[From "The Morning Post," July 7, 1864.]
THE POSITION OF DENMARK.

To the Editor of "The Morning Post."

Sir: Will you allow me, in fewest words, to say how deeply I concur in all that is said in that noble letter of Lord Townshend's published in your columns this morning—except only in its last sentence, "It is time to protest."[14] Alas! if protests were of any use, men with hearts and lips would have protested enough by this time. But they are of none, and can be of none. What true words are worth any man's utterance, while it is possible for such debates as last Monday's to be, and two English gentlemen can stand up before the English Commons to quote Virgil at each other, and round sentences, and show their fineness of wrist in their pretty little venomous carte and tierce of personality, while, even as they speak, the everlasting silence is wrapping the brave massacred Danes?[15] I do not know, never shall know, how this is possible. If a cannon shot carried off their usher's head, nay, carried off but his rod's head, at their room door, they would not round their sentences, I fancy, in asking where the shot came from; but because these infinite masses of advancing slaughter are a few hundred miles distant from them, they can speak their stage speeches out in content. Mr. Gladstone must go to places, it seems, before he can feel! Let him go to Alsen, as he went to Naples,[16] and quote Virgil to the Prussian army. The English mind, judging by your leaders, seems divided between the German-cannon nuisance and the Savoyard street-organ nuisance; but was there ever hurdy-gurdy like this dissonance of eternal talk?[17] The Savoyard at least grinds his handle one way, but these classical discords on the double pipe, like Mr. Kinglake's two tunes—past and present[18]—on Savoy and Denmark, need stricter police interference, it seems to me! The cession of Savoy was the peaceful present of a few crags, goats, and goatherds by one king to another; it was also fair pay for fair work, and, in the profoundest sense, no business of ours. Whereupon Mr. Kinglake mewed like a moonstruck cat going to be made a mummy of for Bubastis. But we saw the noble Circassian nation murdered, and never uttered word for them. We saw the noble Polish nation sent to pine in ice, and never struck blow for them. Now the nation of our future Queen calls to us for help in its last agony, and we round sentences and turn our backs. Sir, I have no words for these things, because I have no hope. It is not these squeaking puppets who play before us whom we have to accuse; it is not by cutting the strings of them that we can redeem our deadly error.

We English, as a nation, know not, and care not to know, a single broad or basic principle of human justice. We have only our instincts to guide us. We will hit anybody again who hits us. We will take care of our own families and our own pockets; and we are characterized in our present phase of enlightenment mainly by rage in speculation, lavish expenditure on suspicion or panic, generosity whereon generosity is useless, anxiety for the souls of savages, regardlessness of those of civilized nations, enthusiasm for liberation of blacks, apathy to enslavement of whites, proper horror of regicide, polite respect for populicide, sympathy with those whom we can no longer serve, and reverence for the dead, whom we have ourselves delivered to death.

I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
J. Ruskin.
Denmark Hill, July 6.

FOOTNOTES:

[14] Lord Townsend's letter was upon "The Circassian Exodus," and pointed out that a committee appointed in 1862 with the object of aiding the tribes of the Caucasus against Russia had failed in obtaining subscriptions, whilst that of 1864, for relieving the sufferers when resistance had become impossible, was more successful. "The few bestowed their sympathy upon the struggle for life; the many reserved theirs for the agonies of death.... To which side, I would ask, do reason and justice incline?" After commenting on the "tardy consolation for an evil which we have neglected to avert," and after remarking that "in the national point of view the case of Poland is an exact counterpart to that of Circassia," the letter thus concluded: "Against such a state of things it is surely time for all who feel as I do to protest."

[15] The debate (July 4, 1864) was upon the Danish question and the policy of the Government, and took place just after the end of a temporary armistice and the resumption of hostilities by the bombardment of Alsen, in the Dano-Prussian war. Alsen was taken two days after the publication of this letter. The "two English gentlemen" were Mr. D'Israeli and Mr. Gladstone (at this time Chancellor of the Exchequer), the latter of whom had quoted the lines from the sixth Æneid (ll. 489-491):

"At Danaum proceres Agamemnoniæque phalanges
Ut vidêre virum fulgentiaque arma per umbras
Ingenti trepidare metu."