LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
[Letters of the length of one of our leading paragraphs are often more read, and therefore more effective, than those which fill treble the space.] THE CONDITION OF IRELAND.
[To THE EDITOR or ran " SPECT■TOR."] Six,—One paragraph in the admirable article in your issue last week on the eternal Irish question recalled to me some of the arguments that Liberal Unionists were in the habit of using when speaking and writing in the Home Rule campaign of former times. The position is the same, though the danger is far greater. In 1886 the League, " marching through rapine to the dismemberment of the Empire," and the vacillation of the Gladstone Government had made Ireland as lawless and as terror-stricken almost as she is to-day. In January of that year Dr. Magee, the eloquent and erudite Bishop of Peter- borough, wrote a letter which analysed the existing conditions and made a shrewd guess of the coming time which we are now enjoying. Tho letter states :-
" The extinction of the loyalist minority in Ireland is the aim of the Irish revolutionists. The extinction of the Irish Protestant minority is the aim of the Irish priesthood. As these minorities are one and the same, the priests and the -revolutionists are for the present united. -When their aims are accomplished by the aid of rival English factions, the revolu- tionists will oust tho priests, and there will be an Irish Republic. Meantime, there will be much plundering and outrage and a good deal of cutting of throats in our blessed country. The English Government will continue putting up Irish loyalists to auction, as they are putting up land for sale in small lots, a loyalist at a time, till there is either nothing more to sell or no one to bid. 'Then they will retire from the scene and wash their hands of Ireland, and very dirty hands they will have to wash."
Some of our politicians seem to think that es the Irish are
only murdering each other the Government can Iodic on with tiallio-like indifference. Is it " a legitimate gamble"? Some cynical critics say that the policy of the Government is really founded on the old Irish legend of the Kilkenny cats. Mean- time, the deserted Irish loyalist appeals in vain to the faith and honour of the 'British Government, only to be told " What is that to us? ' See thou to that." Retaliation by some of the victims of the Murder campaign in Belfast seems to have roused some of the leaders in Church and Labour to a late repentance, a feeling which found no voice when the helpless loyalists in the South and West were murdered and their houses burnt to the ground. From these leaders there is no appeal for the faithful members of the R.I.C. or their helpless wives and children, openly threatened with assassination. The Govern- ment lip-service to their courage and loyalty will not secure their safety from the Sinn Fein gunmen. Some of your readers have not forgotten the official excuse that was given for Government neglect of the first duty of a civilized Government, and which led directly to the rebellion and massacre of Easter, 1916. Is this only a later example of the scheme of mote catching when it is called " a high political policy "? There is much -Government sympathy and to spare for all who are desolate and oppressed in Russia and other distant countries, but there is none for the desolate and oppressed in Ireland, who trusted to the promise of the Government and relied on the protection which it was once the glory of England to extend to all her faithful allies.—I am, Sir, &e.,
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