A great and enthusiastic Unionist demonstration was held in Belfast
yesterday week, which was addressed by Mr. Lea, M.P., Mr. Wodehouse, M.P., and Mr. Arnold-Forster. Mr. Lea, M.P., remarked that Mr. John O'Connor, in moving a recent amendment in the House of Commons, had stated that the Irish Bishops had withdrawn from discussion the subject of education until they should have a Home-rule Parliament to discuss it in. That meant, said Mr. Lea, that under a Home- rale Parliament the Protestants of Ulster would he taxed to support Roman Catholic schools. For our parts, so long as the schools were good schools, and so long as the denomina- tional system were adopted deliberately as the one most suitable to Ireland, we should not at all object to seeing either the Protestants paying taxes for the education of Roman Catholics in good Roman Catholic schools, or the Roman Catholics paying taxes for the education of Protestants in good Protestant schools ; but what we should object to would be the vivid mutual distrust which under a Home-rule system would unquestionably be felt by each party in the good faith of the other. Mr. Wodehouse, M.P., made an excellent speech, in which he asserted that almost all the enthusiasm for Irish Home-rule professed in Great Britain was really nothing but faith in Mr. Gladstone under another name ; and Mr. Arnold- Forster insisted that throughout Great Britain the Irish Ques- tion was really an unreal one, the significance of which did not come home to a single elector, while in Ulster it was to multitudes a matter of the utmost personal significance, and to Loyalists out of Ulster one of life and death. True, and a great mischief it is that so little is known in Great Britain of the feelings with which the loyal Irishmen would view Home-rule.
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