The difficulty of all the Irish Parties now is in
getting any- thing new to say, or in finding any more emphatic and impressive way of saying what they have said before. There have been this week new meetings of the Irish Unionists at Belfast and at Armagh; and at Belfast, on Tuesday, Lord Londonderry took the chair, and expressed his conviction that Mr. Gladstone had only two courses open to him. He might bring in a drastic Home-rule Bill which would fill the Irish Home-rulers with enthusiasm, or he might bring in a milk- and-water Bill which would not alarm the English Home- rulers; and, in his belief, Mr. Gladstone's choice would fall upon the latter alternative, because he could count on the Irish Home-rulers being ready to grasp at anything they could get, while the English Home-rulers might very probably be offended by anything too strong. But whether the Bill were drastic or feeble, the Irish Unionists were alike determined to have none of it, for it would destroy Ulster, whose prosperity had been made by the Union. At Armagh, on the same day, the same assertion was as emphatically made by Mr. Dunbar Barton, M.P., Q.C., who asserted that not only would Ulster have her industry and commerce ruined by Home-rule, but that she would have to pay for all the charities of the rest of Ireland as well. It would be a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul; and Ulster would be the Peter, while Connaught would play the agreeable part of Paul. On that point, we confess, we have our doubts. Ulster is not very easy to rob. And if it could be managed, we doubt much whether Munster and Leinster would pour the whole of the booty into the lap of the poorest and weakest of the sister-provinces.
