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New Zealand Tablet, Volume XII, Issue 29, 7 November 1884, Page 9

On board one of the vessels of the Channel Fleet which has been steaming round the coast of Ireland, and which recently -visited us in Dublin Bay, there ia some one, presumably an officer, who writes a correspondence for an English paper, and who takes care to display in it a great amount of anti-Irish bigotry and spleen. Writing from Kingstown, and describing the visit of the fleet to some of the Northern ports, this person remarks that that part of the country may be called •' Protestant Ireland " ; he says it presented a great contrast to the parts of the South and West which they had visited, the people being industrious and thrifty, their cottages neat, and their children clean. " The places we have been sent to before coming here," he says, " are quite devoid of standing crops— cereals. They do not seem to have an idea beyond a potato field there ; they plant the potatoes and sit on the wall and beg until it is time to dig them up." The despicable slanderer who wrote, these words knew nothing of the condition, circamstances, or habits of the people he was traducing. The poor people in the West who own little patches of land that will only grow potatoes, iustead of sitting down and begging while their crops are in the ground, go in quest of work to England and Scotland, and when the; bring come the fruits of their hard labour the landlord takes the greater part from them under the name of rent. Tbey would be very glad to attend to snug farms and cosy cottages if they were allowed to possess anything of the kind, We think the Catholic officers and men on board the Channel Squadron ought to endeavour to find out this calumniator of their countrymen and their religion. They might, perhaps, discover some way of enlightening him on Irish affairs. Jbtear-Admiral Wbyte is, we believe, a Catholic and an Irishman ; we wonder if he likes to read such accounts of his coreligionists and countrymen as that supplied to the Press by, perhaps, some member of his own ship's company. — Nation, Sept.- 6r