LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
THE AMOUNT OF EXISTING LOCAL LIBERTY IN IRELAND.
[To THE EDITOR Or THE "SPECTATOR."]
SIR,—I am convinced that a very small portion of the "civilised world," or even of the British electorate, has any conception how much " Home-rule " Ireland already enjoys. In France, for example, where I reside during the winter months, it is com- monly believed (and explicitly asserted in Mr. Gladstone's favourite work, "Lea Anglais en Mande ") that the police force consists exclusively of Englishmen ! Now, every one knows here in Ireland that there is hardly a single British constable in the force. I do not believe that there are a dozen Englishmen in the Irish Civil Service. Again, no one can have attended any Local Board, as I did recently the Cork Board of Guardians, or any Town Council, without perceiving that the Nationalists practically have it all their own way nine times out of ten. None but a Nationalist has a chance of being elected to any local appointments.
When, as in the case of the Athy Board last year, the elected Nationalist Guardians abused their authority by voting extravagant out-relief-29 per week to Mr. Dunne, Lord Lansdowne's evicted, well-to-do tenant—it is true that the Local Government Board exercised the tyrannical power of dissolving the Athy Board and appointing interim Guardians. But does this wholesome exercise of British control on the part of the Local Government Board, working only through Irish administrators, justify Mr. Gladstone's renewed com- parison of British rule in Ireland to Russian tyranny and misrule in Poland ?
When the Secretary of the Polish Society and the present writer (in letters published in the Times last September) drew his attention to this monstrous comparison contained in his Wrexham speech, Mr. Gladstone naïvely admitted that he really knew very little about Russian rule in Poland !
Knowing as I do, from many months' residence in different parts of Poland, that the use of the Polish language is forbidden by Russian edict in any public institution in Poland, that the Press is absolutely gagged, that there is no vestige of national representation, and that Polish patriots (of whom I have known many intimately) are hurried off to Siberia and thrown into dungeons far away from the visits of sympathising and sandwich-smuggling Nationalist Justices and doctors, I cannot withhold my astonishment that Mr. Gladstone should stoop to such monstrous calumnies on his own country, especially after his own admission that he knows little about the facts of the case.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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