The great Ulst,..r Convention met for the first time in
Bel- fast yesterday, too late for comment by us. It has been evident, however, all through the week that the meeting would be a great event. The very soul of North Ireland is stirred ; and while room for ten thousand delegates has been provided in the Convention Hall in Belfast, two hundred thousand spectators sympathising with the Union are expected to assemble in the Botanic Gardens. All differences of opinion among Protestants are said to have vanished, and Orangeman and Liberal, Episcopalian and Presbyterian, will act strenuously together. The Primate of all Ireland was to offer the opening prayer, and the ex-Moderator of the Pres- byterian Assembly to read Psalm xlvi., "God is our refuge, and our strength." All violence of speech is to be avoided ; and the reporters, who are present in swarms, testify to the earnestness and self-control of all concerned in the movement, from the committee to the most rural gathering. The resolu- tions to be submitted declare a fixed resolve to "retain unchanged our position as an integral portion of the United Kingdom," and to "have nothing to do with a Parliament certain to be controlled by men responsible for the crime and outrage of the Land League, the dishonesty of the Plan of Campaign, and the cruelties of boycotting," and affirm that such a Parliament "must inevitably result in disorder, violence, and bloodshed." They announce a determination 'to take no part in the proceedings of such a Parliament, and to repudiate its authority." Everything depends, of course, upon the exact- ness with which these resolutions express popular feeling; but so far, no observer appears on this point to entertain any doubt. Those concerned and those who sympathise represent a third of the population of Ireland, and an indefinitely larger proportion of its wealth, the immense majority, moreover, being as Irish in all but descent as the people of Cork or Clare.
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