MR. PRICE HUGHES ON IRELAND.
[TO THE EDITOR OF TI R "SPECTATOR"]
Sin,—The difficulty in accepting Mr. Price Hughes's challenge is his impenetrable ignorance about Ireland and things Irish. It is like arguing an agricultural question with a man who had never yet seen a ploughed field. I will not attempt the contest, but will beg a few lines' space for an appeal to his co- religionists who may not yet share his views,—an appeal not for the strong, upstanding Northerns, who can take good care of themselves, but for the Protestant peasant-farmers of the South and West, whom he describes somewhat insultingly as "a pampered and petted minority."
These scattered and unprotected families of hard-working and God-fearing people have braved a desperate storm for many years, because, for conscience and religion's sake, they refuse to join the League or to assist in boycotting and out- rage. They are many of them Nonconformists, and stand aghast at this fierce outcry against themselves, and this strange craze for priests and Parnellites.
Sir, if some well-known London Rabbi, for any English party purpose, were to preach and write against the Jews of Russia, recommending their expatriation and exonerating their persecutors, what would those ill-fated Hebrews think of him ? Very much, I should imagine, what the Wesleyan farmer in his rude home upon the Munster mountains, thinks of the Rev. Hugh Price Hughes.—I am, Sir, &e.,
A SOUTHERN PROTESTANT.
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