THE POPE'S JUBILEE.
[To TUE EDITOR OF TEE "SPECTATOR,"] Sin,—The following paragraph appears in the Spectator for Saturday, March 4th :— "The official account of the special subscriptions sent to the Pope on the occasion of his Jubilee, contains curious items. France, supposed to be irreligious, sent his Holiness 490,000 r Austria, the pious, 460,000; Great Britain, which is Protestant,. 448,000; Germany, which is mixed, £14,000; Turkey, which is Mussulman and Greek, 42,000; and Ireland, which is fervently Catholic,' seven, hundred and fifty pounds. The Irish did not venture to propose that Parliament should vote the money to. conciliate our down-trodden land ; ' and as to subscribing it them- selves, they want it to purchase their own farms. Keen people the Irish when money is concerned, but perhaps a little secular."
If the sum you give—and which you punctuate by the use of italics—had not been followed up by manifestly unfair strictures, I should attribute the error in amount to over- sight on your part, or to a misprint ; but your commenta are like the proverbial postscript of the lady's letter. I am not aware of the grand total sent from Ireland to his Holiness,. but that you have made a great mistake is apparent, inasmuch as the sum forwarded from the diocese of Waterford and Lismore alone was over £1,200. It is just possible you omitted—or rather, what you quoted from did so—a nought,. which is a very important figure where money is concerned. I knew a local would-be statistician who, detected in either omitting, or adding, a nought in his financial jugglery, in- variably endeavoured to get out of the diffieulty by pleading that "a nought was nothing." I am sure you, Mr. Editor, with your usual fairness, will not think of arguing this excuse in the next issue of the Spectator. —I am, Sir, &c., J. H. MCGRATH.
The " Waterford Citizen" Office, March 8th.
[We took the list from a telegram from Rome signed.
"Dalziel," and published in the Times of March 3rd.—Ent. Spectator.]
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