 May it please the court, and frankly, even if it doesn't please the court. Since 1843, when a Christmas carol was first published, we have witnessed a thoroughly one-sided treatment of my client, Ebenezer Scrooge, at the hands of the prosecution, as represented by the author Charles Dickens. On the basis of emotionally riddled allegations, coupled with pure economic ignorance, we have been asked to find Mr. Scrooge guilty of the most ill-defined wrongdoings. Most of us have been dissuaded from even imagining the possibility of a defence for a man like Scrooge. Not unlike the allegations in a child abuse case, many may be inclined to respond. What kind of defence could be made of a man like that? What would you expect someone who had done such a horrible deed to say? Made in this age of political correctness and tabloid thinking, some might even say that the more atrocious the allegations, the less evidence is needed to sustain the charges, and the greater the burden upon the defendant to refute and disprove them. From the outset Mr. Dickens engages in a subtle form of vilification by giving my client a pejorative name. Scrooge. The name seems designed to evoke prejudice, animosity and revulsion in the mind of the reader, so that they will be predisposed to support any case against the man, no matter how ill-founded. Compare Ebenezer Scrooge to other more wholesome names chosen by Dickens, David Copperfield, Nicholas Nicolby, Mr. McCorber, Fezziwig and so on. I hope that you, members of the jury, are sophisticated enough to resist such an apparent ad hominem attack against my client. What is the bill of particulars with which my client is charged? Pay close attention to Mr. Dickens's allegations. His case comes down to just two points. One, my client has managed to become very rich, and two, he insists on keeping his money for himself. That's it. That is the essence of his alleged wrongdoing. Taking my client as the miserable fellow Dickens has presented him as, let me be the first to admit that if Ebenezer's obsession with materialistic pursuits rendered him an unhappy person, and were it the purposes of his detractors to help extricate him from his self-imposed miseries, and to restore him to that state of happiness and innocence so common to most of us in our childhood years, no one would be happier than I. But it is not my client's happiness that the prosecution endeavours to obtain, but his money. The case against Ebenezer Scrooge is nothing more than a well-orchestrated, vicious conspiracy to extort from my client as much of his money as can be acquired through terror, threats of his death, and other appeals to fear. The only happiness that ensued to my client from this campaign arose from the ultimate cessation of terror inflicted upon him. In addition to extortion, the conspirators against my client are guilty of such torts as intentional infliction of emotional distress, libel and slander, trespass, assault, malicious prosecution, battery, nuisance, and false imprisonment. For this reason my client may elect to bring his own suit, but for now let us focus upon his defence to this action. As we do so, pay particular attention to the utter contradiction underlying Dickens's case. My client is charged with being a greedy, money-hungry scoundrel, and yet it is the conspirators against him who will resort to criminal means to obtain his money to fuel their own greed. Dickens's Scrooge, unlike his antagonists, earned his money in the marketplace by satisfying the demands of customers and clients who continue to do business with him, and did not, as far as we are told, resort to terror or threats of death to get it. It is instructive that Dickens tells us virtually nothing about the nature of Ebenezer's business. We are told that he is something of a banker or financier, but we are told nothing about the nature of his investments. He has presumably been responsible for financing many successful enterprises over the years, which have not only benefited the rest of the community in terms of the goods and services they provide, but afford employment to countless individuals. For all we know, Scrooge may have provided capital for researchers, seeking a cure for the very ailment from which Tiny Tim suffers. It would seem to be beneath Comrade Dickens's sensibilities to ask what good Scrooge's investments have done or care about the answer, preferring to focus upon the fact that Scrooge has profited from his sound business decision-making. If we are to understand the essence of the case against my client, we must inquire into the nature of the collectivist thinking that produced it. In matters of economics, such people believe that wealth is simply a given, something that has come into existence in mysterious ways and in a fixed amount that has somehow managed to get into the hands of a few people through presumed and unspecified acts of dishonesty, exploitation and unscrupulousness. Dickens expresses the idea central to all collectivist thinking that presumes individual self-interest to be a source of social misery rather than the font of human well-being. That the pursuit of self-interest can generate good for others as an unintended consequence was far too complicated a concept for Dickens's simplistic, fragmented mind. To all collectivists, including Dickens, the idea that more wealth could be created never manages to invade their imaginations. To them, the only question is how is this fixed body of wealth to be most fairly redistributed? The question of how can more wealth be created and what conditions would be necessary for accomplishing such ends never enters their minds, for the pursuit of such conditions would utterly destroy all socialist systems. The beneficiaries of such redistribution are looked upon as passive and dependent recipients of other people's decision-making. In this connection, it