"THE MINISTER OF STATE" AND THE MARRIAGE QUESTION.
[To THE EDITOR 07 THE " SPECTATOR "] SIR,—In the brief notice of "The Minister of State" in the Spectator of July 23rd your reviewer asks, "Why the sneer on page 58 ? " Thoughtlessly, light-heartedly, irresponsibly, wrote that a certain character did not regard marriage as "'a heaven-invented patent for transforming men and women into turtle-doves." I was appalled to read in the Spectator that marriage " is the best method that man—not to speak of heaven—has discovered of regulating certain necessities of human life. If marriage fails to turn men and women into. doves, free love certainly succeeds, as every newspaper bears witness, in turning them into wolves and tigers." I did not sneer at marriage ; I abhor free love; and it pains me to have to explain that what is taken so gravely is merely a casual jest arising, as I think, naturally out of the situation in which it occurs.—I am, Sir, &c., J. A. STEUART.
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