On (Essays Collection). Hilaire Belloc

mist. There was no noise of animals in the brakes, the dirty boundary stream lay sluggish and dead, and the rank weeds had lost all colour. One could note the parallel belts of rounded earth where once—long, long ago—this field had been ploughed. No other evidence was there of any activity at all, and it looked as though man had not seen it for a hundred years.

      “Now,” said the Economist, “what is the value of this field?”

      The Squire had begun his answer, when his friend interrupted him testily. “No, no, no; I don’t want to ask about your private affairs; what I mean is, what is it builds up the economic value of this field? It is not the earth itself; it is the use to which man puts it. It is the crops and the produce which he makes it bear and the advantage which it has over other neighbouring fields. It is the surplus value which makes it give you a rent. What gives this field its value is the competition among the farmers to get it.”

      “But——” began the Squire.

      The Economist with increasing irritation waved him down. “Now, listen,” he said; “the worst land has only what is called prairie value.”

      The Squire would eagerly have asked the meaning of this, for it suggested coin, but he thought he was bound to listen to the remainder of the story.

      “That is only true,” said the Economist, “of the worst land. There is land on which no profit could be made; it neither makes nor loses. It is on what we call the margin of production.”

      “What about rates?” said the Squire, looking at that mournful stretch, all closed in and framed with desolation, and suggesting a thousand such others stretching on to the boundaries of a deserted world.

      How various are the minds of men! That little word “rates”—it has but five letters; take away the “e” and it would have but four—and what different things does it not mean to different men! To one man the pushing on of his shop just past the edge of bankruptcy; to another the bother of writing a silly little cheque; to another the brand of the Accursed Race of our time—the pariahs, the very poor. To this Squire it meant the dreadful business of paying a great large sum out of an income that never sufficed for the bare needs of his life ... to tell the truth, he always borrowed money for the rates and paid it back out of the next half year ... he had such a lot of land in hand. Years ago, when farms were falling in, in the eighties, a friend of his, a practical man, who went in for silos and had been in the Guards and knew a lot about French agriculture, had told him it would pay him to have his land in hand, so when the farms fell in he consoled himself by what the friend had said; but all these years had passed and it had not paid him.

      Now to the Economist this little word “rates” suggested the hardest problem—the perhaps insoluble problem—of applied economics in our present society. He turned his vivacious eyes sharply on to the Squire and stepped out back for home, for the Castle. For a little time he said nothing, and the Squire, honestly desiring to continue the conversation, said again as he plodded by his friend’s side, “What about rates?”

      “Oh, they’ve nothing to do with it!” said the Economist, a little snappishly. “The proportionate amount of surplus produce demanded by the community does not affect the basic process of production. Of course,” he added, in a rather more conciliatory tone, “it would if the community demanded the total unearned increment and then proposed taxes beyond that limit. That, I have always said, would affect the whole nature of production.”

      “Oh!” said the Squire.

      By this time they were nearing the Castle, and it was already dusk; they were silent during the last hundred yards as the great house showed more definitely through the mist, and the Economist could note upon the face of it the coat-of-arms with which he was familiar. They had been those of his host’s great-grandfather, a solicitor who had foreclosed. These arms were of stucco. Age and the tempest had made them green, and the head of that animal which represented the family had fallen off.

      They went into the house, they drank tea with the rather worried but well-bred hostess of it, and all evening the Squire’s thoughts were of his two daughters, who dressed exactly alike in the local town, and whose dresses were not yet paid for, and of his son, whose schooling was paid for, but whose next term was ahead: the Squire was wondering about the extras. Then he remembered suddenly, and as suddenly put out of his mind by an effort of surprising energy in such a man, the date February 3rd, on which he must get a renewal or pay a certain claim.

      They sat at table; they drank white fizzy wine by way of ritual, but it was bad. The Economist could not distinguish between good wine and bad, and all the while his mind was full of a very bothersome journey to the North, where he was to read a paper to an institute upon “The Reaction of Agricultural Prosperity upon Industrial Demand.” He was wondering whether he could get them to change the hour so that he could get back by a train that would put him into London before midnight. And all this cogitation which lay behind the general talk during dinner and after it led him at last to say: “Have you a ‘Bradshaw’?”

      But the Squire’s wife had no “Bradshaw.” She did not think they could afford it. However, the eldest daughter remembered an old “Bradshaw” of last August, and brought it, but it was no use to the Economist.

      * * * * *

      How various is man! How multiplied his experience, his outlook, his conclusions!

      A LITTLE CONVERSATION IN CARTHAGE

       Table of Contents

      HANNO: Waiter! Get me a copy of The Times. [Mutters to himself. The waiter brings the copy of The Times. As he gives it to Hanno he collides with another member of the Club, and that member, already advanced in years, treads upon Hanno’s foot.]

      Hanno: Ah! Ah! Ah!... Oh! [with a grunt]. Bethaal, it’s you, is it?

      Bethaal: Gouty?

      Hanno [after saying nothing for some time]: ’Xtraordinary thing.... Nothing in the papers.

      Bethaal: Nothing odd about that! [He laughs rather loudly, and Hanno, who wishes he had said the witty thing, smirks gently without enthusiasm. Then he proceeds on another track.] I find plenty in the papers! [He puffs like a grampus.]

      Hanno: Plenty about yourself!... That’s the only good of politics, and precious little good either.... What I can’t conceive—as you do happen to be the in’s and not the out’s—is why you don’t send more men from somewhere; he has asked for them often enough.

      Bethaal [wisely]: They’re all against it; couldn’t get anyone to agree but little Schem [laughs loudly]; he’d agree to anything.

      Hanno [wagging his head sagely]: He’ll be Suffete, my boy! He’ll be a Sephad all right! He’s my sister’s own boy.

      Bethaal [surlily]: Shouldn’t wonder! All you Hannos get the pickings.

      Hanno: You talk like a book.... Anyhow, what about the reinforcements?—that does interest me.

      Bethaal [wearily]: Oh, really. I’ve heard about it until I’m tired. It isn’t the reinforcements that are wanted really; it’s money, and plenty of it. That’s what it is. [He looks about the room in search for a word.] That’s what it is. [He continues to look about the room.] That’s what it is ... er ... really. [Having found the word Bethaal is content, and Hanno remains silent for a few minutes, then:]

      Hanno: He doesn’t seem to be doing much.

      Bethaal [jumping up suddenly with surprising vigour for a man of close on seventy, and sticking his hands into his pockets, if Carthaginians had pockets]: That’s it! That’s exactly it! That’s what I say, What Hannibal really wants is money. He’s got the men right enough. The men are splendid, but all those putrid little Italian towns are asking to be bribed, and