User:Liberlogos/Answer to A Warning to Belfast
Letter to the Editor
Sir, — I have read with much interest Professor Goldwin Smith's letter entitled "A Warning to Belfast" which appeared in a recent issue of The Times. Having lately returned from Canada after a residence there of 15 years, I know something of the country and am able to bear witness to the truth of every statement made regarding the French population of the province of Quebec by the learned Professor in his letter. There is a remarkable similarity in character and habits between the French of Quebec and the Celtic Irish. Both are alike bigoted Roman Catholics and are equally ignorant, superstitious, and preist-ridden. They are both alike agressive in their temper and are similarily animated by hostility to England and hatred to Protestantism. Both are clannish in their habits and have a similarily low standard of comfort. Both races possess extraordinary fecondity and multiply more rapidly than the Anglo-Saxons. Like the Irish of the colonies and the United States, the French-Canadians are inveterate politicians and office-seekers, and are utterly unscrupulous as to the means by which they may obtain power or place. Even in their virtues they are alike, in the gaiety of their temper and their love of music, song, and dance. Such being the similarity of the two races, we are perfectly justified in looking to Quebec, as it is under French-Canadian rule, for a counterpart of what Ireland would be under Home Rule. The priest there is supreme, the education and intelligence of the masses at the lowest notch, and the Protestant element in the population, as Professor Goldwin Smith says, is being rapidly eliminated. In any rural district in Quebec, where the Protestants are in a minority, they speedily discover that they cannot continue to live there. The public schools are under the control of the majority, who are themselves the slaves of the priests, and are so conducted that it is impossible for Protestants to send their children to them. They must either support separate schools or, if unable, because too few, to do that, must go without schools. The local taxation is also controlled by the majority, and the Protestant minority finds itself taxed without having any voice in the matter or control of the money. [...]
Would not a similar state of things be established in Ireland under Home Rule? Would not the Roman Catholic priests be the true rulers of the land, no matter who might be its nominal ones? Would not the Protestant element in the population of the rural districts here where they were in a minority be soon made as uncomfortable as the rural Protestants of Quebec are today under similar circumstances, and, like them, be compelled to emigrate? And with them would surely go the prosperity of Ulster and Belfast, its capital. With the Protestant gone or almost gone from Ireland, where would England's security be for the permenancy of her power here? One wonders at the infatuation of Mr. Gladstone and those English and Scotch Protestant Liberals who follow him in his suicidal policy. They would promote Liberalism by making Ultramontanism paramount in Ireland, and strengthen England by making her bitterest enemies — the bitter enemies of Protestantism — its exclusive owners and rulers. History can have but one judgement for such conduct, that it is treason alike to England, to Protestantism, and to true Liberalism.
Yours truly,
Samuel Clarke, C.E. Clones, Ireland.
Notes
This is a letter to the editor of The Times newspaper of London (October 8, 1888, p.13), from The Times Digital Archive available at the Gales Databases website, in turn available with a membership of the Bibliothèque nationale du Québec.