(To THE EDITOR or Tae " SPECTATOE."3 Sut,—Colonel Plunkett traverses
a statement made by me in the correspondence columns of the Times that certain Northern Counties of Ireland are peopled by a Scottish race differing widely from the Celts of the rest of Ireland. In support of his objection he harks back to prehistoric ages, during which the island received a current of immigration from the Mediter- ranean and Scandinavia, while a counter-stream flowed toward Western Scotland. But we are not living in the times of "Conn, the great Irish warrior." Ours is, unhappily, an epoch when, broadly speaking, the cleavage-line between rival religions also divides the political aspirations of the Irish race. It is an historical fact that Protestantism in Ireland was founded by James I. in pursuance of a determined attempt to crush Catholicism. The "Flight of the Earls" left Ireland at his mercy: he confiscated their vast estates, and replaced their clansmen by immigrants, mostly of Scottish origin. Their descendants—Presbyterian and Episcopalian almost to a man— largely outnumber the Catholic element in the Northern Coun- ties of Antrim, Armagh, and Londonderry, while Ulster as a whole has more Protestants than Catholics. The problems confronting us in Ireland are surely difficult enough -without an attempt to complicate them by anthropological theories.-1
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