June 18, 1888.

    To the Editor of “United Ireland."

Dear Sir,—­I observe that in your last issue, amongst other things, you state that Mr. Taylor accepted a Crown Prosecutorship in 1885.  I happen to know the precise facts.  Mr. Taylor was offered the Crown Prosecutorship of the King’s County, and some of us strongly advised him to accept it.  There were no political prosecutions impending at the time, and it seemed to me that a Nationalist who would do his work honestly in prosecuting offenders against the ordinary law might strike a blow against tyranny by refusing to accept a brief, if offered, against men accused of political offences or prosecuted under a Coercion Act.  I know that a similar view was entertained by the late Very Rev. Dr. Kavanagh of Kildare, and many others.  However, we failed to influence Mr. Taylor further than to make him say that he would do nothing in the matter until Mr. Davitt was consulted.  I, for one, called on Mr. Davitt, and pressed my views upon him; but he was decided that no Nationalist could identify himself in the smallest way with Castle rule in Ireland.  This settled the question, and Mr. Taylor declined the post, which was subsequently applied for by Mr. Luke Dillon, who now holds it.—­Faithfully yours,

    JAMES A. POOLE.

    29 Harcourt Street.

    EDITORIAL NOTE.

    "United Ireland,” June 23.

We devote a large portion of our space to-day to the apparently organised defence of Mr. J.F.  Taylor and his friends, and we are quite content to rest upon their letters the justification for our comments.  When a gentleman who avows himself a disappointed aspirant for Parliamentary honours, and who owns his regret that he did not become a petty Castle placeman, is discovered writing in an important English Liberal paper, venomous little innuendos at the expense of sorely attacked Irish leaders which excite the enthusiasm of the Liarish Times, it was high time to intimate to the Manchester Guardian the source from which its Irish information is derived.  The case against Mr. Taylor as a criticaster is clinched by the fact that his cause is espoused by Mr. John O’Leary.  The Irish public are a little weary of Mr. O’Leary’s querulous complaints as an homme incompris.  So far as we are aware, the only ground he himself has for complaining of want of toleration is that he possibly considers the good-humoured toleration for years invariably extended to his opinions on men and things savours of neglect.  His idea of toleration with respect to others seems to be toleration for everybody except the unhappy wretches who may happen to be for the moment doing any practicable service in the Irish cause.

NOTE O.

BOYCOTTING BY “CROWNER’S QUEST LAW.”

(Vol. ii. p. 312.)

The following circumstantial account of this deplorable case of Ellen Gaffney preserved here, as I find it printed in the Irish Times of February 27, 1888.