4 JUNE 1988, Page 5

WHIGGERY

IN THE Biblical disputes which have recently become fashionable, Mr Kinnock likes to use against Mrs Thatcher the words of St Matthew, chapter XXV. It is a pity that Mrs Thatcher did not consult The Spectator of 26 November 1711 before the hostilities began. There Sir Andrew Freeport, one of the club invented by Addison and Steele, discusses Matthew's text: What then? am I against all Acts of Charity? God Forbid! I know of no Virtue in the Gospel that is in more pathetical Expressions recommended to our Practice. 'I was hungry and ye gave me no Meat, thirsty and you gave me no Drink, naked and ye cloathed me not, a Stranger and yet took me not in; sick and ye visited me not.' Our blessed Saviour treats the Exercise or Neglect of Charity towards a poor Man, as the Performance or Breach of this Duty toward himself. I shall endeavour to obey the Will of my Lord and Master: and therefore if an industrious Man shall submit to the hardest Labour and coarsest Fare, rather *Centre for Policy Studies, 8 Wilfred Street, London SW1, £5.50.

than endure the Shame of taking Relief from the Parish or asking it in the Street, this is the Hungry, the Thirsty, the Naked; and I ought to believe if any Man is come hither for Shelter against Persecution or Oppression, this is the Stranger, and I ought to take him in . . . I ought to give to an Hospital of Invalids, to recover as many useful Subjects as I can; but I shall bestow none of my Bounties upon an Almshouse of idle People . .

Sir Andrew attacks the 'dependency cul- ture' encouraged in the name of religion: . . . I cannot but think it a Reproach worse than that of common Swearing, that the Idle and the Abandoned are suffered in the Name of Heaven and all that is sacred, to extort from christian and tender Minds a Supply to a profligate Way of Life, that is always to be supported but never relieved.

Some readers will think that Sir Andrew's interpretation of Christ's words fits a little too neatly with his theory of the benefits of low wages advanced in the same essay, and will note that Sir Andrew is a prosperous merchant, but none of this would bother Mrs Thatcher. It is interesting to find her attitudes so fully foreshadowed by a Whig.