Ireland Under Coercion: The Diary of an American (2 of 2) / (2nd ed.) (1888)

by William Henry Hurlbert

The not less imposing warehouse of Richardson and Co., built of a singularly beautiful brown stone, and decorated with equal taste and liberality, adjoins that of Robinson and Cleaver. The banks, the public offices, the clubs, the city library, the museum, the Presbyterian college, the principal churches, all of them modern, all alike bear witness to the public spirit and pride in their town of the good people of Belfast. With more time at my disposal I would have been very glad to visit some of the flax-mills called into being by the great impulse which the cotton famine resulting from our Civil War gave to the linen manufactures of Northern Ireland, and the famous shipyards of the Woolfs on Queen’s Island, As things are, it was more to my purpose to see some of the representative men of this great Protestant stronghold.

I passed a very interesting hour with the Rev. Dr. Hanna, who is reputed to be a sort of clerical “Lion of the North,” and whom I found to be in almost all respects a complete antitype of Father M‘Fadden of Gweedore.

Dr. Hanna is not unjustly proud of being at the head of the most extensive Sunday-school organisation in Ireland, if not in the world; and I find that the anniversary parade of his pupils, appointed for Saturday, June 30th, is looked forward to with some anxiety by the authorities here. He tells me that he expects to put two thousand children that day into motion for a grand excursion to Moira; but although he speaks very plainly as to the ill-will with which a certain class of the Catholics here regard both himself and his organisation, he does not anticipate any attack from them. With what seems to me very commendable prudence, he has resolved this year to put this procession into the streets without banners and bands, so that no charge of provocation may be even colourably advanced against it. This is no slight concession from a man so determined and so outspoken, not to say aggressive, in his Protestantism as Dr. Hanna; and the Nationalist Catholics will be very ill-advised, it strikes me, if they misinterpret it.

He spoke respectfully of the Papal decree against Boycotting and the Plan of Campaign; but he seems to think it will not command the respect of the masses of the Catholic population, nor be really enforced by the clergy. Like most of the Ulstermen I have met, he has a firm faith, not only in the power of the Protestant North to protect itself, but in its determination to protect itself against the consequences which the northern Protestants believe must inevitably follow any attempt to establish an Irish nationality. Dr. Hanna is neither an Orangeman nor a Tory. He says there are but three known Orangemen among the clerical members of the General Assembly of the Irish Presbyterian Church, which unanimously pronounced against Mr. Gladstone’s scheme of Home Rule, and not more than a dozen Tories. Of the 550 members of the Assembly, 538, he says, were followers of Mr. Gladstone before he adopted the politics of Mr. Parnell; and only three out of the whole number have given him their support. In the country at large, Dr. Hanna puts down the Unionists at two millions, of whom 1,200,000 are Protestants, and 800,000 Catholics; and he maintains that if the Parliamentary representatives were chosen by a general vote, the Parnellite 80 would be cut down to 62; while the Unionists would number 44. He regards the Parnellite policy as “an organised imposture,” and firmly believes that an Irish Parliament in Dublin would now mean civil war in Ireland. He had a visit here last week, he says, from an American Presbyterian minister, who came out to Ireland a month ago a “Home Ruler”; but, as the result of a trip through North-Western Ireland, is going back to denounce the Home Rule movement as a mischievous fraud.

When I asked him what remedy he would propose for the discontent stirred up by the agitation of Home Rule, this Presbyterian clergyman replied emphatically, “Balfour, Balfour, and more Balfour!”

This on the ground, as I understood, that Mr. Balfour’s administration of the law has been the firmest, least wavering, and most equitable known in Ireland for many a day.

Later in the day I had the pleasure of a conversation with the Rev. Dr. Kane, the Grand Master of the Orangemen at Belfast. Dr. Kane is a tall, fine-looking, frank, and resolute man, who obviously has the courage of his opinions. He thinks there will be no disturbances this year on the 12th of July, but that the Orange demonstrations will be on a greater scale and more imposing than ever. He derides the notion that “Parnellism” is making any progress in Ulster. On the contrary, the concurrence this year of the anniversary of the defeat of the Great Armada with the anniversary of the Revolution of 1688 has aroused the strongest feelings of enthusiasm among the Protestants of the North, and they were never so determined as they now are not to tolerate anything remotely looking to the constitution of a separate and separatist Government at Dublin.

BELFAST, Tuesday, June 26.—Sir John Preston, the head of one of the great Belfast houses, and a former Mayor of the city, dined with us last night, and in the evening Sir James Haslett, the actual Mayor, came in.

I find that in Belfast the office of Mayor is served without a salary, and is consequently filled as a rule by citizens of “weight and instance.” In Dublin the Lord Mayor receives £3000 a year, with a contingent fund of £1500, and the office is becoming a distinctly political post. The face of Belfast is so firmly set against the tendency to subordinate municipal interests to general party exigencies, that the Corporation compelled Mr. Cobain, M.P., who sits at Westminster now for this constituency, to resign the post which he held as treasurer and cashier of the Corporation when he became a candidate for a seat in Parliament. I am not surprised, therefore, to learn that the city rates and taxes are much lower in the commercial than they are in the political capital of Ireland.

Both Sir John Preston and Sir James Haslett have visited America. Sir John went there to represent the linen industries of Ireland, and to urge upon Congress the propriety of reducing our import duties upon fabrics which the American climate makes it practically imposssible to manufacture on our side of the water. Senator Sherman, who twenty years ago had the candour to admit that the wit of man could not devise a tariff so adjusted as to raise the revenue necessary for the Government which should not afford adequate incidental protection to all legitimate American industries, gave Sir John reason to hope that something might be done in the direction of a more liberal treatment of the linen industries. But nothing practical came of it. Sir John ought to have known that our typical American Protectionist, the late Horace Greeley, really persuaded himself, and tried to persuade other people, that with duties enough clapped on the Asiatic production, excellent tea might be grown on the uplands of South Carolina!