THE "SPECTATOR'S " "'HATRED OF THE OPPRESSED RACES."
[To rim EDITOR Or THE " SPECTATOR.") Sm,—The letter signed "An Irish Peer" in your issue of January 3rd cannot be considered very helpful to Ireland or to any one else at the present juncture. For what is the use of reviving the out-of-date intolerance of the Ascendancy party, or referring to the brutal sentiments expressed years ago by a dead militarist ? The old exquisite solution of all social troubles, so favoured by overfed old Junkers in club windows, and so accursed in the eyes of those who hunger and thirst after justice—" Shoot them down! "—is, I should have thought by now, shown up plainly as the Prussian Satanism that it is. The letter is on a par with those now so frequent in Tory papers, and usually signed "Retired llajor-General," praising and gloating over the massacre of unarmed men at Amritsar, which, whatever the provocation, is a disgrace to the so-called "ruling race." The reference to the Catholic clergy, whose chief vice, in your-eyes, is that loyalty to their faith and the poor which you praise in the Archbishop of lifelines, is so shocking that one is amazed to find it even in a paper so notorious for provincial bigotry as the Spectator. You speak in another place of the advisability of Irishmen forgetting the injuries they have received from England, as Englishmen are to forget the activities of the Inquisition. Is this letter an 'example of the religions tolerance which is to issue in the brotherhood of man recently advocated by the Premiers of the British Empire ? Your hatred of the oppressed races is the result not, of strength but of weakness: it comes from a bad conscience. The truly magnanimous man is enjoined to forgive injuries unto seventy times seven, but your hatred of the weak is increased unto seventy times seven with every fresh insult that you heap upon them. All this filth is of the Dark Ages now left behind for ever. Much to the disgust of the immaculate and chaste editor of the Spectator, even nasty black Indians and dirty Papistical Irishmen have as much right to enter the Kingdom of Heaven as the English county families. You adopt a mighty "Christian" tone, especially when playing the part of the canting bully : allow me to remind you that of the three Magi one was a Negro and one an Asiatic.—Your devoted
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