"THE FINANCIAL REFORM ALMANACS"
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."1 SIR,—May I be again allowed to call your attention to the ridiculous and misleading compilation, " The Aristocracy and the Public Service," published in the "Financial Reform Almanack " ? The portion published in the " Almanack " for 1885 is open to the same objections as those I endeavoured to raise against the last number. I do not wish to undertake for the second time the nnpleasing task of pointing out that it has ever been suggested or implied that this or that distinguished man gained honour and reward in the public service, not through merit, but by the influence of some noble family with which his wife may claim a distant relationship. I may, perhaps how- ever, point out that the only attempt made, in the apology con- tained in the present " Almanaek," to answer my former letter,. is to compare a sentence from it—a sentence torn from the con- text and materially altered in quotation—with some remarks in an article of your own made a month later and apparently on a different subject. The fact that one quotation is from a letter to the editor, the other from a leading article, is not stated—a suppression surely somewhat important. The table which follows this somewhat disingenuous preface, with its absurd totals, really speaks for itself. Is it hopeless to make the writers of the " Almanack " see that to prove too much is sometimes worse than to prove nothing at all? True economists will hardly escape a feeling of melancholy in noticing that an Asso- ciation with aims so admirable as the raising of public revenue- by direct taxation alone, and of economy in administration,
should waste an eighth of their space in showing how many trivial appointments in the Militia, the Yeomanry, and the Church are held by the relations of viscounts and barons. Perhaps next year the Financial Reform Association will treat us to a table of the public situations held by persons who have no" Peerage connection." The result might perhaps astonish them.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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