IRISH NATIONALISTS AND ENGLISH RADICALS,
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."' SIR,-YOu say truly that "the first important consequence of the split in the Irish Party will be its tendency to convince the English electors that the Parnellites are not at all fastidious about the moral character of their uncrowned king.' But a far sadder result to many Liberals has been the evidence- that an important section of the English Radicals are no- more fastidious than Irish " Parnellites." For it is since the publication of the Divorce-Court proceedings that such representative Radicals as Mr. Labouchere, Mr. Canninghame Graham, Mr. Jacob Bright, and Mr. Hopwood, to say nothing of the " Protestant Home-rule Association" of Ireland, proclaimed their continued adherence to Mr. Parnell as the- leader of the Home-rule Party. Mr. Labouchere promptly followed his Irish friends in throwing Mr. Parnell overboard ; whether the others have done the same, I do not know. The- speeches of these gentlemen, and the hand-shake given to Mr. Parnell on the floor of the House of Commons, will have- sadly brought home to thousands of Liberals the extent to. which the Radical Party, or a section of it, has degenerated from its high standard, and is ready to divorce morals from politics. Probably the world has never seen a more glaring; instance of political and moral flabbiness than the way in which the majority of the Irish Nationalists and a portion of their English adherents enthusiastically adopted Mr. Parnell as their leader one week, and—to use his own phrase—threw him to the wolves the next week. And it is an Irish Parliament and an Irish Executive composed of these. men to whom English Liberals are willing and eager to entrust legislation for the Presbyterians of Ulster, and the honest, moral, law- abiding people throughout the island !—I am, Sir, &c.,
ALFRED W. BENNETT.
6 Park Village East, Regent's Park, December 13th.
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