11 DECEMBER 1886, Page 12

CIVIL SERVANTS AND POLITICS.

[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.""

fear you will think me a nuisance for "going on ;" but the truth is, you put my points so much better than I do, that you tempt me to enlarge upon them. I really did not see how completely the case of Lord Howard illustrated my position until you expanded it a little. Lord Howard was a Roman Catholic, and as such desired the restoration of his faith to the position it had held in the last reign. But he was "bitterly opposed" to the methods by which the Pope and the King of Spain sought to bring this about. Consequently, he could be, and was trusted, to thwart those potentates. A. B. is in favour of the restoration of an Irish Parliament ; but he has no sym- pathy with Fenian conspirators and moonlighters. You draw a different conclusion from Queen Elizabeth's. No doubt if there had been a newspaper press in those days, and political capital could have been made out of a "No Popery" cry, Lord Howard would not have been Lord High Admiral for long.— (N.B.—This last remark is not "to the address," as our Osrics say, of the Spectator.)—I am, Sir, &c., A. J. B.

[Our correspondent is unfortunate again. What was wanted in the case of the Irish Secretary was not popular confidence in his desire to carry out the anti-Fenian measures of the Govern- ment, but popular confidence in his desire to carry out the anti- Home-rule measures of the Government. And that popular confidence would certainly not have been felt.—En. Spectator.]