever, whereas it was only very cruel. It was not fair, and there is an end. All the maxims in the world could not make such a transaction brotherly or right. And neither commerce nor anything else can thrive long on the principle of pure selfishness. To use the quaint but expressive words of an American poet, men must get up early “if they mean to take in God.”