Salisbury's nobility
Sir: In his review of Lord Salisbury on Politics (April 15) Professor J. Vincent omits any reference to that strain of nobility which motivated Lord Salisbury's political philosophy; although this would seem to have been both the most outstanding and the redeeming feature of his career.
For he was a patrician in the true sense of the word: that is 'a father of the people ': he was not concerned with the indoctrination, or imposition, of any spectific ideology, but simply with what he believed to be in the real interest of the nation and of the people.
His —administrative years, after all, took place less than a lifetime after the revolutionary government in France had overthrown the very elements of -justice and common humanity.
It is not surprising therefore that he should have considered that democracy should be established step by step, if not only justice but liberty was to be conserved. Now however egalitarianism has again become a ' predominant theme in politics, and therefore, evidently, any concept of the existence of an elite in government must be dismissed as reactionary.
Yet the fact remains that the training of the patrician from boyhood (" by headmasters and bishops ") had been to consider duty to the community before either partisanship or self.
Professor Vincent advocates that Lord Salisbury "should be More read by more Tories" — why only ' Tories '?
The patrician, as a statesman, may be fading into the past, but as the Professor, perhaps unwittingly, advocates it is a past that the present would do well to study.
F. E. Isaac 124 Lexham Gardens, London W8
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