e
for pay only; abject less and less in proportion to the degrees of love
and of wisdom which enter into their duty, or _can_ enter into it,
according as their function is to do the bidding and the work of a manly
people;--or to amuse, tempt, and deceive, a childish one.

146. There is always, in such amusement and temptation, to a certain
extent, a government of the rich by the poor, as of the poor by the
rich; but the latter is the prevailing and necessary one, and it
consists, when it is honourable, in the collection of the profits of
labour from those who would have misused them, and the administration of
those profits for the service either of the same persons in future, or
of others; and when it is dishonourable, as is more frequently the case
in modern times, it consists in the collection of the profits of labour
from those who would have rightly used them, and their appropriation to
the service of the collector himself.

147. The examination of these various modes of collection and use of
riches will form the third branch of our future inquiries; but the key
to the whole subject lies in the clear understanding of the difference
between selfish and unselfish expenditure. It is not easy, by any
course of reasoning, to enforce this on the generally unwilling hearer;
yet the definition of unselfish expenditure is brief and simple. It is
expenditure which, if you are a capitalist, does not pay _you_, but pays
somebody else; and if you are a consumer, does not please _you_, but
pleases somebody else. Take one special instance, in further
illustration of the general type given above. I did not invent that
type, but spoke of a real river, and of real peasantry, the languid and
sickly race which inhabits, or haunts--for they are often more like
spectres than living men--the thorny desolation of the banks of the Arve
in Savoy. Some years ago, a society, formed at Geneva, offered to embank
the river for the ground which would have been recovered by the
operation; but the offer was refused by the (then Sardinian) government.
The capitalists saw that this expenditure would have "paid" if the
ground saved from the river was to be theirs. But if, when the offer
that had this aspect of profit was refused, they had nevertheless
persisted in the plan, and merely taking security for the return of
their outlay, lent the funds for the work, and thus saved a whole race
of human souls from perishing in a pestiferous fen (as, I presum