My dear Sir: Mr. Johnson's speech in the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, which you favor me by sending, appears to me the most important event that has occurred in relation to the true interests of the country during my lifetime. It begins an era of true civilization. I shall allude to it in the "Fors" of March, and make it the chief subject of the one following (the matter of this being already prepared).[65] It goes far beyond what I had even hoped to hear admitted—how much less enforced so gravely and weightily in the commercial world.
Believe me, faithfully yours,
J. Ruskin.
[64] This letter was received from Mr. Ruskin by a gentleman in Manchester, who had forwarded to him a copy of the speech made by Mr. Richard Johnson (President) at the fifty-fourth annual meeting of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, Feb. 1, 1875. Mr. Johnson's address dealt with the immorality of cheapness, the duties of merchants and manufacturers as public servants, and the nobility of trade as a profession which, when rightly and unselfishly conducted, would yield to no other "in the dignity of its nature and in the employment that it offers to the highest faculties of man."
[65] In "Fors Clavigera," March, 1875, Mr. Johnson's speech is named (p. 54) as "the first living words respecting commerce which I have ever known to be spoken in England, in my time," but the discussion of it is postponed.