The rioting in Belfast was very serious this day week,
and was renewed again on several subsequent days. If we can trust the letter of Mr. Dempsey in Wednesday's Times, on the former day it originated with the Orangemen, and was, indeed, according- to that account, wholly their work. Other accounts, however, charge the Nationalists with making attacks on the Orangemen, and probably, both statements are true. On Tuesday, if the Times' own information can be trusted, the Nationalists took the offensive, we suppose out of revenge, and attacked the Orange- men. Probably both parties are equally in fault, and take the offensive as opportunity offers. But whatever the truth may be, unquestionably the state of Belfast at present is a great scandal to all orderly men, and we trust that Lord Londonderry and Sir Michael Hicks-Beach will promptly rectify a state of things which is no doubt greatly due to the excitement attending a change of Government. How, with Ireland so passionately divided between these factious, it can be wise to throw her entirely into the hands of one of the factions, as Mr. Gladstone's policy would have done, we are at a loss to conceive. And Belfast is, in this respect, Ireland in miniature, though an Ire- land with the numerical proportions of the two factions reversed.
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