THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON AND THE IRISH SOLDIERS: A CORRECTION.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] have only just seen the Spectator of May 17th and I dare say before now other correspondents have called your attention to the literary forgery perpetrated, knowingly or unknowingly, by the compiler of the "Compendium of Irish Biography." The speech there referred to as the Duke of Wellington's is a pure fabrication, and was never uttered by the Duke. It was concocted by an advocate of Catholic Emancipation as a specimen of what (in his opinion) the Duke ought to have said; but this bogus speech has been caught up and repeated as the Duke's own words by so many Catholic writers, one after another, that many readels have been deceived into taking it as authentic; among others the late Mr. Ruskin, who has quoted it as genuine in the preface to one of his works. The Duke's sentiments and utterances on Catholic Emancipation were very different from what they are here represented to have been. Besides, the great Duke always spoke simply and accurately, and he would never have made such a wild statement as that "it is mainly to the Irish Catholics that we all owe our proud pre-eminence in our military career." Mr. Fitchett in his interesting book, "How England Saved Europe," says that "it must be confessed that Wel-
lington sometimes talked very wildly about his soldiers. At one time he called them the scum of the earth ; at another he said that he owed all his successes to them." (I quote from memory, not having the book by me.) But Wellington never spoke wildly, and both these assertions were true, nor is there anything incompatible in them.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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