[TO THE EDITOR OP THE SPECTATOR." J
Snt,—Perhaps you will allow me space for a reply to Mr. O'Doherty. Mr. O'Doherty begins by objecting to my" delivering judgment in a case to which I am a party." As you are aware, neither directly nor indirectly has the statement the slightest basis of fact. I have no connection with Gweedore. I know none of the Hills. I had taken no part whatever in the con- troversy until, without the slightest suggestion on my part, you requested me, as an impartial person, to examine the whole of the evidence, and to do my utmost to arrive at a fair conclusion on the subject. I was not the writer of the first article. I honestly did my beat to search out the facts, to tarn up refer- ences, to read Mr. O'Doherty's own letters and speeches at Gwee- dore, and to judge for myself. I frankly admit that I felt then, and feel now, that, for the sake of truth, it is a very great mis- fortune that the "Facts from Gweedore" should not have been investigated by a legal tribunal, as they would have been if Mr. George Hill's agent, Colonel Dopping, had brought the action we all know of against Mr. Gladstone. I am anxious, however, to press this matter of Mr. O'Doherty's allegation, as a matter of fact, that I, of whom he knows nothing, was "a party" in the cause in which I affected to give judg- ment, because it exactly illustrates the difficulty which we Englishmen have in dealing with Irish evidence. Mr. O'Doherty makes this charge as an established fact not because he has any ground whatever for it, but because it for the moment seems to serve his purpose. I have had constant experience of this method adopted by Irish politicians. I was once endeavouring to appeal to a body of English working men to give a fair hearing to loyal Irish working men who had come over to London to state their own case, when from the body of the hall an Irishman alleged, as a matter of fact, and as though he bad known me in Ireland all his life, that I was an " Orange- man." You, who know my parentage, will judge of the value of this sort of statement, which constantly passes muster in England as bona fide evidence of fact, when really it is simply a weapon used as a matter of course because it is likely to be effective.
Mr. O'Doherty's next complaint is that I have preferred the evidence given in the House of Commons by Sir Robert Peel, corroborated by the assent of all the Irish Members, in a House of which Mr. Smith O'Brien was a Member, by Mr. Carlyle, by the Nation newspaper of the day, and by the Times' Commis- sioner, to his own. The question was as to the change that had taken place in the condition of the tenants on Lord George Hill's property. Mr. O'Doherty had made it his main business to throw discredit on the statement of a certain local school- master as to the miserable condition in which the tenants were at the time when Lord George Hall took over the property. I venture to think that, even had I relied, which I did not, on the evidence of Donegal landlords who had witnessed the condition of the people both before and eleven years after Lord George Hill took over the property, it would have been better than that of Mr. O'Doherty, who was not alive in 1846, Bat it is vital to us to understand Mr. O'Doherty's view of this question, because it exactly represents the condition to which Irish justice would be reduced if he and his friends should ever come to rule in the land. For him, an Irish landlord's evidence is to be treated like that of the " Niggers" was in South America. Nay, it is worse than that. To say even that a statement has been corroborated by any Irish landlord, no matter how independent and high-minded a man he may be, is to prove that it is false, no matter how strong the other evidence for it may be. Mr. O'Doherty's statement that the crimes of which Judge Penne- father spoke were "afterwards found to be the work of the very men who charged them on the people," is a statement of exactly the same character as the suggestions that were thrown out by the same party, that the murder of Lord Frederick Cavendish was the work of Orangemen. I never referred to Mr. O'Doherty "as one of the two priests who in 1846 " did anything. I referred to him as one of two priests who in this year, 1887, have been the centre and focus of the Land League and "National League" (merely a new name for the old thing), and of the boy- cotting of the neighbourhood. Within the last few weeks, MT. O'Doherty has carried this so far that, in order to prevent any kindly feelings springing np between landlord and tenant, he
broke up a race-meeting for whioh a local landlord had given the ground. He worked upon the people to abandon this site, and carried on the race on the sea-strand rather than accept a kindly gift from the landlord.—I am, Sir, &a., THE WRITER OF YOUR SECOND ARTICLE.
Previous page
