IRELAND AND SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT. (To TIM EDITOR OF THE
" SPECTATOR."] ''Sra,—As an Irishman who takes an interest iu his country, I must write to thank you sincerely for your admirable article in last Saturday week's Spectator, entitled "The Scone of Thursday."
Differing entirely as I do from the object and means of the so-called " National Party," I have long felt stung and hurt by the tone which Ministers like Sir William Harcourt adopt towards the Irish Irreconcilables. I speak with something more than superficial knowledge, when I endorse the truth of your remark that Mr. Dillon's speeches, however hare-brained and mischievous they may be, are the utterances of passionate sincerity. Perhaps to no people are Mr. Dillon's speeches more 'astoniehing than to those who know something of his character apart from politics, and who perceive how political passion can so change a man, that he appears to be in public the very re- verse of everything that he is in private life. Sir William Harcourt's tone of triumphant " Pharisaic • sarcasm " is precisely the sort of tone which Ireland does not want at the present time. It stings thousands of Irishmen who have no other sympathy with the Nationalists, and it helps to engender a feeling of positive hatred towards the Government, in a way that nothing else could. Irishmen are generally sensi- tive, and to be "spoken down to" by a self-righteous English- man is a thing that they cannot and will not stand.—I am, Sir,
&c.,
AN IRISHMAN.
Previous page
