THE LATE PROFESSOR BONAMY PRICE.
[To THE EDITOR OP THE " SPECTATOR." _I SIR,—" Coming as he did from Guernsey, there was in Bonamy Price not a little of the genial alertness of the French intellect." (Spectator, January 14th.)
The notion that the Channel Islands were conquered, or in some such way acquired, by England from France, that the islanders are consequently French or of French origin, and that the islands themselves are even now held in much the same manner and by much the same means as, Bay, Malta, is not an uncommon one. It is none the less absolutely erroneous.
In no part of the Empire can longer pedigrees be shown, nowhere is purity of race more highly prized or maintained, and nowhere is pride of race more general, than in these islands. If there be any French blood, it is Huguenot; and there can be but very little of that in a land where the Frenchman is not even allowed to own real property, and where the name is, and has always been, a term of reproach.—I am, Sir, &c., Mao.
[Surely the command of the French language and literature, transmitted from generation to generation, is itself sufficient to secure a large infusion of the French genius.—En. Spectator.]
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