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Arrows of the Chace, vol. 2/2 / being a collection of scattered letters published chiefly in the daily newspapers 1840-1880 cover

Arrows of the Chace, vol. 2/2 / being a collection of scattered letters published chiefly in the daily newspapers 1840-1880

Chapter 58: FOOTNOTES:
By John Ruskin
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About This Book

A collected set of public letters offers sustained commentary on political, economic, and cultural questions of the era. Subjects include foreign policy, war, and imperial unrest, as well as economic issues such as currency, supply and demand, wages, strikes, and the nature of wealth and property. Other pieces discuss infrastructure and industry, domestic service and housing, education, art and literary criticism, dress and women's work, and proposals for social and institutional reform. The epistolary form combines moral argument, practical policy suggestions, and cultural observation addressed to newspapers, public figures, and civic audiences.

[From "The Monetary and Mining Gazette," November 13, 1875.]
THE DEFINITION OF WEALTH.
Corpus Christi College, Oxford,
9th November, 1875.

To the Editor of "The Monetary Gazette."

Sir: I congratulate you with all my mind on the sense, and with all my heart on the courage, of your last Saturday's leading article, which I have just seen.[66] You have asserted in it the two vital principles of economy, that society cannot exist by reciprocal pilfering, but must produce wealth if it would have it; and that money must not be lent, but administered by its masters.

You have not yet, however, defined wealth itself, or told the ingenuity of the public what it is to produce.

I have never been able to obtain this definition from economists;[67] perhaps, under the pressure of facts, they may at last discover some meaning in mine at the tenth and eleventh pages of "Munera Pulveris."

I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
J. Ruskin.

FOOTNOTES:

[66] The article was entitled, "What shall we do with it?"

[67] At the meeting of the Social Science Association already alluded to (p. 4, note), Mr. Ruskin said that in 1858 he had in vain challenged Mr. Mill to define wealth. The passages referred to in "Munera Pulveris" consist of the statement and explanation of the definition of Value. See ante, p. 63, note.