LORD DUFFERIN'S NATIONALITY.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.") SIR,—" E. M. B.," in Saturday's Spectator, asks why Lord Duffeiin is called an Irishman. Then, expecting your readers at once to give up the conundrum, the writer proceeds to answer the enquiry. It is negatively done. Lord Dufferin is not an IriAhman_ because his ancestors have been born and have lived in Ireland for a period of between two and three hundred years ! Again, he is- not Irish because he himself is a descendant of the Milesian. Sheridans, has been born in Ireland, and is a peer of Ireland If these things do not destroy his claims to Irish nationality,. one fails to see what would do it. What, then, is Lord Dafferin ? He is not Irish because a remote ancestor was not Irish, but only one who helped to colonise Ulster ! The logic is irresistible. If the future Viceroy of India is not an Irishman because one of his remote ancestors was a Scotchman, and that Scotchman's ancestors were probably Danes, then many of the nobility at present residing in England are not English at all, because in bygone ages their ancestors were Norman-French, and theirs again were probably Romans. But if nothing else proves Lord Dufferin's nationality, it would be satisfactorily established, as "E. M. B." has naively put it, by his possession of eight great- grandmothers, just double the number that any man—not an. Irishman—could possibly have. "B. M. B." must be a great- grandmother. The letter is altogether great-grandmotherly.—
I am, Sir, &c., SnAmaocx.
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