is to Mr Cratchit that I would now like to direct my attention. The central character in this campaign of terror and extortion against my client is one Bob Cratchit, the 19th century's version of Forrest Gump, a witless and chronic loser with no apparent control over any significant aspects of his life, save perhaps for his body's biological functions. Apparently his only purpose in life is to absorb the blows visited upon him by others. He is the poster boy for victimhood, a flatliner devoid of any dynamic sense of life. At this point, many of you are probably thinking to yourselves, surely he's not going to denounce the Cratchits, is he? They are one of the most revered of all families, a part of the pantheon of secular gods in our culture. Yes, I am. I am going to attack the Cratchits. One of the offences with which my client has been charged was that he had not paid Bob Cratchit a large enough salary. Cratchit has allegedly been underpaid, whatever that may mean, by my client for many years. Why? Why did he not quit? Why didn't he go to work for some other employer, perhaps one of the politically correct businessmen who periodically show up at Scrooge's office to solicit and browbeat charitable contributions from my client? Put yourself in Cratchit's position. Imagine yourself to have been the victim of years of underappreciated and underpaid work, head of a large family, one of whose members suffered from a life-threatening ailment. What would you have done? Would you have simply sat around in a stupor, hoping that great fortune would befall you through some act of dumb luck? Certainly in the early days of the Industrial Revolution, wherein Dickens wrote, when new businesses were starting up all over the place in a great burst of economic creativity, there must have been all sorts of opportunities available for a competent bookkeeper. Great fortunes were made by those who rose up out of abject poverty, such men as Andrew Carnegie come to mind, a young boy who went from seeing his father begging in the streets for work to become the richest man of his era. At no time in history had there been a greater opportunity for self-betterment than during the Industrial Revolution, where demonstrated merit helped to destroy the state-conferred privileges of feudalism. To anyone with even the most rudimentary understanding of economics, two things should be clear. One, if, as has been alleged, my client is a tight-fisted, selfish man, he surely would not have paid Bob Cratchit a shilling more than his marginal productivity was worth to Scrooge's firm. And two, if Bob Cratchit was being woefully underpaid by my client, there must have been all kinds of alternative employment available to this man at higher salaries. If Cratchit cannot find more immunerative work, and if my client is paying him the maximum that he is marginally worth to his business, then Cratchit must be worth precisely what my client is paying him. Economic values are subjective, with prices for goods or services rising or falling on the basis of the combined preferences of market participants. It is this interplay of marketplace forces, which Dickens neither understands nor favours, coupled with Cratchit's passive, sluggish disposition when it comes to improving his marketable skills or opportunities that accounts for Cratchit's condition in life. My client should no more be expected to pay Cratchit more than his marketable skills merit than would Dickens have paid his stationer a higher-than-market price for his pen, ink and paper, simply because the retailer needed more money. Dickens' ignorance of basic economics would, if acted upon by Scrooge, have produced adverse consequences for Cratchit himself. Had Ebenezer chosen to pay a higher salary for the work being done by Cratchit, Scrooge would very likely have been able to attract employees whose higher marginal productivity might have earned Scrooge even greater profits, leaving Cratchit with no job and no income at all. If there are employers out there prepared to pay Cratchit a higher wage than he is receiving from my client, then we must ask ourselves, did Bob Cratchit simply lack the ambition to seek higher-paying employment? It would appear so. At no time do we see this man exhibiting any interest in trying to better his and his family's lot. Not even when the aforementioned businessmen arrive for their annual shakedown of my client, does Cratchit so much as suggest to them, gentlemen, I have a son who is afflicted with a life-threatening condition, and if you would be so inclined to look upon him as one of the objects of your charitable purposes, I would be greatly appreciative. He is unable to generate even the slightest motivation to rise from his self-pitying position long enough to even speak up for Tiny Tim at a time when any responsible and loving parent would have jumped at the opportunity to plead his son's case. The prosecution, in the form of Mr Dickens, would have you believe that my client is a heartless and irresponsible person. But why should my client be more greatly motivated on behalf of Tiny Tim than was Tim's own father? Neither in this connection can we ignore the behaviour of Scrooge's nephew, who pops into the story early enough to chide his uncle for his miserly attitudes and appears later at a lavish Christmas party fated for his yuppie friends for all his sanctimonious rhetoric about caring for others. Why were no gold coins forthcoming from the nephew's pockets on behalf of Tiny Tim? We see in this nephew the forerunner of the modern politically correct limousine liberal who has all kinds of plans for disposing of other people's money while carefully shepherding his own. A man Mark Twain might have had in mind when he wrote of those who believe that there is nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits. If a lack of imagination