LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
AN ILL-GROUNDED DESERTION. [To THE MATCH OP TH2 " Brzorxroa."1
Sin,—In the "News of the Week" in your last issue you note an astonishing utterance of Lord Courtney which it is to be hoped will remain peculiar to himself. He is still, he says, a Unionist by conviction, but is prepared to strike his flag because it has occurred to him that in dealing with Ireland "unity has been too often lost in domination." Whatever ground there may once have been for this statement, it has become less and less true throughout the last eighty years, as grievances have been removed and benefits bestowed up to the crowning boon of the last Unionist Land Act. Yet Lord Courtney chooses this moment to abandon the Unionist cause to which he adhered twenty-five years ago, when the hopes of Unionist policy for Ireland were certainly less bright than now. The land question (always the most important) is all but settled to the general satisfaction, and no funds can be raised in Ireland for the factitious political agitation. A few more years of patience, firmness, and justice would establish the Union on the rock of popular content. This is the way of peace. Yet Lord Courtney, it seems, would prefer to repair an old fault by a new crime, and to betray his fellow-citizens, whom as a Unionist he pledged himself to protect, into the hands of the political partners of Patrick Ford, the instigator of arson and murder. His Lord- ship argues that because one set of Irishmen were too little considered in the past, therefore another set of Irishmen are to be foully wronged in the future. The argument is as illogical as it is heartless and unjust.—I am, Sir, &c., E. M.
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