the enormous increase in that of Belfast? That
extrinsic factors such as those of geographical situation have much to
do with increase of prosperity is well illustrated by the industrial
growth of Wexford, with its manufactories of agricultural implements and
dairy machinery, which is largely attributable to the close proximity of
that town to the coalfields and iron of South Wales.

As to the argument that political preoccupation is responsible for
national backwardness, in the case of Finland the convulsions of a
bitter political agitation have not been found incompatible with an
increase of wealth and of population.

In this connection it is germane to ask what the Protestant people of
Ulster have done for the rest of the country, and to inquire if, with
all their commercial success, they have been in the van of progress.
That they have never produced a great leader of men or framer of policy
is a remarkable fact, and to every demand of their fellow-countrymen
they have answered with a reiterated _non possumus_, backed by threats
of their intentions in case they are ignored, which, in point of fact,
they have never carried into effect.

The Orangemen in turn opposed Emancipation, Tithe Reform, Land Reform,
Church Disestablishment, the Ballot, Local Government, and the
settlement of the University question. Their attitude to the Land
Conference we have seen elsewhere, and in view of this record one may
ask whether or not they deserve Mr. Morley's condemnation as "an
irreconcilable junto, always unteachable, always wrong."

That their loyalty is contingent on the maintenance of their ascendancy
and the enforcement of their views, their reception of the Church Act of
1869 well shows, as does also the manner in which in 1886 they
threatened armed resistance if the Bill to which they were opposed was
carried. That they submitted to the Church Act without carrying out
their threats is a matter of history, and there is at least a strong
probability that in the latter event a similar effect would have been
witnessed.

The removal of religious tests in the public life of Great Britain has
been accomplished so completely that it is difficult for Englishmen to
realise the extent to which the spirit, if not the letter, of tests at
this day persists in Ireland.

We have recently seen the adjournment of the House of Commons moved by
the Orangemen because a rate collector in Ballinasloe did not receive
the appointment to a p