SOME MODEST PROPOSALS.
[TO THE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR."'
although an Irish Protestant, I have not, or rather my cruel ancestors have not, preserved my blood " pure from Celtic taint." On one side of my family there are Macs, on the other there are O's, and I tremble to think that I may one day be a victim to the " purgative " policy outlined by Mr. Leslie D'Esse in your columns on the 31st ult. Mr. D'Esse has been more fortunate. His ancestors were obviously pure Normans (so stout a Celtoyhobe can have bad no drop of Gallo-Roman blood in his veins), unless indeed their patronymic reveals an even more Teutonic origin, and proclaims descent from some Hessian house. But I would ask Mr. D'Esse to reconsider his policy of purging Ireland of the Celt after Home-rule has been granted, on the grounds that it is likely to lead to a great deal of disturbance and to put many harmless and quiet people of all denominations to much trouble and expense. In the first place, a great number of Irish Protestants have the misfortune to bear Celtic names, whether Irish or Lowland Scottish, and a great number of Irish Catholic Unionists are in the same case. How, Sir, are they to de-Celticise them- selves, and how prove their freedom from the Celtic taint, save by changing their names and revising their genealogical trees P Secondly, a greater number of Irish Catholic Celts changed their names during the period of anti-Celtic and anti-Catholic legislation. O'Tooles became Tutthills, O'Greevbas Griffins, Geoghegans Gogginses, and the like. Is it not probable that many of these wolves in sheep's clothing will escape the purging operation, which, if applied at all, should be logically and thoroughly applied ? How does Mr. D'Esse propose to deal with them, or with the still more difficult problem presented by Irish Protestant Unionists of Celtic origin who have modified their Celtic names P How would he have proposed to deal with the late Dr. Kane, one of the leading figures among the Unionists of Ulster, who took an altogether reprehensible pride in his " tainted " descent from the Celtic house of O'Cahan ? If Mr. D'Esse can find a solution of these difficult problems, I trust he will communicate it to his fellow-countrymen. For my own part, I can see none, save that all persons bearing Celtic names or claiming to have Celtic ancestors should be required to change their names or provide themselves with new pedigrees within a given time ; at the expiry of which those, and they will be many, who will have clung to their Celtic names or ancestry with a besotted obstinacy which no good Orangeman durst compare for an instant to Mr. D'Esse's inflexible and legitimate pride of race, shall be put to death without distinction of age, sex, or denomination. Exile would be but a palliative. Could any Government, even if administered by such efficient business men as the Harlands, Wolff s, Kennans Ones Kinabans), and Cohensons (originally O'Cahans) of North-East Ulster, prevent the exiles from returning sooner or later under such non-Celtic aliases as Skrimshanks or Ramsbotham, Jaw& guiberry or Nasalheim P Moreover, these drastic methods, though they might enrich that small class which lives by manufacturing genealogical trees, would, in my humble opinion, give just offence to the members of the Heralds' College, to the Orange bands—which would dislike the necessity of playing party tunes to audiences entirely of their own way of thinking—and to the many persons who would be owed money by the eliminated nonconforming Celts. They would also fail in their object, for the racial purity thus attained could only be a fictitious purity. We are left, there- fore, with the alternative of the unconditional elimination of the " Celtic taint," which, given Mr. D'Esse's premisses, is the only logical way out. But at least five-sixths of the popula- tion of Ireland must have some Celtic taint, whether Irish, Welsh, or Highland Scottish. Mr. D'Esse solitudinem faciet, pommy appellabit. In the circumstances, Sir, what is an Anglo-Celtic cross-bencher who has friends among Unionists and Nationalists to do ? I do not wish to commit perjury or be massacred, and there is no racial Nauheim to free me from my " Celtic taint."—I am, Sir, &c.,
HIBERNICIIS EXECUL.
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