e is one of the blackest, most
Unionist, Protestant, and loyal in the whole country. A number of buff
placards issued by Nationalists attract respectful attention. The same
bill is stuck all over Belfast--in the High Street, on the hoardings
facing the heretic meeting houses, everywhere. It purports to present
the sentiments of the great Duke of Wellington _re_ the Roman
Catholics of Ireland, and is to the effect that in moments of danger
and difficulty the Roman Catholics had caused the British Empire to
float buoyant when other Empires were wrecked; that the Roman
Catholics of Ireland, and they only, had saved our freedom, our
Constitution, our institutions, and in short that it is to the Irish
Roman Catholics that we owe everything worth having. Alone they did
it. The priest, in short, has made Mr. Bull the man he is.

Can anybody in England "go one better" than this?

These extracts are plainly taken from some speech on the Roman
Catholic Emancipation Bill, and refer to the valour of the Irish
soldiery, whose bravery in fighting for a Protestant cause was
doubtless invaluable to the cause of liberty. There is an apocryphal
story concerning Alfred de Musset, who on his death-bed is reported to
have conveyed to a friend with his last breath his last, his only
wish, to wit:--

"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 group