INTRODUCTORY 
15 
be sadly confessed. It is significant that 
Dickens felt called upon to defend the crime 
of poverty in the Chimes, and to attack the 
economic man in Hard Times. By many 
readers to-day these tales may be ranked 
among his inferior works by reason of their 
exaggeration, but had such critics lived in his 
day it is possible that the exaggeration would 
have seemed but legitimate artistic emphasis. 
Ruskin was another writer who felt sure that 
there were wrongs to be righted ; but, while 
Dickens appealed to human emotions, he for 
his part set himself to the task of searching 
out the errors of reason wherein social wrongs 
found their source. Unfortunately for political 
economy, Ruskin in his generous enthusiasm 
was for root and branch destruction. Falling 
into the same fundamental error as the 
popular political economists, in confounding 
precepts with laws, and, while brilliantly 
suggestive, adding to the confusion by over 
laying the positive with the ethical point of 
view, he denounced not merely the appalling 
economic maxims which were passing current 
as political economy but also the scientific 
generalisations relating to the causes of 
economic phenomena, the truth and service 
ableness of which should have been apparent. 
In the above paragraph events have been,