FREEDOM OF THOUGHT
[To the Editor of TUE Sisee.yron.] f;itt,---- Your correspondent, Janus, haS made history in the long life of The Spectator by a paragraph in Iasi week's issue. lie endeavours to persuade your readers that before coming to a conclusion as to the validity of a writer's views, they must have some idea as to the amount of the writer's income.
But .neither you, Sir,- nor any of your predecessors, have ever suggested that before reading a book we should satisfy ourselves that the financial position of the author is within such alitnit as would meet with, in this case,. Janus's approval, or that we should know that the shadow of unemployment was over him when he wrote, the book,. and yet. Janus,goes much further than this in his enslaving of our thinking. If the author of England had had a much smaller income than the. 22,000 a year referred to, his views " on the working classes generally and the unemployed in particular," would be vitiated by the mere fact that he is a clergyman. This is a unique principle to be inculcated in an organ of free thought and unfettered judgement, and could not possibly meet with a moment's sympathy from The Spectator. Do assure us that within your columns there is " neither Jew nor Greek," rich man or poor man,, employed or unemployed, but only honest opinions which arc offered for free discussion without prejudice.--I am, Sir, &c., EDWARD HANSON. , 1)0 Preston New Road, Blackburn. • [Janus writes : " My argument=good Or bad--was quite simple. It was that passages suggesting that the unemployed should be docked of part or all of their meagre pittance come with particularly bad grace from one who is both an official teacher of the doctrine of- charity and is living in considerable material comfort himself."]
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