LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
MR. GL.A_DSTONE AND tifITCH-FILSTOWN.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."'
SIR,—As a very old reader of the Spectator, I cannot forbear entering my protest against the tone and temper of your comments upon Mr. Gladstone's political speeches. When parties are so widely separated as they are by the Home-rule Question, one expects severity of criticism ; but we look to the Spectator for fairness, and we do not get it. On the con-
trary, we have persistent unfairness. That we might endure, but we have no right to be called upon to endure flagrant misrepresentation of facts and perversion of language. To- day you charge Mr. Gladstone with saying at Lowestoft that the Armenian atrocities are nothing to compare in guilt with the atrocities of the Irish Constabulary. This statement of yours is utterly untrue, for not only did Mr. Gladstone not say this, but he is not reported to have said it ; and, further, he did not say anything which a fair and candid mind could -distort into the accusation you have made. 1 can but come to one conclusion,—namely, that the writer of the statement has never read the speech, but has based his comments upon those of an unscrupulous evening paper which had a note containing almost your words. It is perfectly -clear that the comparison was between the Siberian and Armenian " atrocities," and not between the Armenian and the Irish, and the greater guilt was apportioned to Christian Russia. The Daily Graphic (no friend of Mr. Gladstone's), May 19th, said :—" Mr. Gladstone compared the Siberian horrors with the Armenian atrocities He very justly apportioned the larger share of the blame to the Russians, on the ground that a people who enjoy the blessings of Christian teaching have less excuse for the perpetration of -crime than the less happily instructed Mussulmans."
This is a fair and truthful summary of what Mr. Gladstone said, and I think myself entitled to call upon you to retract as gross a piece of misrepresentation as ever appeared in the public Press.—I am, Sir, &c., Has our correspondent himself read Mr. Gladstone's speech, which he should have done before charging us with misrepre- senting him P At all events, we had read it most carefully, and had no doubt at all as to the drift of Mr. Gladstone's statement. We quote from the Times' report his exact language after -denouncing the Armenian atrocities :—" What I wish to do is this, to lay down and enforce as far as I can upon everybody the principle that our law ought to be applied by us in our own minds to cruelty and oppression wherever we find them ; and I will make this further addition, that if we find where the Christian religion prevails something too much approaching to what we have denounced in a Mahommedan country, they are much more guilty in proportion to the light of that religion under which it is our happy lot to live." The last words cannot evidently be applied, as the Daily Graphic applied them, to the Christianity of Russia, for it is not our happy lot to live under the light of Russian Christianity, and the reference certainly is to the conduct of the Irish police at Mitchelstown, with which Mr. Gladstone represents the Russian Government as reproaching us in the concluding passage of the speech from which we have quoted.—En. Spectator.]
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