"If, as I have reason to believe from his subsequent letter, Lord Dufferin has since read the 'Plea for the Celtic Race,' I am sure he will admit that it would not be fair to describe me as having 'ruthlessly gibbetted' Irish landlords, or 'gibbetted' them at all. My whole argument was that 'the landlord of 100 years ago' was, as Lord Dufferin describes him, the creature of circumstances. I never once alluded to any management, vicious or otherwise, of the estates of a century ago."
In reply to these observations I have much pleasure in assuring Mr. Butt that he is not the writer to whom I alluded in the passage he has quoted. It was the anonymous author of a very able article in the Daily News, of Dec. 12, whom I described as proposing to "ante-date our responsibilities;" and, so far from implying that Mr. Butt shared his opinion, I endeavoured to refute it by a quotation from Mr. Butt's own pamphlet.
Mr. Butt next objects to my view of the injuries inflicted on Ireland by the commercial restrictions of the last century. Of course the point must always remain a matter of opinion. It cannot be proved by a rule of three sum; but if Mr. Butt has any confidence in the judgment of Mr, Cobden and Mr. Bright, I would refer him to the opinion of those two gentlemen. Mr. Cobden has stated that but for the suppression of her trade and commerce, Ireland might have been as prosperous as England; and Mr. Bright, in his speech at Dublin, has said that, but for the development of her manufacturing resources, England might have been as miserable as Ireland. If any weight is to be attached to these two authorities, the matter is reduced to something very like a mathematical certainty.
Mr. Butt objects that for the last 80 years the trade of Ireland has been free, and that ample time has been given to the South to rival the North in manufacturing prosperity. I would venture to remind him that within the same period the South has been the scene of two attempts at rebellion, and the theatre of a perennial agitation, and that such circumstances are unfavourable to industry and to the investment of capital.
Mr. Butt further complains that I have not taken into sufficient account the confiscations of former times, and the religious hostility which prevailed between the owners and occupiers of the soil.
I have never proposed to myself to review the political history of Ireland, for the simple reason that I did not consider that any change in the destination of existing
