LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
THE ABSENCE OF POLITICAL RANCOUR IN ENGLAND.
pro THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR.") think you have omitted one cause—perhaps the greatest proximate cause—of the above agreeable charac- teristic. It is one of the many beneficent legacies of government by a class. Comrades at the same schools and colleges, members of the same society (a society small enough to involve a pervasive mutual acquaintance, though liberalised by its elasticity and by the intellectual variety of its com- ponent parts), officers in the same services, intermarrying with each other's families, joining in the same country sports, brought together by the esprit de corps of a governing class, and all agreeing in a fundamental satisfaction with the social structure, the personal rancours of men meeting only as opponents and fanatical supporters of antagonistic doc- trines and views of life were well-nigh impossible. To this we owed also the success of our Parliamentary system. The latter we seem to be losing. The comparative absence of personal rancour is an advantage which I hope our national temper will enable us to keep.—I am, Sir, &c., 0.
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