our English friends. If, however, the whole truth might be freely spoken, without offence, I should say that strong doubts of England's disinterestedness have much to do with our unfilial rejection of her counsel. "Is it probable," the American shrewdly asks, “that, in her anxious efforts to secure our adoption of Free-Trade, the nation is governed by a maternal solicitude for our good, rather than her own interests? Can we mention a single instance in which England's relations with a weaker Government have been characterized by that large and even-justice which distinguishes the philanthropist from the trader? Can we name China? Is it one of the glories of Free-Trade that history of the wars of 1840 and 1857, of the occupancy of Hong-Kong, of the forcible introduction into the Empire of £9,000,000 worth of opium every year, and of the refusal to modify or suppress the clause of a Treaty which compels a nation of four hundred millions to be slowly poisoned? Is it Spain-whose chief fortress was seized by England at a time when peace existed between the two nations, and is retained, Mr. Bright tells us, 'contrary to every law of morality and honour? Is it India, of whose patient, dumb, and famine stricken people, even the very salt is taxed 2000 per cent. on its cost,* that England may prosecute imperial wars, in the conduct of which the Hindu has no voice? Is it Afghanistan, struggling for its independence in resistance to what some of the greatest of English statesmen have pronounced an utterly unjust and wicked war?+ Zululand, the first step to whose annexation has been taken by what has been called an unnecessary and criminal war? Is it the Transvaal, whose Boers saw their cherished independence rudely trampled under foot when it seemed to conflict with English interests?' Is it Bulgaria, to the atrocious butchery and outrage of whose women and children by the Turk an English Ambassador could be officially blind for the sake of English interests? We are not mistaking Government for the people. We know very well in America that against this policy of self-interest, and in behalf of justice to all people at all times, the wisest and noblest of England's heritage of good men raised their protests; but their voices were drowned by popular clamour, and their proposals were defeated in Parliament by an immense majority of the nation's representatives. When Sir James Stephen declared that in the question of a war with Afghanistan, we are to decide according to our own interests, meaning, by that expression, the interests of the permanence and stability of the British power;'‡ when a leading London newspaper declared that the preservation of our rule in India is the highest moral law we can observe,§ they but named the standard by which the England of to-day decides the question of undertaking

*Prof. Fawcett, in Nineteenth Century, Feb. 1879.

Is it

Earl Grey, Letter to the Times, October 26, 1878. Earl Shaftesbury, Letter to Afghan Committee, November 26, 1878. Mr. Gladstone, House of Commons, Nov. 30, 1878, and at Glasgow, December 5, 1879.

+ Letter to the Times, Oct. 24, 1878.

§ Editorial in the Standard, Nov. 13, 1878.

what the nation's conscience pronounces a war of injustice and folly. Is it, then, unreasonable," we ask, " for us Americans to imagine that the standard which decides such great and awful responsibilities is less used to determine a mere question of trade?"

These, then, are some of the reasons which appear to me largely to determine the persistent allegiance to the doctrine of Protection by the people of the United States. It may be that these apparent facts are all illusions, capable of easy refutation; if so, such refutation, clear, absolute, and convincing will carry far more weight than the thousandth reference to the "Wealth of Nations," or the assumption of our national stupidity. During the late Civil War, while Grant was winning victory after victory, some envious politician whispered in the President's ear that the great commander was too much addicted to the use of spirits. "Drinks, does he?" was Mr. Lincoln's reply; "then I wish you would find out the kind of liquor he takes. I want to recom. mend it to some other Generals in the army."

So if it be true that the great mass of the American working people, whether agriculturists or mechanics, are better housed, fed, clothed, and in all respects better situated than the working millions of a nation whose ports are open to the world; if, moreover, it is true that no purely agricultural country, depending on foreign trade for its manufactures, has ever in modern times attained place and influence among the nations; if, without Protection, America would certainly have been thus dependent upon Europe, and especially upon Great Britain; if with it, and by it, the Republic has finally gained a position which makes its name honoured, its friendship desirable, its rivalry formidable, its power respected, and its future promise not unworthy the nation from which it sprung-it has no need to put Protection upon its defence. It might even recommend this discarded and obsolete doctrine to some of its less fortunate and less favoured rivals.

