Carlyle, who admired the strong hand, and had no interest in Baptist missionaries, accepted Mr. Eyre as the saviour of society in his West Indian sphere; and there were many, both in Jamaica and at home, who believed that, but for his prompt action, the white population would have been massacred with all the horrors of a savage rebellion.  Ruskin had been for many years the ally of the Broad Church and Liberal party.  But he was now coming more and more under the personal influence of Carlyle; and when it came to the point of choosing sides, declared himself, in a letter to the Daily Telegraph (December 20th, 1865), a Conservative and a supporter of order; and joined the Eyre Defence Committee with a subscription of L100.  The prominent part he took, for example, in the meeting of September, 1866, was no doubt forced upon him by his desire to save Carlyle, whose recent loss and shaken nerves made such business especially trying to him.  Letters of this period remain, in which Carlyle begs Ruskin to “be diligent, I bid you!”—­and so on, adding, “I must absolutely shut up in that direction, to save my sanity.”  And so it fell to the younger man to work through piles of pamphlets and newspaper correspondence, to interview politicians and men of business, and—­what was so very foreign to his habits—­to take a leading share in a party agitation.

But in all this he was true to his Jacobite instincts.  He had been brought up a Tory; and though he had drifted into an alliance with the Broad Church and philosophical Liberals, he was never one of them.  Now that his father was gone, perhaps he felt a sort of duty to own himself his father’s son; and the failure of liberal philanthropy to realise his ideals, and of liberal philosophy to rise to his economic standards, combined with Carlyle to induce him to label himself Conservative.  But his conservatism could not be accepted by the party so called.  Fortunately, he did not need or ask their recognition.  He took no interest in party politics, and never in his life voted at a Parliamentary election.  He only meant to state in the shortest terms that he stood for loyalty and order.

CHAPTER VII

“TIME AND TIDE” (1867)

The series of letters published as “Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne” were addressed[13] to Thomas Dixon, a working cork-cutter of Sunderland, whose portrait by Professor Legros is familiar to visitors at the South Kensington Museum.  He was one of those thoughtful, self-educated working men in whom, as a class, Ruskin had been taking a deep interest for the past twelve years, an interest which had purchased him a practical insight into their various capacities and aims, and the right to speak without fear or favour.  At this time there was an agitation for Parliamentary reform, and the better representation of the working classes; and it was on this topic that the letters were begun, though the writer went on to criticise