he ignorance and credulity of English Gladstonian speakers, who,
with a Primitive Methodist accent and a Salvation Army voice,
proclaim, with a Bible twang, their conviction that Home Rule means
the friendship of Ireland.

Dublin, March 30th.

No. 3.--ULSTER'S PREPARATIONS FOR WAR.

Ulster will fight, and fight to the death. The people have taken a
resolution--deep, stern, and irrevocable. Outwardly they do not seem
so troubled as the Dubliners. They are quiet in their movements,
moderate in their speech. They show no kind of alarm, for they know
their own strength, and are fully prepared for the worst. They speak
and act like men whose minds are made up, who will use every
Constitutional means of maintaining their freedom, and, these failing,
will take the matter in their own strong hands. Meanwhile they
preserve external calm, and systematically make their arrangements. If
ever they went through a talking stage, that is now over. They have
passed the time of discussion, and are preparing for action. If ever
they showed heat, that period also is past. They have reached the cold
stage, in which men act on ascertained principles and not in the
frenzy of passion. There is nothing hysterical about the Belfast men.
They are by no means the kind of people who run hither and thither
wringing their hands. Neither are they men who will sit down under
oppression. And oppression is what they expect from a Dublin
Government. Mr. Gladstone and his tribe may pooh-pooh this notion, but
the feeling in Ulster is strong and immovable. The tens of thousands
of Protestants thickly scattered over other provinces feel more
strongly still; as well they may, for they have not the numbers, the
organisation, the unity which is strength, that characterise the
province of Ulster. They hold that Home Rule is at the bottom a
religious movement, that by circuitous methods, and subterranean
strategy, the religious re-conquest of the island is sought; that the
ignorant peasantry, composing the large majority of the electorate,
are entirely in the hands of the priests, and that these black swarms
of Papists have a congenital hatred of England, which must bring about
separation. These are the opinions of thousands of eminent men whose
ability is beyond argument, who have lived all their lives on the
spot, who from childhood have had innumerable facilities for knowing
the truth, whose interests are bound up with the prosperity of
Ireland, and