THE TIPPERARY ELECTION.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTAT011.1
Stn,—Surely Mr. W. F. Marriott cannot be serious when he asks us to believe (in his letter to the Spectator of the 27th ult.) that there is any analogy, much less an exact one, between his supposed case and that of John Mitchell? Is it not plain to him that in the example he adduces the punishment is to take place within a given time, while in Mitchell's case the punishment was to be for a given period ?
Nor do I conceive that the paradox involved consists, as Mr. Marriott would have it, in the fact that Mitchell " has not fulfilled his sentence, and that, nevertheless, there is no unexhausted part thereof which he can be made to undergo." The paradox, I take it, consists rather in the fact that John Mitchell is a felon, but that the sole disability attaching to him as such is that he cannot sit in the House of Commons ; and it is because I consider it such a wondrous paradox, that I venture to think he should either have been arrested the moment he landed, or the question of his disability should have been referred to a Select Committee, instead of being decided off-hand by the House.—I am, Sir, &c.,
R. W. A. H.
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