INTRODUCTION lxxxi

said in an instant it was vile. I did not say so in print,¹ because I felt that no one would care for a boy’s opinion, but I heartily wish now that I had written to the Times, and could now refer to my then stated opinion. In like manner I hope the Times will put these letters in, for twenty years hence, if I live, I should like to be able to refer to them and say ‘I told you so, and now you are beginning to find it out.’ And that would give some power-then, however little it may be possible to do at present.

“I have kept these letters as plain and simple as I could. I was tempted to go into the question of cheap wages as connected with that of cheap bread; but found it would lead me too far. In the same way, I should have liked to have gone into some further statements of the mode in which the increasing percentages of income tax were to be fitted to each other; so that a man who had £900 a year, might not be forced to pay £81, and reduced to £819, while a man who had £899 a year paid only £71, 18s. 4¾d. and would have left therefore £827, 1s. 7¼d.; but all this would have taken too much room: I only want to get at the principle.”

“March 23.-These three letters I want to be able to refer to twenty years hence-people may call them as futile as they like now. I know also how much is said on the subject. When every mouth out of (I know not how many millions there are in) England is talking on the same subject, it is likely the truth will be occasionally said and occasionally admitted. Everything true has been said millions of times, but as long as it is mixed up with falsehood, it will be the better of extrication. Whatever I read of public press shows me the confusion of men’s heads on simple matters. These three letters do not profess to say anything new, any more than an Eton grammar does. But they profess to give grammatical and common rules in a simple and clear form, and one likely to be useful, as far as they may be attended to, more than a library full of treatises on political economy. If people say they are common truth, let them act upon them; if people suppose them all wrong, there is the more need of them.”

Ruskin’s father was travelling in the country when the letters reached Denmark Hill; his mother seems to have acknowledged their receipt, and to have deprecated the attack on Disraeli as likely to offend her husband. Ruskin’s next letter on the subject is addressed to her:-

“March 26.-... I am glad you think so well of what is doing in England. But you will see by my last letter² that I am not considering England only. There is assuredly over all Europe nothing but

¹ Sir Charles Barry’s designs were adopted in 1836; Ruskin’s earliest criticism of them in print is in vol. ii. of Modern Painters (1846), Vol. IV. p. 307 n.

² The third of the letters intended for the Times.

XII. f

[Version 0.04: March 2008]