list orators and their humble follower Mr. Birrell,
who in November 1911, informed his friends at Bristol that the Irish
had shown a great capacity for local government and that from what
people who had seen a great deal of the south and west of Ireland told
him there was no fear of persecution or oppression by the Catholic
majority of their Protestant fellow-subjects. In support of this,
various facts are adduced, which it is well to examine in detail,
remembering the poet's words that

"A lie which is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies."

One of the greatest powers possessed by the County Councils is the
exercise of patronage. It would probably be generally admitted in any
country but Ireland that there, if anywhere, religion and politics
should be excluded, and men selected only for their qualifications.
The Nationalists, wishing to demonstrate the fairness of the Councils
which hold their views, contrast the bigotry shown by the Unionist
Corporation of Belfast with the liberality of similar bodies in other
parts of the country. And certainly the figures they adduce, when
addressing audiences in England or writing for English readers, are
very striking. Thus Mr. Birrell said at Skipton in November 1911 that
he had been told that in the great Unionist City of Belfast there was
only one Roman Catholic in the employment of the Corporation, and he
was a scavenger. (It will be observed that here, as in many of his
speeches, he carefully used the expression "he had been told"--so
that what he said may be literally true, even though when he heard the
statement he knew that it was false.) And Stephen Gwynn, M.P., in his
"Case for Home Rule," says: "In Belfast, Catholics are a third of the
population; but the Corporation pays L51,405 in a year in salaries,
of which only L640 goes to Catholics." And about the same time as
Mr. Birrell's oration, Mr. Redmond, speaking at Swindon, said that in
Galway, Cork, Westmeath and King's County (where Roman Catholics form
the large majority of the population) Protestants held 23 per cent. of
the salaried appointments in the gift of the Councils.

But when we descend from the airy height of Nationalist rhetoric to
the prosaic region of fact, we find that the rates of the City
of Belfast amount to about L342,000; of this sum, Roman Catholic
ratepayers pay less than L18,000. There are nine hundred Roman
Catholics in the employment of the Corporation, and they receive in
salaries