and ambition is not at the crux of Bob Cratchit's problem in maintaining his inert, status quo position for so many years, then perhaps we should consider the possibility that this man was simply incompetent. Perhaps he had tried but was unable to obtain more highly paid employment because he was incapable of performing at any higher skilled level than that of the bean counter he apparently was and seemed satisfied in remaining. If Cratchit's stagnating in the backwaters of Scrooge's shop was due to his basically poor work skills then the obvious question is why did Cratchit not seek to enhance his skills as by learning a more remunerative trade? Alas Bob Cratchit was once again either too unambitious or too unimaginative to pursue this cause of conduct. Indeed about the only gumption we see Cratchit exhibiting in this story is in his grovelling request for another lump of coal for the stove or his equally weak-need appeal for a day off on Christmas. Such is the extent of his courage, ambition and love for his family. My client, whatever his reasons, has seen fit to keep this incompetent non-creative dawdler on his payroll. But instead of being praised for not terminating this slug he stands condemned for not paying him more than he was marginally worth. More than any other employer would have paid him if indeed any other employer would have hired him in the first place. Perhaps my client's retention of Bob Cratchit should be looked upon as the most charitable of all the acts engaged in by anyone in Mr Dickens's story. To be clear we do not allege this man to be one of the principal conspirators against my client. Far from it for he is both too dull and too lazy to have dreamed up or to have actively participated in a scheme as convoluted and diabolical as the one perpetrated against my client. Cratchit is not a villain, but a tool used by the conspirators. The morally culpable wrongdoers in this shakedown of my client are the spirits who trespass at night upon the quiet enjoyment of my client's premises to terrify him with previews of his own demise should he not succumb to their demands to part with his money. No more blatant act of criminal extortion could be imagined than that visited upon my client by these spirits. At this point you may see the thoroughly dispirited nature of socialism, a philosophy for losers, that feeds upon and requires the continuing nourishment of the mindset of victimology. It might be argued that Dickens's spirits were simply interested in the reclamation and rehabilitation of my client's soul, and that such acts of terror had the well-being of Scrooge at heart. Such were the arguments used during the medieval Inquisition to justify the torture and burning at the stake of heretics, or in later generations to the persecution and hanging of witches. Lest you accept this shabby explanation for their behaviour, ask yourself this question would these spirits have dained to visit Ebenezer if he had been a penniless beggar? Would they have bothered this man for a single moment had there been no money to squeeze from him? Furthermore at any point in the story did these spirits demonstrate regard for the well-being of other persons who might be inconvenienced by Scrooge's being terrorised into giving away his money? If my client is to throw his money around, or pay more for services than only worth to his firm what is to happen to the plans of those who had arranged to borrow money from Scrooge's firm only to be later told that the funds for such loans were no longer available? Do the spirits have any way of compensating them for their disappointments? Or like socialists generally are they totally indifferent to the unintended consequences of the events they set in motion? It is at this point for these spirits arises any decent person with even a minimal level of humanitarian sentiment must look upon the spirits with utter contempt and moral revulsion. Keep in mind these spectres are possessed with the powers to suspend ordinary rules that operate throughout the rest of nature. They can successfully defy gravity, move backwards and forwards in time, cause matter to become invisible, raise the dead and foresee the future. Having all these amazing powers why did these spirits not intervene to cure Tiny Tim of his ailment? The answer is quite clear like socialists and welfare status generally they don't give a damn about Tiny Tim's plight. This poor crippled boy was nothing more to them than an opportunity a convenient resource to exploit the assurance of what was important to them to ring from my client whatever amount of money they could. The fate of Tiny Tim was held hostage left to the outcome of an elaborate blackmail scheme. Had the spirits been truly desirous of helping the Cratchit family they would have been better advised to focus their time and energies upon this family rather than upon my client. The ghost of Christmas past could perhaps have taken Bob Cratchit after his youth to help him discover why he had become such a passive wimpy recipient of other people's decision making. The ghost of Christmas present could have warned Cratchit of the dreary fate awaiting his family as a consequence of his incompetence, laziness, passivity and psychic bankruptcy. The prospect of Tiny Tim's death and of his own family ending up in a dismal poor house might have been enough to stir some semblance of ambition in this hapless Lummox. These spirits might even have offered him more positive assistance by encouraging him to develop better marketable skills in order that he might remove his family from the dire straits to which Cratchit seems all but indifferent. The Cratchits are good for little more than sitting around the house spouting empty bromides and homilies seemingly oblivious of the need to make fundamental changes in their lives. At no time in the story do we find either