LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
FACTS FROM GWEEDORE.
[To THE EDITOR OP THE ..SPECTATOH..] SIR,—With reference to your second notice of the above, in the Spectator of December 3rd, I desire to say only a few words. I object altogether to your contributor delivering judgment in a cause to which he is a party, and I do protest against the style and spirit of the judgment, especially in the third paragraph. It is unworthy of the Spectator. I never made a " charge" or an " attack " on Lord George Hill. I expressed an opinion, and stated the facts and reasons on which it was founded. The facts and reasons your contributor does not notice ; but the opinion formed upon the evidence of forty years' trial of the new system, is met by opinions given (before any real trial of the system could have been made) in debates in Parliament by Sir Robert Peel, and endorsed by two Tory landlords who in 1846 represented Donegal. Is this reasoning up to the Spectator's standard, either P The references in the last paragraph to matters of fact are particularly unfortunate, Baron Pennefather's charge recalling how the " crimes " of which that Judge spoke were afterwards found to be the work of the very men who charged them on the people. The Judges I spoke of were in Gweedore in 1884-85, and heard the people and saw their holdings. Baron Pennefather, I venture to say, was never in Gweedore in his life. But the references to one as one of the two priests who in 1846 (before I was born) fought the tenant's battle in Gweedore, and the lecture read one thereanent, and the quotations from speeches I am represented to have then made, show exactly how far your contributor is qualified to ascertain facts " as certainly as it is possible to ascertain anything about Ireland." Mr. George Hill knew at least with whom he was disputing, and something of
what he was writing about, and the controversy might very well have been left between ns.—I am, Sir, &c.,
JAMES E. O'Donxwrr.
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