THE LORD MAYOR OF CORK.
[To THE EDITOR Or THE " EPECTATOE."] Sza,—Would you allow inc to demur to your view that the object of the late Lord Mayor of Cork, in condemning himself to a dreadful death by lingering starvation, was to prevent the British Government putting more Irishmen in prison? No one, I imagine, could possibly do such a thing for such a reason. His motive was not that, but to protest against the sentence passed by some English military officers upon an Irishmen who believed that he owed no allegiance except to an Irish Republic. We may think him mistaken in that, but such was his motive (as he said himself), and it is not, at any rate, an ignoble one. I submit also that you are for too absolute upon the question of suicide, and that the Catholic Bishops were right in not deeming this the kind of suicide for personal motives which the Church condemns. Suppose the following dialogue between an early Christian and a Roman Praetor :— Praetors "Offer incense before this statue of the Imperator, and I will let you go home free at once."
Christian: "I cannot do so."
Praetor: "Then the law compels me to order you to execution. It is entirely your own doing; you choose to die when you can live, and that is suicide, which, as I understand, your own religion condemns."
We are entitled by precedent to put rebels in arms to death until rebellion assumes such dimensions that it becomes Civil War, but we are not entitled to misrepresent their motives
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