On Thursday Mr. Balfour, presiding at a great Unionist ,
demonstration at the Queen's Hall to protest against the Irish policy of the Government, declared that !ie new Chief Secre- tary for Ireland had in the course of his i;tiv months of office performed a feat never performed by any of his predecessors. He had united the most ardent loyalists from Ulster, the most devoted followers of Mr. itedmond, and the most enthusiastic Irish extremists in denouncing the Government's proposals. A new situation had been born of the Government's policy. Devolution was dead, but we were now face to face with two classes of danger. The first was the danger that the Radicals might induce the Government, who had failed to bribe the Nationalists with their measures, to bribe them with their administratipn,—that is, with a lax application of the laws that preserve order and good government in Ireland. The second danger was that we were now confronted with "the simple naked issue : Are you going to maintain the Union, or are you going to be traitors to it P" Though the Unionist Party were weak in the House of Commons, he was confident of the future. "At the critical moment we shall show again, as we have so often shown before, that the powers of resistance in this country to rash, unconsidered, and unpatriotic change lire still sufficient."
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