THE " NEW PHILANTHROPY. "
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR:1 SIR,—The writer of the article on my address at "the Wesleyan-Methodist Chapel" (where, by-the-way, I merely discharged a function which had been much more ably dis- charged on previous similar occasions by Mr. H. M. Stanley and Mr. W. T. Stead), has done me considerable injustice; although I do not think that he intended to be unfriendly. Had he done me the honour to go and hear what I had to say, instead of basing his remarks upon a necessarily condensed report, he would not, I feel sure, have imputed to me the absurdities of which he assumes I am the victim.
My address was an attempt to show that Bishop Magee was entirely in the wrong when he stated that if we attempted to govern in accordance with the principles of the Sermon on the Mount, society would tumble to pieces. On the contrary, I believe it is only in so far as we honestly endeavour to govern in accordance with those principles that society can be held together. I expressed the opinion that all former civilisations had decayed, simply because their rulers and governors were of the same opinion as the Bishop ; but that, notwithstand- ing the decline and fall of ancient and medioeval empires, Christianity had not failed, because each civilisation had been an improvement upon the other, and that the tendencies during the last eighteen hundred years (which is not a long period in the history of evolution) have been in the direction of the realisation of the Christian ideal.
The first Beatitude I regard as the text of the Sermon on the Mount,—the key-note to the whole of Christ's economic and ethical teaching : "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven," which meant, I said : "Blessed are they whose sympathies are with the poor, who, though they be rioh, are willing to make proper use of their wealth in promoting the betterment of the condition of the masses of the people, for theirs is the Kingdom of Ileaven ;" or, as Matthew Arnold puts it, the ideal society of the future. We may never reach that ideal ; but we can work in the direction of it. I certainly never said that it was only the rich who were to be poor in spirit, or that it would be a proper use of their wealth to distribute it in maudlin benevolences. I quite recognise the fact that it is possible, though difficult, for a millionaire to be poor in spirit. For instance, the lord of the vineyard in the parable was poor in spirit when he paid the men who went in at the eleventh hour the same wage as those who had worked all day, and contracted for it. For the circumstances of the eleventh-hour men were exceptional—they had evidently been out of work for a long time—therefore, he determined to give them a good start ; and I do not think that the " unionists " who grumbled at his con- duct were poor in spirit. I am assuming, of course, that the price for which they contracted was a fair wage.
To answer all your objections, however, in detail would take up much more space than you could spare me. I will, there- fore, content myself with replying to the question in which you sum up your objections : "What, Mr. Fletcher, is to be the irreversible law,—the Sermon on the Mount, or the will of Gladstonians in the House of Commons ? " I say, without hesitation, the Sermon on the Mount. I am a great admirer of Mr. Gladstone, but I think that all his troubles are due to the fact that he has occasionally forgotten the principles of the Sermon on the Mount. He certainly went contrary to them when he courted disaster in 1874 by offering to relieve the well-to-do and the wealthy of the Income-tax, without making any provision for relieving the poor of taxes such as the tea-duty, with which they are burdened to this day. Again, if he had acted in accordance with the principles of the Sermon on the Mount, he certainly would not have been guilty of the terrible blunder of the
Daily Chronicle Office, Fleet Street, E.C.
[Mr. Fletcher can surely hardly mean that he really thinks the legislatures of modern times have more and more intro- duced the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount into their legislation, and have succeeded in so doing. Do modern Legis- latures attempt to gauge or discern the secret motives of action as the Puritans, both in Europe and New England, did, and to punish evil thoughts and desires ? Is there even a single modern code which punishes vice as distinguished from crime, except where there is corruption of the young, who cannot be treated as really free? Has not every attempt to push criminal law in that direction been found to interfere disastrously with human freedom ? Has modern law ever attempted to enforce such a precept as, "Give to him that asketh of thee, and from him that borroweth of thee turn not thou away " ? Surely Archbishop Magee was right. This is the province of religion, and not of law.—ED. Spectator.]
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