Letter: Making a basic judgement of ministerial morality

Sir: Thank you for your leading article 'Public morality is what matters'(12 January), so refreshingly full of moral judgement. I am glad that poor little fidelity got at least a window of opportunity in your last paragraph. For has there not been as much moral indignation in your pages at the suggestion that adultery is not the birthright of every Englishman, and increasingly every English woman, as ever there was in that stuffy Suffolk constituency?

I realise that to refer to the Ten Commandments would be to invite thunder about 'atavistic metaphysics' (James Fenton, 3 January) or 'the sexual revolution' (Beatrix Campbell, 12 January). So, let me just say that a gradual ebbing away of trust between husbands and wives and children is likely to produce a lot of unhappy people; and that unhappy people, under whatever complexion of government, are unlikely to make a healthy society.

Yours faithfully,

PATRICK RODGER

Edinburgh