LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
AN UNMANNERLY CORRESPONDENT.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.')
Sin,—Your comment upon my letter might be convincing but for the fact that your quotation from the Times—which you assert is "exact "—is garbled and altered to suit your own
purpose. Such a tactic puts an end to honest controversy.—
[We have compared our copy of the passage with the passage in the Times' report, and find that we made two.
errors,—one a printer's error, a substitution of the word "our" for the word "one," due to bad handwriting, which escaped the eye of the editor in the proof; and one due to the accidental omission of two lines owing to the copyist's taking up the words "in a" on their second occurrence a line or two lower down, instead of on their first occurrence two lines. earlier ; but we give the extract as it really stands in the Times side by side with the passage as we quoted it, and will ask a candid reader,—a description which does not, we fear, include our correspondent,—whether there is any difference
in total effect between the two ?—
"TimEs" " REPORT. OUR own EicrsecT.
"What I wish to do is this, to "What I wish to do is this, to lay down and enforce as far as I lay down and enforce as far as I can upon everybody the principle can upon everybody the principle- that one law ought to be applied that [our] law ought to be by us in our own minds to applied by us in our own cruelty and oppression wherever minds to cruelty and oppression we find them, and I will make wherever we find them ; and I this further addition, that if we will make this further addition. find where the Christian religion that if we find where the prevails, something too nearly Christian religion prevails some- approaching to what we have thing too much approaching to denounced [in a country where what we have denounced in the Ilahommedan religion pre- a [ ] Mahommedan rails, such transactions in a country, they are much more Christian country are not equally guilty in proportion to the light guilty with those] in a Illahom- of that religion under which it is medan country, they are much our happy lot to live."
more guilty in proportion to the light of the blessed religion under which it is our happy lot. to live."
We have marked by square brackets the two errors in the copy; but so far as regards the main words proving, as we
supposed, that Mr. Gladstone's mind was really fixed on the- Irish scandal in Mitchelstown, and not on the Russian scandal in Siberia, there is absolutely no difference. As we find, to our surprise, that Mr. Gladstone has, in a published letter,
absolutely disclaimed any reference to the Mitchelstown affair when he referred to the guilt of those who commit deeds of this kind in spite of the religion "under which it is our happy lot to live," we, of course, implicitly accept his disclaimer, and regret our mistake. But we hold that our interpretation of his drift was perfectly natural.—En. Spectator.]
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