Our self-denying ordinance in regard to comment on the Irish
question during negotiations does not extend to two matters with which we must now deal. In the first place, we desire to draw attention to the letter from the Roman Catholic Bishop of Limerick quoted at length in our correspondence columns. Bishop O'Dwyer's impudent and offensive letter to Sir John Maxwell was bad enough, but the letter to the Limerick Board of Guardians is infinitely worse. Imagine what would have been said if some prominent Ulster loyalist had written in a similar tone of Mr. Asquith and his Administration. It is a direct violation of the Prime Minister's plea for silence, and cannot but prove the most serious embarrass- ment to Mr. Redmond and Mr. Lloyd George in their negotiations. it is an incitement to the extremists not to yield on any point— a hint that their role is not compromise, but the coercion of the Government. Compare with the Nationalist Bishop's action the action of the Ulster loyalists as exhibited in their chief organ the Northern Whig, quoted above. And yet among Home Rulers the myth is still assiduously propagated that it is the Ulstermen who are the firebrands of Ireland, and that it is they who forbid a friendly compromise
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