8 FEBRUARY 1902, Page 16

[To TIIE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]

Sin,—You state in your leading article of February 1st that to Mr. Gladstone "to represent Home-rule as a consequence of the Irish alliance would have seemed something little short of blasphemy." Yet he was himself practically guilty of that same blasphemy when he declared that loyalty on the part of the Irish to Mr. Parnell would wreck the alliance and reduce his own advocacy of Home-rule "to a nullity." Lord Rosebery seems, for different reasons, to have reached that "nullity" stage which his late revered leader once threatened to occupy.