o embitter the
hostility of conflicting creeds and parties in Ireland." The United
Presbyterian Church of Scotland resolved at a meeting of its Irish
Presbytery "that Home Rule would greatly intensify the antagonism now
existing between the two peoples inhabiting Ireland." The Quakers come
out pretty strong. They first ask to be believed. They hope that
Englishmen will give credence to the sincerity of their convictions
and the disinterestedness of their motives, and then they say that
Home Rule "cannot fail to be disastrous to Ireland, and must tend to
perpetuate and intensify the strife and discord which we have so long
lamented and which we earnestly desire, so far as in us lies, to
mitigate and allay." These protests are not all from Ulster. Every
Grand Jury in Ireland has expressed itself in similar terms. The
leading mercantile men of the three southern provinces of Ireland have
declared in writing that "the Bill of the Government throws amongst us
a new apple of discord, and plunges Ireland again into a state of
political and party ferment." Pages of quotation might be added. But
if those already adduced are not sufficient to satisfy my readers as
to the feeling of the Irish Unionist party, they would hardly be
persuaded though one rose from the dead.

The feeling of the other party is still stronger, and has been so
often and openly expressed as to stand in no need of proof. Mr. Dillon
has threatened to "manage Ulster;" and others have over and over again
declared that the Protestant settlers are not Irishmen, and therefore
have no right in the country. The lower classes of Irish Nationalists
regard an Irish Legislature as an instrument to secure ascendency and
plunder. The ruling idea is loot. The Unionists are determined at all
costs to maintain religious equality and to hold their own. In Ulster
masters and men, landlords and tenants, are of one mind. They do not
bluster and brag. Those who represent them as rowdies do them
grievous wrong. They are sober, thrifty, industrious, pious. In
character they resemble Cromwell's Puritans, or the Scottish
Covenanters of old, and no wonder, for they are of the same stock.
They are by nature kindly and peaceful, but they become dangerous
indeed on the points of liberty, religion, and property. We can partly
judge their future by their past. In the dark and troublous days of
rebellion they held the country for England, established a police, did
for Ireland all that Gove