HATRED IN POLITICS
SIR,—While agreeing heartily with your condemnation of evil speaking in political discussion, I fear you are wrong in supposing that such debate has never in our history been conducted on a basis of hatred. Mr. G. W. E. Russell, who used to write so entertainingly on political and social usages, has described the almost incredible violence of party hatred in the pre-Victorian age, not only in the field of politics proper, but penetrating into social life, the public schools, the universities, the dieatre and the Church itself. "Even the two collects for the King in the Com- munion Service were regarded as respectively Tory and Whig." A little girl in a Whig family asked her mother whether Tories were born wicked or grew wicked afterwards, and received the reply, "They are born wicked, and grow worse." Political manners are mild today, a fact which makes some recent lapses appear so deplorable.—I ant, &c.,
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