Page:Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne.djvu/123

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XV. PER-CENTAGE.
109

or estate; but fortune of this kind is freely given in gratitude for benefit, not as repayment for labour. Also, men of peculiar genius in any art, if the public can enjoy the product of their genius, may set it at almost any price they choose; but this, I will show you when I come to speak of art, is unlawful on their part, and ruinous to their own powers. Genius must not be sold; the sale of it involves, in a transcendental, but perfectly true, sense, the guilt both of simony and prostitution. Your labour only may be sold; your soul must not.

82. Now, by fair pay for fair labour, according to the rank of it, a man can obtain means of comfortable, or if he needs it, refined life. But he cannot obtain large fortune. Such fortunes as are now the prizes of commerce can be made only in one of three ways:—

(1.) By obtaining command over the labour of multitudes of other men, and taxing it for our own profit.

(2.) By treasure-trove,—as of mines, useful vegetable products, and the like,—in circumstances putting them under our own exclusive control.