So far as
your intensely interesting volume has compelled some very prejudiced
people to read your attack on modern delusions, it is a great gain,
especially to themselves. I have read your tract on "Justice, not
Charity," with great pleasure and approval. The moment Mr. Benjamin
Kidd invented the striking term of "equality of opportunity" I adopted
it, and have often preached it in the pulpit and on the platform, just
as you preach it in the tract before me. I fully agree that justice, not
charity, is the fundamental principle of social reform. There is
something very contemptible in the spiteful way in which many newspapers
and magistrates are trying to aggravate the difficulties of
conscientious men who avail themselves of the conscience clause in the
new Vaccination Act. There is very much to be done yet before social
justice is realised, but the astonishing manifesto of the Czar of
Russia, which I have no doubt is a perfectly sincere one, is a
revelation of the extent to which social truth is leavening European
society. Since I last wrote to you I have been elected President of the
Wesleyan Methodist Conference, which will give me a great deal of
special work and special opportunities also, I am thankful to say, of
propagating Social Christianity, which in fact, and to a great extent in
form, is what you yourself are doing.--Yours very sincerely,
H. PRICE HUGHES.
* * * * *
TO ALFRED RUSSELL
_Parkstone, Dorset.
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