LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
IRISH ADMINISTRATION AND MR. GOLDWIN SMITH. [To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIN,—Some one has sent me a letter addressed to you by Lord Emly, marking for my special attention the words,—" In a letter written in the beginning of this month (to the Times) by Mr. Goldwin Smith, claiming for himself a special knowledge of Ireland on account of having spent a summer at the Chief Secretary's lodge, he lets both his imagination and his bigotry
run riot" My answer is, that I did nothing of the kind. What I claimed on account of my having spent some months in familiar intercourse with the officials, was not a special knowledge of Ireland, but some acquaintance with the spirit of the adminis- tration, which appeared to me thoroughly kind, considerate, and just.
If I was wrong in thinking that Sir Alexander Macdonnell (whose name by some accident appeared in my letter to the Times as "Macdonald ") was of Scotch extraction, he was
a Protestant educated in an English University, and distinctly belonged not to the Irish Party, but to that administrative and arbitrating element which the Union with Great Britain supplied, without which the system of national education could not in those days have been introduced or sustained, and the withdrawal of which, as I believe, would be fatal to it in the Catholic provinces now.
If the person who sends me the letter thinks that nobody but a bigot can suppose that the political character of the Irish has its peculiarities and infirmities, let him study that character in the United States, where it has now had perfectly free play on a large scale for half-a-century ; and if he thinks that the Roman Catholic Church, when left to itself and dominant, will not absorb the wealth of a community, and at the same time retard economical progress, let him study the Church and people of our province of Quebec. I have never said that the infirmities are innate or indelible. They probably arise from the accidental prolongation of the clan system and the lack of constitutional training. But they exist, and they would make the concession of a separate Parliament the most fatal gift which folly could bestow.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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