IRISH SOLDIERS IN THE ENGLISH SERVICE.
[To THE EDITOR Or TEL "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—When thanking you for the kindly notice of myself, if not of my book, in the Spectator of April 3rd, I hope you will allow me to say a few words upon one subject—the soldiers—dwelt upon by my reviewer. I quite agree with him that a man " cannot justifiably be both a Fenian and a soldier," and I have over and over again publicly condemned the taking of two conflicting oaths, whether by soldiers or others. But this matter of soldiers is by no means so simple as your reviewer thinks. I should most certainly not accept the aid, as a conspirator, of a commissioned officer, unless he first resigned his commission. But with non-commissioned officers and the rank-and-file the case is different. They can- not resign, and, though they have certainly sinned in taking the two oaths, I held in the Fenian time, and I hold still, the sin was in the first oath and not in the last. I, however, never "asked men," though I did "connive at their being asked," at least in the sense that I never protested against it. As to the question of how Irish soldiers would act in certain con- tingencies, it is no business of mine to follow your reviewer into that just now, though my views are diametrically opposed to hie, and I think he most effectively answers himself when he says : " If men enter into two organisations with opposing obligations, they will obey that one which appeals most strongly to them."—I am, Sir, &c.,
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