RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE IN IRELAND.

[To TRY EDITOR OP THIS "SPECTATOR.") Sin,—I did not reply last week, as I was acquiring the precise information for which Mr. Gwynn asks. I do not

intend to trouble you with further correspondence on this matter, and must apologise for entering into detail.

I need hardly, perhaps, remark that Mr. Gwynn not only impugns the truth of my facts about the Salvation Army in Ireland, but confuses me, possibly through inadvertence, with the officer whom I quoted.

I now enclose to you, Sir, a statement written by the officer in question, with her full name and address, corroborating all I said in regard to her experience, and adding the words,

"Last Wednesday I had to go to — (a strong Nationalist centre) and was warned by my superior officer not to go in uniform, lest I should be mobbed."

Mr. Gwynn suggests that "long years ago, when the Salva- tion Army was new," " some opposition " was, perhaps, offered to it. Mr. Gwynn's correspondent astutely eludes the point

of police protection. To make matters certain, I went to the Salvation Army cffice in an important centre and received the

following statement in regard to present conditions, signedby two intelligent English officers there, with details of places and names. They say :—

"In other Roman Catholic countries we can safely wear our uniform ; in Nationalist Ireland we cannot safely do so. We have to receive police protection when we go to our meetings, even in Dublin. A recommendation to wear uniform from Headquarters, dated August 17th last, was issued to Irish officers. One of our captains was soon after attacked in Co. Cork, and received serious injuries, which it is feared will be permanent. It has been found quite impossible to carry out the recommendation. We cannot even visit our members in uniform without subjecting than to personal injury."

I was, moreover, informed that two or three years ago a young woman officer was so badly beaten in Limerick that she has never recovered her hearing, and that they have had to close their work there. The Salvation Army, it appears, never seeks reprisals in courts of law.

To be further " precise," I asked the two officers to give me

the present facts about Waterford. The reply was that the open- air services are held weekly, and only under police protection. Now, Sir, I must leave you and your readers to judge of the dust which is at present being busily thrown into English

eyes by members of Mr. Gwynn's party, who propose to take the Government of Ireland into their hands. Facts which are perfectly patent here are continually denied and discredited in England, and this it is which leads some of us who care little for party politico, but much for truth and freedom and civic righteousness, to make our protest to English Liberals.

Far more instances of intolerance and corruption, in close connection with Nationalist politics, would come to light but that personal injury follows exposure. At the recent North Louth Election case Mr. Justice Gibson (Feb. 23rd) spoke in strong reprobation of the "molestation " and " maltreatment" practised towards witnesses " on account of evidence they might have given." Is the Judge " infected with intoler- ance" because he draws attention to the " hidden ways of

dishonesty" P

The point of my letter was to show why the free-bred community in Ulster unfortunately cannot trust the new professions of liberality made to British audiences by Nati ona- list politicians, and I imagine that this correspondence may have helped to justify their position. It is certainly with no de- sire to attack individual Roman Catholics, among whom we Ulster people have personal friends ; it is as certainly with no desire to enter on religious controversy, that some of us who are associated with Liberal aims in England try to make the truth known in regard to the civic and social injury which under Nationalist control would be the lot of a third of the population in Ireland—that portion of it, namely, which, accord- ing to Liberal principles, is certainly the most enlightened and the most progressive portion of the community.

The attitude of the militant political Roman Catholic—the member, for instance, of the Ancient Order of Hibernians—is logical enough. He is naturally guided by such a document as the recent Lenten Pastoral of the Head of his Church in Ireland. In that Pastoral Cardinal Logue grounds his pro- hibition of mixed marriages on the definite principle that all but his own co-religionists are " Canaanites " in the land. He quotes Deuteronomy vii. 3, forbidding intermarriage (I hope "Nemo" will note the essential difference here in the case of Boer and Briton), and leaves for private perusal the preceding verse on which his own is founded : "And when the Lord shall deliver them before thee, thou shalt smite them and utterly destroy them, thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor show mercy to them."

No, Sir, we do not olame individuals for faithfully receiving this teaching, but we do naturally wish to point out that the Nationalist Party, who claim, without dispute, that they will, under Home Rule, control Ireland, is in the closest concert with it, is indeed a political and civic system built upon it, and that the lively expectations of the minority who care for just the " light and sunshine " of which " Nemo " speaks are not unjustified. We wish, moreover, to point out that a political party founded on such a system is more to be dreaded by a free community than the Church on which it founds, for the moral checks existent in the one have proved too often to be non-existent for the other.

And now, may I venture to say that if a good Liberal like g Nemo " would make himself really acquainted with Ireland, he would find that, though Protestant Ulster is not without its faults, the large majority there do cherish his own ideals of light and freedom and religious liberty, and that it is just because these ideals are imperilled by. Home Rule that so many of the finest young Ulstermen are already leaving for the States P A race that has produced among others the Lawrences, John Nicholson, Lord Kelvin, Lord Dufferin, Sir Robert Hart, and five or six Presidents of the American Republic is not likely to be even generally " infected " with a blind bigotry. Secondly, I fear his illustrations are deceptive. The power in France has passed to the Liberal ; Home Rule would, without question, give the power to the party which has in Parliament consistently voted against Liberal principles in regard to education and other matters, the party that does not welcome the light in "Nemo's " sense, but shuts it out. Again, the Government in France has become intolerantly secularist. Neither Protestant nor Catholic in Ireland desires to pass through a time of terrible upheaval to gain that end. In the colonies "Nemo" will find, I think, that not one has, as a whole, been handed over to the control of a majority bred in and founded on the Roman system, and that the few portions of them which, like Quebec, are so controlled, have, like Quebec, in spite of strong paper guarantees, gradually and quietly squeezed out the Protestant community from influence, and with it the free speech and enlightened ideas which are the lawful heritage of the British people.

Finally, " Nemo" probably does not realise that we have had in Ireland a full trial of what "responsibility" will do. In 1898 complete local government was granted to Ireland. If the results of that measure (which was inevitable) be care- fully studied, our Liberal friends will see that they are not such as to give North-East Ulster much comfort in the certain prospect of like results from Home Rule. To give one fact : of seven hundred and nineteen councillors in the three pro- vinces of Ireland outside Ulster, only fifteen are not of the dominant political party.

No, the "light and sunshine" which all good Liberals desire come to us in Ireland from the presence of a strong, independent Imperial Government, which at. the last resort will see justice done, and under which Ireland has. in spite of

all obstacles, been making long strides of late towards an era

of prosperity.—I am, Sir, &c., W. RICHARDSON. Moyallan.