Of the ultimate adoption by nations of the principles of absolute Free-Trade, I have as little doubt as the most sanguine disciple of Adam Smith. But, like the hope of universal peace among all peoples of the world, it is the dream of a far-distant future, in centuries beyond our own. It assuredly cannot be realized while the tramp of armies is louder than the din of the workshop; while the Thunderer and the Warrior, the Devastation and the Terror, are a menace on every sea. By America, however, the day of its adoption may be much nearer our own time. History often repeats itself. Like England, by thorough protection of our growing industries, we have laid the foundations of success in every branch of manufactures. So soon as our pre-eminence is absolutely ensured, there will exist no longer the necessity to protect. Of that future we have, apparently, every reason to hope. The Earl of Derby, speaking at Rochdale in January, 1879, predicted for the United States, during the lifetime of our children, a population of two hundred millions. It may be, that with all the advantages of a vast

and increasing home market, of an economical and popular Government, of enormous and inexhaustible mineral resources, of abundant and cheap food, of plentiful and never-failing harvests, with no rivals to trouble us, no enemies to fear, no distant territories to guard, the time is not so distant when every article of European manufacture may be made cheaper in America than it can be made abroad. If the day ever arrives, when English workmen shall have followed their tradeswhen the production of Anglo-American skill and industry may be found in every shop in Europe cheaper than their home-made wares -it is probable that we shall then take our turn in eulogizing Free-Trade, in opening our ports to all nations, and in preaching the blessings of unrestricted commerce to a reluctant and still doubting world.

ALBERT J. LEFFINGWELL.

THE PUBLIC LETTERS OF JOHN

RUSKIN, D.C.L.

"I never wrote a letter in my life, which all the world are not welcome to read, if they will."- Fors Clavigera, Letter 59, 1875, p. 311.

II.

IN

N my first Paper upon these Letters I dwelt exclusively upon such as treated of Art. I preferred to begin with those-as I there pointed out-partly because most of them preceded in chronological order those with which I have now to deal, and partly because Art is still the chief subject upon which Mr. Ruskin's authority is widely recognized. He is still regarded, by the general public, mainly as the author of "Modern Painters," "The Stones of Venice," and "The Seven Lamps of Architecture;" and the works in which he himself now finds most to alter, are those in which they see most to praise. Thus the book " which, hitherto, remains their favourite," is one which he is "resolved never to republish as a whole;" whilst the volumes which he has written on other subjects, or in later years, are, for various reasons, those upon which they place a lower value, and by which he sets the highest store. It is even possible to fix a date, 1860, when the fifth and final volume of "Modern Painters" was first issued, by which to mark this difference in opinion between the author and his public; the public practically ignoring all that Mr. Ruskin has written since that date- whilst he reverses their judgment. And so strong is his conviction on this point that where, in a particular instance, he no longer approved of some expressions in a chapter of one of his books published in 1865, he has still retained it in a recent reprint of the volume, expressly in order to leave no room for any one to say that he has "withdrawn, as erroneous in principle, so much as a single sentence of any of his books written since 1860."

This critical attitude of Mr. Ruskin towards one portion of his writings, and this comparative ignorance in the public of another portion of them, must not, of course, be exaggerated. It would be easy to "Ethics to the Dust," Preface to the 1877 edition.

quote recent passages in which he endorses, with full approval, much that he wrote before the date I have named; and it would be obviously absurd to imagine that there are not very many people who have made careful and continuous study of almost all his books. Those who have done so may, indeed, be disinclined to believe that others have not done the same, but that I am convinced they are mistaken, and that Mr. Ruskin is still most constantly congratulated, not on his latest, but on his earliest work.

The reasons which weigh with him in this judgment of the three books mentioned are clearly defined by their author. In his brief preface to the last edition of "Modern Painters," in publishing which he yielded to a general request, though with some violence to his own feelings, he points out that he now objects to much of the first two volumes of that work, as having been "written in a narrow enthusiasm, and that the substance of its metaphysical and religious speculation is only justifiable on the ground of its absolute honesty." Similarly, in the introduction to the first volume of the whole series of his revised works, commenced in 1871, after commenting on the style in which he had first written, and on the influence exercised over his language by his " then favourite in prose, Richard Hooker," he continues thus:-"What I wrote about religion was painstaking, and, I think, forcible, as compared with most religious writing; especially in its frankness and fearlessness, but it was wholly mistaken; for I had been educated in the doctrines of a narrow sect, and had read history as obliquely as sectariaus necessarily must." And of the predilection of the public in favour of these early books of his he is also well aware, for in the preface to the very recent republication of "The Seven Lamps of Architecture," some two months ago, he remarks that the public still like and will read this book "when they won't look at what would be really useful and helpful to them."

This predilection of the public, however, is interesting, because of the questions which it raises. Literary criticism has always refused to confess the same man to be supreme in more than one great department of Knowledge or of Art; and has ever distinguished the concentrated power of genius from the facile diversity of an accomplished mind. The universalist has never escaped the suspicion of charlatanry, and it is invariably doubted whether he who has attempted many matters can have pre-eminently succeeded even in one. And literary criticism has generally been right. But it is not enough to rest content with the fact that success in different pursuits has been rare; we must look for the cause of failure. We should go back, not to the one study or subject in which the man we may be considering is supreme, but to the qualities of mind which enabled him to be so; and we should then ask, not if of two subjects attempted by him oue is inconsistent with the other, but whether both are, or are not, consistent with those qualities. Thus, where we see that an author's fame is based mainly