in is anything more than a bargain, whereas in point of fact it
is a link in the policy of mankind, and either a good or an evil to the
world. We have a sort of blindness which prevents us from seeing
anything but sovereigns. If one man agrees to give another so many
shillings for so many hours' work, and then wilfully gives him a certain
proportion of the price in bad money and only the remainder in good, we
can see with half an eye that this man is a thief. But if the other
spends a certain proportion of the hours in smoking a pipe of tobacco,
and a certain other proportion in looking at the sky, or the clock, or
trying to recall an air, or in meditation on his own past adventures,
and only the remainder in downright work such as he is paid to do, is
he, because the theft is one of time and not of money,--is he any the
less a thief? The one gave a bad shilling, the other an imperfect hour;
but both broke the bargain, and each is a thief. In piecework, which is
what most of us do, the case is none the less plain for being even less
material. If you forge a bad knife, you have wasted some of mankind's
iron, and then, with unrivalled cynicism, you pocket some of mankind's
money for your trouble. Is there any man so blind who cannot see that
this is theft? Again, if you carelessly cultivate a farm, you have been
playing fast and loose with mankind's resources against hunger; there
will be less bread in consequence, and for lack of that bread somebody
will die next winter: a grim consideration. And you must not hope to
shuffle out of blame because you got less money for your less quantity
of bread; for although a theft be partly punished, it is none the less a
theft for that. You took the farm against competitors; there were others
ready to shoulder the responsibility and be answerable for the tale of
loaves; but it was you who took it. By the act you came under a tacit
bargain with mankind to cultivate that farm with your best endeavour;
you were under no superintendence, you were on parole; and you have
broke your bargain, and to all who look closely, and yourself among the
rest if you have moral eyesight, you are a thief. Or take the case of
men of letters. Every piece of work which is not as good as you can make
it, which you have palmed off imperfect, meagrely thought, niggardly in
execution, upon mankind who is your paymaster on parole and in a sense
your pupil, every hasty or slovenly or untrue performance, should rise