of the adult Cratchits considering alternatives by which they could improve their economic condition. We do not, for instance, read of Mrs Cratchit telling Bob as they huddle around their rapidly cooling fireplace Bob, today I saw an advert for a correspondence school where you can learn all kinds of new skills. Perhaps you could study charter accountancy and make more money. Neither is any offer made by Mrs Cratchit to seek employment in order to earn money that could be used to help their ailing son. Tiny Tim continually reminds them God bless us, everyone. But let us not forget that other admonition long since lost on the Cratchits. The Lord helps those who help themselves. Of course any suggestion that the Cratchits exercise independence and self-responsibility in their own affairs would run counter to the political and social agenda that Dickens through his assorted spiritual operatives have over such proto-proletarians. To have the Cratchits of the world become truly self-governing and autonomous would be fatal to the socialist mindset which requires a passive, compliant, conscript clientele only too willing to exchange one master for another. As we reach the end of the story we see my client reduce to such a state of psychological terror at the prospect of his own death that he awakens and begins throwing money out the window to a stranger in the street. In the mind of Dickens Scrooge has now justified his existence by abandoning the rational decision-making that has made his firm successful and adopting the mindset of a worker who barges into the Cratchit household and begins running their lives. While Ebenezer's post-nightmare behaviour reflects what can only be described as the most immature understanding of how wealth is both produced and exchanged in the marketplace they also represent significant legal issues. I would suggest that a man who has been induced by dread fear of his own death to part with his money has available to him the claims of duress and legal incapacity to restore to him what was involuntarily taken from him. The basic principles of property and contract law support the conclusion that transactions entered into under duress or while in a state of incapacity are invalid. In the final analysis this case against Ebenezer Scrooge comes down to an emotional appeal based upon the resentment and envy that is at the core of every second-rate's personality. Such charges as have been leveled against my client only serve to confirm in the minds of far too many that the success of the few is always bought at the expense of the many and that financial wealth is only accumulated through fraud, corruption, exploitation, dishonesty and a depraved insensitivity to human suffering. With such beliefs do the unmotivated or the unsuccessful soothe their shabby egos. I may be poor but at least I didn't sacrifice my principles. It's the common defence of those whose accomplishments come up short in comparison with their more prosperous neighbours. It would be unrealistic I suppose to have expected a different result from a collectivist such as Dickens who had a most restrictive view of the human spirit. Dickens like other socialists is no less materialistic than Scrooge. Their vision of a better world extends no further than obtaining by the invocation of guilt and fear vast sums of money from their more successful neighbours and redistributing it to losers instead of working to remove the barriers that prevent others from bettering their own lot thereby increasing their little wealth. Ebenezer could have been more beneficial to the Cratchits in ways that money can never accomplish. Instead of treating him as a charity case he could have taken Cratchit aside and told him, Bob you're a loser. At this rate you and your family are destined for that long slide down the razor blade of life into total entropy. I recognise that the nature of our relationship helped to condition you well. But what will your future be like when I and my generosity are not around to sustain you? Let me help you by providing some lessons in advanced accounting practices so that you can become marginally more productive to me and in the process help you earn more money. This is the Industrial Revolution Bob and opportunities have never been greater for anyone with a creative idea. Why don't you get one? Who like you might get rich in this setting? Still I doubt that Bob Cratchit would get the message. I suspect that he would still cling to his tin cup lifestyle preferring to trade upon our sympathies rather than develop creative talents. Never to experience the joy of existential equality and dignity that comes from being a producer of goods and services that other people value. Dickens' approach like the underlying methodology of the welfare state does nothing to provide long-term help for the Cratchits of the world. Scrooge's unearned generosity will not only increase his cost of doing business, thus increasing the likelihood of his own business failure, but upon his bankruptcy or eventual death will leave Cratchit in the position of having to find a new host upon which to attach himself for the remainder of his parasitic life. Let us have no more of these drive-by specters from the netherworld who feign their concern for crippled children like other opportunistic parasites who tell us that they feel our pain even as they are causing us more pain Let us have no more of the self-serving guilt peddling that keeps men and women subservient to those who threaten to cut off their dependencies. The claim against my client is without substance and should be dismissed with prejudice. It is the Industrial Revolution's version of a scapegoating action grounded more in bigotry than in fact or reason. In the end I can offer no better answer to such charges than those provided by my client himself. Bar humbug The defence rests.