Page:Irish Emigration and The Tenure of Land in Ireland.djvu/411



MR. BUTTS PAMPHLET.

the foregoing pages were sent to press, I have had the advantage of reading Mr. Butt's recent work, entitled "The Irish People and the Irish Land." In that publication Mr. Butt has been good enough to notice my letters to the Times, and to contest my facts and opinions with a freedom I am only too glad he should have used, but with less candour than I might have expected.

As I am anxious my pamphlet should be at the service of Members of Parliament before the adjourned debate on Lord Naas' Land Bills, I do not propose to enter into any lengthened examination of Mr. Butt's very able and interesting volume; but I must be allowed to notice one or two sentences in which he refers more immediately to myself.

The first passage it is necessary to quote is the following, p. 51—

"Before I do so I must claim your lordship's permission to offer some observations upon the letters of Lord Dufferin . . ..

"It is only in a third letter that Lord Dufferin incidentally notices the 'Plea for the Celtic Race.' Before noticing the second letter I claim your lordship's permission to offer some observations on the third.

"I cannot say that, in this letter, Lord Dufferin has even made an attempt to answer me. I gather, indeed, from the way in which he alludes to it that his lordship had not then condescended to read the tract upon which he commented. In his third letter he observes that—

" 'It has been objected I have mistaken the nature of the accusations directed against the landlord class in Ireland, who, I am informed, have been ruthlessly gibbetted, not exactly on account of their own acts, but as representatives of those bygone generations to whose vicious mismanagement of their estates the present misfortunes of the country are to be attributed.' . ..

"As, in a subsequent part of the letter, Lord Dufferin does me the honour of mentioning me by name, I presume that I am 'the writer' referred to in this passage, and that this is intended as a criticism on the 'Plea for the Celtic Race.' The very language of the reference, 'I am informed,' implies that Lord Dufferin had formed his opinion of the tract upon the opinion of others. I did not need, indeed, that reference to assure me that this was so. It was, I, believe, impossible, if he had read it, for a writer as intelligent and able as Lord Dufferin so completely to misunterstand—equally impossible for one of his station and character so entirely to misrepresent.