* * * An Archbishop's Critics The Archbishop of York's
letter on income-tax and unemployment benefit has produced some singular com- ments. Dr. Temple's position is surely simple enough. Being, among other things, a Christian, he makes the eminently Christian suggestion that income-tax payers should agree that if it is a question whether a surplus should go to restoring unemployment benefit to the 1931 figure or to reducing income-tax the unemployed should have first consideration ; and being, among other things, a democrat, he adds the eminently democratic suggestion that income-tax payers who take that view should so inform their representatives in Parliament, with the idea that they should transmit the desire to members of the Cabinet. The Chancellor of the Exchequer's irritation that anyone should presume to make any suggestion as to how money should be spent argues an unfortunate mentality which membership of a Cabinet resting on a huge majority in the House of Commons may all too easily breed. As for the lesson in economics addressed by the Bishop of Gloucester to the Archbishop, it may or may not be technically sound, but it is well for a bishop to • have some regard to psychology. No one can doubt either that the effect on the unemployed of the relief of the middle and upper classes while their pittance re- mained untouched would be disastrous, or that recog- nition of their prior need would dispel a great deal of dangerous bitterness.
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