"BUSINESS" AND POLITICS.
(To THE EDITOR OP THE " SPECTATOR.") Sia,—It is singular that the well-known passage from Eccles*. ticus should be quoted in your columns a second time with a complete perversion of its meaning. The word " business " refers (as you allowed me to point out, I think, about a year ago) obviously and exclusively to manual labour, not to the activities covered by the term in modern English. And surely to suggest that the normal type of " successful business man " is per se unfitted for political life would be to stultify the national approval of statesmen such as the late Mr. W. H. Smith, and a number of eminent merchants, bankers, and financiers, not to mention the selection, during our present emergencies, of several business men. That, I would further and more emphatically suggest, is not the real ground of objection (in the mind of the Spectator or of the general public) to the official status of a great newspaper pro- prietor, but the fact that (1) such a peculiar business (however well conducted) is likely to induce a grave conflict of interests, public and private; and (2) a far more material point (as urged, I understand, by the Spectator and a large party in the country) that the views of the magnate in question (whose experience and position certainly do not disqualify him for a political leader) are crude and dangerous, and his methods of enforcing them dis- tinctly deleterious to public opinion and political civilization. Right or wrong as an " argument against a N-- Ministry " such charges are personal, not professional.—I am, Sir, Le.,
G. H. P.
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