INVOKING THE DEITY.

Evening Star, Issue 15072, 2 January 1913, Page 8

INVOKING THE DEITY.

Mr F. E. Smith, the Conservative " front bencher," gave ■ himself away when on tour in Ireland with Sir-Ed-ward .Carson crusading against Home Rule. Speaking at Londonderry, he said: "On behalf of hundreds of thousands, of our friends in the English constituencies, I clasp your hand tonight, and I say, under God, we are with yon in the fight." Sir Edward Carson said that " with the help of God they were prepared to defend themselves".,; "there was a plea known to. the law as the plea of selfdefence, and with God's help they would make use of that plea"; "as long as God gave him strength, that great God in whomthey all trusted, he would go forward in that struggle, because they knew God would defend the right," and so on. But three days later Mr Smith forgot his part and gave the show away. Having moved on to Ballymena, he made this painful slip: " AVhen I was brought more and more in contact with the criminal classes than at present, whenever I met a prisoner who made, tremendous professions of his innocence, and more particularly- when he invoked the Deity in support of it, the more loudly he protested his innocence the more resolutely I always required to see his record "!