Madam, - Kevin Myers always makes entertaining reading. However, we must be careful not to confuse entertainment with fact. In his Irishman's Diary of October 14th, where he describes in glowing detail the woes that befall those who dare to rebel against the divine order of kings and commoners, he commits at least one sin of commission and one of omission.
His assertion that France suffered a greater loss of life over the revolutionary period than over the world wars is simply wrong: the French population rose from 1740 to 1801 by 5 million, while it fell by 2 million over the 1911-1921 period. Second, he notes approvingly that worthy Canada, which of course still has a monarch as head of state, never fell into the moral slough of slavery while the dastardly Yankees galloped headlong, priapic and leering towards the slave cribs as soon as they were free from the benign paternalism of German George.
Ignoring for the moment that it wasn't until 1807 that slave trading was abolished within the British Empire, the roots of slavery in the cotton belt of the US were agricultural and economic. Cotton, indigo, cane, rice, tobacco and other plantation crops being rare and precious flowers indeed on the shores of the St Lawrence, it is perhaps not surprising that the trade never took root there, no more than it did in Maine or Oregon. Once again, alas, in his desire to tell a good story, Mr Myers has not let facts stand in the way. - Yours, etc.,
BRIAN M LUCEY,
School of Business Studies,
Trinity College,
Dublin 2.