INTRODUCTION lxxix

and his ‘re-consideration’ of his resolution to accept no invitations except from municipal bodies. I do not suppose that at any previous period of history there has been more open Communism coolly announced in the face of all men. The French Revolution was a frenzy begun in a necessary reform of vicious government, but the principles which that frenzy reached at its wildest, becomes now the subject of the after-dinner declamation of our respectable London citizens. There is assuredly a root for all this-desperate abuses going on in governments, and real ground for movement among the lower classes, which of course they are little likely to guide by any very just or rational principle ... However, I must mind and not get too sympathising with the Radicals. Effie says with some justice that I am a great conservative in France, because there everybody is radical, and a great radical in Austria, because there everybody is conservative. I suppose that one reason why I am so fond of fish (as creatures, I mean, not as eating) is that they always swim with their heads against the stream. I find it for me the healthiest position.”

In this spirit of revolt Ruskin, from his distant eyrie at Venice, surveyed the state of politics in England. Catholic Emancipation had been carried, but Ireland had not been pacified. Chartism had been snuffed out, but the movement for Reform continued. The Corn Laws had been abolished, but the Conservative Party under Disraeli were still hankering after a return to protection.¹ Early in 1851 Lord John Russell’s Government had been defeated, but, on Lord Stanley’s failure to form an administration, had returned to office. But internal feuds between Lord John and Lord Palmerston had led to the resignation of the latter, and then to the tit for tat which caused the defeat of the former. In February 1852, Lord Stanley (Lord Derby) had by this time become Prime Minister, with Disraeli as Chancellor of the Exchequer and leader in the House of Commons.

It was at this moment that Ruskin wrote his letters. In the first of these, after a passing sneer at Disraeli as a mere novelist, he discussed the policy of Free Trade, and the principles of taxation-stoutly defending the former, and with regard to the latter advocating direct and graduated taxation. The second letter is incomplete, but is partially supplemented by an explanatory letter to this father (see below, p. lxxxiii.). Ruskin seems to have advocated a system of universal suffrage combined with what in later discussions were called “fancy franchises.” Every man was

¹ One of the events which Ruskin must have had specially in mind was Disraeli’s motion on February 19, 1850, ascribing the agricultural distress to the establishment of free trade, and asking for a Committee of Inquiry.

[Version 0.04: March 2008]