MARTIN PULBROOK,
Sir, - The plaque of honour to the Rev William Hazlitt - father of the essayist - recently erected at the courthouse in Bandon is richly deserved.
Hazlitt - of whom a striking portrait survives at Maidstone Unitarian Church - was Unitarian minister in Bandon from 1780 to 1783, and, at considerable personal risk and danger, visited and encouraged American and other prisoners of conscience in jail in Kinsale.
However, perhaps too many people who have looked a Hazlitt from a perspective outside Unitarianism have tended to see him as an altogether exceptional figure in his times, inexplicable except as an exception.
Without in any way detracting from what he achieved, Unitarians would claim that Hazlitt exemplifies the core Unitarian qualities of "Freedom, Reason and Tolerance". And it bears pointing out that the Dublin (St Stephen's Green) and Cork (Prince's Street) Unitarian communities still actively pursue and foster the same attitudes that guided Hazlitt 220 years ago: "Here let no man - or woman - be a stranger". - Yours, etc.,
MARTIN PULBROOK, New Meeting House, Prince's Street, Cork.