Canon Scott-Holland has followed up the letter in which he
gave his blessing to the Progressive policy in the London County Council, by a very severe rebuke to the Guardian for what he calls its " hard, cynical, suspicious, and malignant" tone in criticising the aims of the Progressive Party. He holds, no doubt quite truly, that many or most of the Pro- gressives are animated by a burning zeal for elevating the morality and social level of the London poor ; and he is more than indignant with the Guardian for suggesting that they are unscrupulous in the means which they choose for attaining that end. But surely there is no sort of inconsistency, except the habitual inconsistency inherent in human nature itself, between Canon Scott-Holland's view of the higher aims of the Progressives, and the Guardian's view of the very little hesitation which they show in invading the strict rights of the few in order to promote the higher interests of the many. It is perfectly true that there is a selfish and cynical mode of defending the rights of the few which often magnifies and exaggerates them into defensive works for utterly unworthy and un-Christian greed. But it is also perfectly true that there is a wild and reckless mode of invading those rights which augurs very badly for the future of that pro-
pagandist Socialism on behalf of the poor which Canon Scott- Holland no doubt earnestly desires to Christianise, but which, as the French Revolution shows us, too often topples over into the hardest and most grasping spirit of envy towards the rich, as distinguished from sympathy with the poor.
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