"Don't permit me to be annotated." The Iron Duke might have said the same if he had thought of it. He could not know that, shorn of his context, divorced from his drift, he would be placarded in his native land as an agent in the cause of sedition and disloyalty. This truly Grand Old Man, who, in his determination to uphold the dignity and unity of the Empire "stood four-square to all the winds that blew," would scarcely have sided with the modern G.O.M. and his satellites, Horsewhipped Healy and Breeches O'Brien.
One word as to the alleged "intolerance of the fanatic Orangemen of Belfast."
The placards above-mentioned were up on Tuesday last. They are large and boldly printed, and attracted crowds of readers—but not a hand was raised to deface them, to damage them, to do them any injury whatever. I watched them for four-and-twenty hours, and not a finger was lifted against any one in the High Street or elsewhere, so far as I could ascertain.
There are twenty thousand Orangemen in the city, and the Protestants outnumber the Papists by three to one. Yet the placard was treated with absolute respect, and although I entered several groups of readers I heard no words of criticism—no comment, unfavourable or otherwise, no gesture of dissent. The people seemed to be interested in the bill, and desirous of giving it respectful consideration. I have seen Liberal Birmingham, when in the days of old it assembled round Tory posters—but the subject becomes delicate; better change our ground. It is, however, only fair to say that the Gladstonians of Birmingham, who, as everybody knows, formed the extreme and inferior wing of the old Radical party, can hardly teach the Belfast men tolerance.
Ballymena, April 6th.
No. 6.—THE EXODUS OF INDUSTRY.[ToC]
