n Government, but upon the character and the motives of
their political opponents?

CHAPTER XVI.

BELFAST, _Monday, June 25._--I left Dublin yesterday at 4 P.M., in a
train which went off at high pressure as an "express," but came into
Belfast panting and dilatory as an "excursion." The day was fine, and
the line passes through what is reputed to be the most prosperous part
of Ireland. In this part of Ireland, too, the fate of the island has
been more than once settled by the arbitrament of arms; and if
Parliamentary England throws up the sponge in the wrestle with the
League, it is probable enough that the old story will come to be told
over again here.

At Dundalk the Irish monarchy of the Braces was made and unmade. The
plantation of Ulster under James I. clinched the grasp not so much of
England as of Scotland upon Ireland, and determined the course of events
here through the Great Rebellion. The landing of the Duke of Schomberg
at Carrickfergus opened the way for the subjugation of Jacobite Ireland
by William of Orange. The successful descent of the French upon the same
place in February 1760, after the close of "the Great Year," in which
Walpole tells us he came to expect a new victory every morning with the
rolls for breakfast, and after Hawke had broken the strength of the
great French Armada off Belleisle, and done for England the service
which Nelson did for her again off Trafalgar in 1805, shows what might
have happened had Thurot commanded the fleet of Conflans. In this same
region, too, the rout of Munro by Nugent at Ballinahinch practically
ended the insurrection of 1798.

There are good reasons in the physical geography of the British Islands
for this controlling influence of Ulster over the affairs of Ireland,
which it seems to me a serious mistake to overlook.

The author of a brief but very hard-headed and practical letter on the
pacification of Ireland, which appeared in the _Times_ newspaper in
1886, while the air was thrilling with rumours of Mr. Gladstone's
impending appearance as the champion of "Home Rule," carried, I
remember, to the account of St. George's Channel "nine-tenths of the
troubles, religious, political, and social, under which Ireland has
laboured for seven centuries." I cannot help thinking he hit the nail on
the head; and St. George's Channel does not divide Ulster from Scotland.
From Donaghadee, which has an excellent harbour, the houses on the
Scottish coast can ea