A Joy For Ever; (And Its Price in the Market) | Page 2

rather, by habitual disobedience, destroy their capacity of
understanding them. But there is not one of the really great principles
of the science which is either obscure or disputable,--which might not
be taught to a youth as soon as he can be trusted with an annual
allowance, or to a young lady as soon as she is of age to be taken into
counsel by the housekeeper.
I might, with more appearance of justice, be blamed for thinking it
necessary to enforce what everybody is supposed to know. But this
fault will hardly be found with me, while the commercial events
recorded daily in our journals, and still more the explanations
attempted to be given of them, show that a large number of our
so-called merchants are as ignorant of the nature of money as they are
reckless, unjust, and unfortunate in its employment.
The statements of economical principles given in the text, though I
know that most, if not all, of them are accepted by existing authorities
on the science, are not supported by references, because I have never
read any author on political economy, except Adam Smith, twenty
years ago. Whenever I have taken up any modern book upon this
subject, I have usually found it encumbered with inquiries into
accidental or minor commercial results, for the pursuit of which an
ordinary reader could have no leisure, and by the complication of
which, it seemed to me, the authors themselves had been not
unfrequently prevented from seeing to the root of the business.
Finally, if the reader should feel induced to blame me for too sanguine
a statement of future possibilities in political practice, let him consider

how absurd it would have appeared in the days of Edward I. if the
present state of social economy had been then predicted as necessary,
or even described as possible. And I believe the advance from the days
of Edward I. to our own, great as it is confessedly, consists, not so
much in what we have actually accomplished, as in what we are now
enabled to conceive.

CONTENTS.
LECTURE I. PAGE THE DISCOVERY AND APPLICATION OF
ART 1
A Lecture delivered at Manchester, July 10th, 1857.
LECTURE II.
THE ACCUMULATION AND DISTRIBUTION OF ART 70
Continuation of the previous Lecture; delivered July 13th, 1857.
ADDENDA.
NOTE 1.--"FATHERLY AUTHORITY" 151 " 2.--"RIGHT TO
PUBLIC SUPPORT" 159 " 3.--"TRIAL SCHOOLS" 169 "
4.--"PUBLIC FAVOUR" 180 " 5.--"INVENTION OF NEW WANTS"
183 " 6.--"ECONOMY OF LITERATURE" 187 " 7.--"PILOTS OF
THE STATE" 189 " 8.--"SILK AND PURPLE" 193
SUPPLEMENTARY ADDITIONAL PAPERS.
EDUCATION IN ART 213
ART SCHOOL NOTES 229
SOCIAL POLICY 240

"A JOY FOR EVER."

LECTURE I.
THE DISCOVERY AND APPLICATION OF ART.
A Lecture delivered at Manchester, July 10, 1857.
1. Among the various characteristics of the age in which we live, as
compared with other ages of this not yet very experienced world, one of
the most notable appears to me to be the just and wholesome contempt
in which we hold poverty. I repeat, the just and wholesome contempt;
though I see that some of my hearers look surprised at the expression. I
assure them, I use it in sincerity; and I should not have ventured to ask
you to listen to me this evening, unless I had entertained a profound
respect for wealth--true wealth, that is to say; for, of course, we ought
to respect neither wealth nor anything else that is false of its kind: and
the distinction between real and false wealth is one of the points on
which I shall have a few words presently to say to you. But true wealth
I hold, as I said, in great honour; and sympathize, for the most part,
with that extraordinary feeling of the present age which publicly pays
this honour to riches.
2. I cannot, however, help noticing how extraordinary it is, and how
this epoch of ours differs from all bygone epochs in having no
philosophical nor religious worshippers of the ragged godship of
poverty. In the classical ages, not only were there people who
voluntarily lived in tubs, and who used gravely to maintain the
superiority of tub-life to town-life, but the Greeks and Latins seem to
have looked on these eccentric, and I do not scruple to say, absurd
people, with as much respect as we do upon large capitalists and landed
proprietors; so that really, in those days, no one could be described as
purse proud, but only as empty-purse proud. And no less distinct than
the honour which those curious Greek people pay to their conceited
poor, is the disrespectful manner in which they speak of the rich; so
that one cannot listen long either to them, or to the Roman writers who

imitated them, without finding oneself entangled in all sorts