MISDIRECTED PHILANTHROPY.

Taranaki Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 10653, 30 June 1896, Page 2

MISDIRECTED PHILANTHROPY.

TO THE EDI TOP. . Sir. — In roplying to my letter of the 24th June Mr Fisher demonstrates to his own satisfaction that Greg's language is beautiful, and that failure to admire it arises from ignorance, and also that the charges made in tho excerpt published by you are truthful . What particular qualifications your correspondent possesses to oonstitute him a literary critic, I cannot say,' but the mere fact that in those days of circulating libraries and cheap editions, he found the quotation, "a very rare treat," indicated the extent of his journeys into bookland, and his right to assume that a different opinion to his own evinses a newspaper education. "With people really qualified to judge, I venture to assert, there can bo only one opinion concerning Grog's style, and that is that it is stilted aud ungraceful, and in parts cloudy. His language- taking the excerpt as a fair sample- is as devoid of the lucidity of such writers as Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, Stanley Jevons, or Herbert Spencer as it is of the hoauty and symmetry of Kingsley and Lowell, or the "rugged grandeur of Carlyle. Between " Sooial Enigmas " and "Political Economy," "Tho Study of Sociology," "Alton Locke" or "Sartor Itesartus" no comparison can really be drawn, and I only mention them because Greg's work, despite it 3 lack of merit, appears in a measuro to belong to the same category. ' How much foundation your author has ' for his charge against tender-hearted statesmen, Mr Fisher can easily ascertain by reading about the factory and coalmines legislation, the Corn Law Repeal, or indeed_ any of the great movements for bettering the condition of the working population of Great Britain. Unaided, the artisans aud laborers were helpless, for at the period of which I speak they had scarcely any direct political power ; but their miserable condition arGined, first tho sympathy of certain tenderhearted statesmen, aud afterwards of the middle and wealthier classes, and abuses were removed and inkjuitqus laws repealed, which might have gone on producing their spawn of crime and misery until to-day ; whilst Mr Greg and othor pious comfortable porson3 continued to solace themselves with the convenient reflection that callousness and " majestic indifferenco " were in thorough conformity with Divine Law, and indeed part of the attributes of the Almighfcv himself.— l am, &q

R, CoBKRAN,