Cf. The Crown of Wild Olive:
'let every man who wishes well to his country, render it yearly an account of his income, and of the main heads of his expenditure; or, if he is ashamed to do so, let him no more impute to the poor their poverty as a crime, nor set them to break stones in order to frighten them from committing it' (XVIII, 505).
Ruskin's belief in financial openness led him, as his ideas for the Guild of St George developed, to lay open his own accounts in the pages of 'Fors Clavigera', mainly by way of example, but also to demonstrate that he could practise what he preached.