NONCONFORMITY AND "REPRISALS."
LTo THE EDITOR OP THE " SPECTATOR.")
SIE,—Permit me to thank you for your chivalrous defence of Nonconformity against the attack made upon it so gratuitously by "A Wayfarer" in the Nation. If Nonconformists are to be denounced because they have refused to desert the Govern- ment that happens to be in office in its painful resolve to fight down organized and ruthless assassination in Ireland they will bear the .blame bravely. Granted that there have been occasional excesses—" reprisals" if we use the least charitable description available—on the part of the police and soldiery, surely there have been, at the very least, such "extenuating circumstances" as English justice, to say nothing of English mercy, has invariably taken into account when the accused had acted in self-defence or found himself exposed to exasperating provocation. As one who extends a warm admiration towards Mr. Asquith, I wish profoundly that the recent- resolution of the House of Commons, adopted immediately after the rejection of the form of words he intro- duced, had been, in-its final shape, wholly his creation.—I am,
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