The Rev. J. Guinness Rogers maintains in the Times of
Thursday, that an Irish Nonconformist cannot exist, since there is no Established Church in Ireland to which he could have been asked to conform. We should not at all care to traverse this rather neat verbal expedient for escaping the charge that English Nonconformists are deserting their Irish brethren. Let it be granted. Still, it must be admitted that Mr. Guinness Rogers and his colleagues are deserting those religious bodies in Ireland which are closest to themselves in faith, and deserting them at a time when they stand in dire need of help. They are deserting those who, if they lived in England, would necessarily be Nonconformists, and deserting them in a kind of peril to which the English Nonconformists are most sensitive. It is the thing, not the name for the thing, which counts.
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