 Recent scholars have misinterpreted Spencer’s theory rights because, among other reasons, they have no doubt misunderstood Spencer’s motives for writing The Man Versus the State. The essay is a highly polemical protest, in the name of strong rights as the best antidote, against the dangers of incremental legislative reforms introducing socialism surreptitiously into Britain. Its vitriolic, anti-socialist language surely accounts for much of its sometimes nasty social Darwinist rhetoric, which is unmatched in Spencer’s other writings notwithstanding scattered passages in The Principles of Ethics and in The Principles of Sociology  (1876–96).[12]