The Belfast rioters of both parties have received a very
just though severe sentence from Mr. Justice Lawson. Nearly sixty were brought up for sentence, and two of them received a sen- tence of five years' penal servitude. They had headed a riotous mob, one of them armed with an iron bar, and the other with a cleaver, and led on that mob to attack the house of a gentleman in Rosemary Street, and had shouted for his life. Another man had a sentence of seven years' penal servitude. Many of the rioters were sentenced to imprisonment for periods of one or two years, with hard labour. Altogether they have not come out of their wicked sport without something much worse than " burning their fingers." And what is better, they cer- tainly will not be able to say, with Mr. Disraeli, " I see no scars." Let us hope that next autumn the scars will still be visible enough and deterrent enough to prevent another outbreak.
Previous page
