[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR:'] SIR, —The Spectator always
hits hard,' but generally accords to friends and foes fair play. If you had chanced to say anything— especially to make a grave accusation—on insufficient grounds, I am certain, Sir, you would make any reparation in your power. Had Mr. Grant but stated in the leading papers that he had made an error in supposing that I was " spreading atheism by organized instrumentalities," there would have been an end of the matter, and I should never have dreamt of a legal action. Denied this, 1 had no other means of publicly contradicting a most injurious assertion, which, according to Mr. Grant's preface, had gone out to "a religious public which had exhausted an edition of a thousand copies of the previous volume in a few months." As your paragraph reads as if I had been somewhat hard upon the author in question, I venture to trouble you with this letter.—
[Ideas of hardness differ. It seems to us that to let off the London Review with a letter, and then fine Mr. Grant for quoting the London Review, was hard.—En. Spectator.]
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