[To THE EDITOR OP THE " SPECTATOR. "] SIR,—If the force
of the phrase, " Ex uno disce omnes," still holds good, you are quite right in saying in your footnote to Mr. Clement Shorter's letter, published October 12th, on " Ulster and the Liberals," that his " assertions of what he ' knows ' . . . are, though doubtless thoroughly well meant, without value of any kind." May I give one instance P He quotes a friend, just returned from Ulster, who assures him of "a great change of opinion, over two hundred Presbyterian ministers being now strong Home Rulers." This is an absolute fiction. At the late Presbyterian General Assembly held in Belfast last June it was publicly stated by one of its leaders that, though a number of its ministers objected to the introduction of what they called political issues into Church courts, there were not ten actual Home Rulers among them, i.e., not ten in six hundred. One of this minute fraction, the Rev. J. B. Armour, a straightforward man who never hides his colours, did not dispute the statement, but passed it off with the remark that ten righteous men might yet save the situa- tion I May I add that the importance of the political views of Presbyterian ministers in Ireland in relation to those of their people is wholly different from what it is among English Nonconformists P Among the latter, I understand, political sabjects are frequently discussed from the pulpit, and the ministers who do so thus become political leaders of important sections of their flocks. In Ireland the Protestant ministers of all denominations limit themselves practically to religious and social work in their parishes, and in the normal life of their churches political sermons are almost unknown. Their people, with characteristic Ulster dourness, take their own line in politics, wholly independently of what their ministers think. That this is so as regards Home Rule is evident from the growing Unionist majorities in Parliamentary elections in Ulster since that of 1900, after which Home Rule began to appear in the offing. If I may imitate Mr. Clement Shorter, I would say I " know " that, when the next General Election takes place, the Ulster Home Rule Protestant vote will be a negligible quantity.—I am, Sir, &c.,
ULSTER PRESBYTERIAN.
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