Mr. Whalley made an inquiry yesterday week of the Secretary
for Ireland, in language so fearfully and wonderfully incoherent and emancipated from grammatical laws, that the noble Marquis himself voluntarily assumed the duty of grammatical criticism. The question concerned the recent murder of Mrs. Neill in Dublin, —a murder due, in all probability, to a quarrel with her tenant, and ran thus :—" Whether the statement in the public journals that Mrs. Neill addressed a letter to the Lord-Lieutenant specifying the priest by whom, and other circumstances connected with, the altar denunciation on the Sunday preceding her murder, was true ; and if so, whether any measures were taken in consequence of her com- munication." We suppose Mr. Whalley would say, with the actor whom Mr. Lowe quoted the other day, "If you know what I mean, what does it matter what I say ?" but it is really worthy of note how Romanist enormities make the Jesuit-hunting Members literally incapable of articulate speech. The Marquis of Hartington's answer, when given, was that no such letter as was indicated in the question had been received, and that Mrs. Neill had not been denounced from the altar at all, but that the priest accused of the denunciation, after celebrating mass, had alluded to the eviction of Mrs. Neill's tenant, and recommended the parishioners to raise a fund for the tenant's defence, offering to subscribe £5 himself, and arranging to receive subscriptions in the chapel,—an arrange- ment which, for some unexplained reason, never came off. The murder was a cruel and wicked one, but the gasp over the asserted altar denunciation which dispersed Mr. Whalley's verbs to the winds was out of place.
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