heir very noses are
now becoming expert in battalion drill, having mastered company drill,
with manual and firing exercise; and whose numbers--I love to be
particular--amount to the respectable total of one hundred and
sixty-four thousand six hundred and fourteen, all duly enrolled and
pledged to act together anywhere and at any time, most of them already
well armed, and the remainder about to be furnished with splendid and
effective weapons, which before this appears in print will have been
landed from a specially chartered steamer, and instantly distributed
from a spot I am forbidden to indicate, by an organisation specially
created for the purpose.

All these particulars--and more--were furnished by gentlemen of high
position and unimpeachable integrity, whose statements, of themselves
sufficient, were abundantly confirmed by the exhibition under
restrictive pledges, of undeniable documentary proofs, with partial
but satisfactory glimpses of the work actually in hand. No vapouring
here, no breathless haste, not a suspicion of excitement. Nothing but
a cold, emotionless, methodical, business-like precision, a
well-considered series of commercial transactions, conducted by men
specially acquainted with the articles required and regularly trained
to office routine. English Home Rulers, unable to see a yard in front
of them, whose training and instincts are of the goody-goody, milk and
water type,--the lily-livered weaklings, who measure the courage of
others by their own,--may be excused their inability to conceive the
situation. They cannot understand the dour, unyielding spirit of the
Ulsterman in a matter which affects his property, his religion, his
freedom. A party backboneless as the Globerigina ooze, and, like that
sub-Atlantic production, only held together by its own sliminess, must
ever fail to realise the grit which means resistance, sacrifice,
endurance; cannot grasp the outlines of the Ulster character and
spirit, which resemble those which actuated the Scottish Covenanters,
the Puritan army of Cromwell, or even--and this illustration should be
especially grateful to Gladstonians--the Dutch Boers of the Transvaal.

But although the surface is placid the depths are turbulent. If Dublin
is simmering, Belfast is boiling. The breed is different. The
Northerner is not demonstrative, is slow to anger, but being moved is
not easily appeased. The typical Irishman, with his cutaway coat, his
pipe stuck in his coni