DUBIOUS LIBERALITY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XXXXII, Issue 100, 7 June 1900, Page 2

DUBIOUS LIBERALITY.

TO THE EDITOR. Sik, —You quote with word of approval certain remarks from the Hawke's Bay Herald re contributions to the Indian famine Belief Fund, which are, I think, open to question as to their logic and trend. 1 refer to the commendation of contributions to the fund in question by curtailing of personal expenditure. While 1 wish in no way to deprecate the spirit of generosity which this calamity is evoking throughout the world, I think we may well consider where the universal adoptisn of the lines indicated would land us before we held them up as worthy of imitation. There is, I think, no subject more surrounded with aspects of fallacy than the question of expenditure and economy, Wine-tenths of the proverbs and adages which have gained currency among us have but a modicum of truth in them, and given a wider, truer condition of things they would, I believe, be abandoned. To find contributions for any particular object only by stopping the purchase of articles heretofore thought needful is only to shift the locality of the distress, and while I should personally favour the cessation of expenditure on tobacco and beer, because of my belief that both habits encouraged by their use are mischievous, I think the saving is a very small item in the argument. Suppose tbe suggested economy in reference to ladies' head-gear was universally adopted who is to compensate milliner, tradesman, manufacturer, and the hundred-and-one workers who are dependent on the demand fur new hats and bonnets ? Distress and bankruptcy would certainly follow, and this fact illustrates, I think, how easily we may be misled on these questions.—l am, etc. £., s., D.

j [We are surprised at our correspondent, The logical outcome of his Jineof argument would be the justification of unmeasured luxury and the condemnation of all self-denial. One of the greatest and best men that our nation has known expressed the Christ ian philosophy of the situation when he said that "we should deny ourselves luxuries that other people might have comforts; that we should dispense with comforts in order that other people might be provided with necessities." " 8., d." reverses this by raying, in effect, it is necessary for ua to have comforts in order that others may have necessities ; necessary for us to have luxuries in order that others may have their comforts —a doctrine the political economist will scorn and the Christian i regard as the antithesis of Christianity. —Ed. News.]