• munity in the sister-kingdom. There was, to be sure,
a certain reality of the truce proclaimed by the leaders of the Orange- suspicion of inequitable administration, a certain perception of men, it was resolved that a great Catholic and Home-Rule injustice in the scope and purposes of the law, that irritated demonstration should be held in Belfast on the 15th inst. Irish Protestantism against the Imperial Government, but there The Orangemen affected to see in this proposed gathering— was no real restraint upon the desire of the contending sects to which was not characterised, so far as we can understand, insult each other and to provoke noisy and not always bloodless by any more disorderly or dangerous incidents than those quarrels. To challenge an attack, by the display of banners usual on the other side—a menace against the Union. and badges and the inharmonious iteration of party-tunes, was They turned out in semi-military array, and attacked under the Party Processions' Act illegal; but under the ordinary the Catholics. The latter, exasperated not only by the law rioting, the almost inevitable consequence of such pro- outrage itself, but by the breach of an honourable understand- vocations, is forbidden ; yet we have seen this week the capital ing which it involved, accepted the challenge with fierce of Ulster ravaged by two raging mobs, and the authorities delight. For a week Belfast has presented the appearance of seemingly powerless to control the factions. In truth, when a a city in a state of siege, with the superadded horrors of population is determined—as the men of Belfast on one side popular insurrection and magisterial imbecility. The list of and the other appear to be—to break the Queen's peace, the killed and wounded after each day's field operations was re- existence of an additional legal barrier, like the Party Proces- ported as regularly and received with as little surprise as sions' Act, is simply a vexatious futility. The Belfast Orange- though war had actually broken out in the capital of Ulster. The men had resolved, according to their time-honoured customs, worst feature to be observed is the facility with which this to insult their Catholic fellow-citizens, and the latter were faction-fighting has degenerated into a vulgar revelling in ready, and even eager, to take up the gauntlet. In these cir- pillage and outrage. The sacking of private houses which cumstances, an Act forbidding party processions would are suspected to belong to the party opposed to the dominant merely have removed to another point the breach of body of rioters has become quite common. Attacks upon the law which was predetermined. No statutory pro- private individuals by gangs of ruffians lying in ambuscade are hibition by itself would have controlled the spirit of reported as one of the usual hazards of the Belfast streets. vengeance, outrage, and rapine that has run its course un- It appears only too certain that the riots which reckless bigotry checked in Belfast during the week. It is not a law of repres- has instigated are being used to cover scandalous burglaries sion, new or old, that Ulster needs to curb the frenzy of her and highway robberies. These scenes are allowed to continue factions ; it is an administration of the existing laws, firm, because the police are too weak to separate the ferocious mobs, courageous, and above all, impartial. With these laws we while the authorities shrink from the responsibility of using manage to keep the peace throughout the rest of the kingdom, with vigour and resolution the military forces at their disposal. and until we have tried how such laws properly administered In fact, the magistrates who hold the reins of power at will work in Ireland, we have no right to draw vague morals present in Irish cities cannot act with energy, because they are, from the failure of that important experiment, the repeal of the or are believed to be, the champions of one faction or the Party Processions' Act. We have a strong opinion that the other. This is particularly the case in Ulster, where party law will never be administered in Ireland by the existing spirit runs so high, and it is not too much to say that a Mayor Magistracy so as to convince the people that public justice is of Belfast who used his power during a crisis like that of the at once strong and impartial ; yet if it is to impress the Irish past week as it should be used would be a marked man for imagination, and to control popular action, the law must be his lifetime. However impartial he might be in the work of seen to be strong, so as not to admit the faintest suspicion of restoring order, the masses in Ireland would never believe that weakness;and impartial, so as to stand removed by an im- he had not acted as a partisan of that faction with which he passable gulf from any suspicion of partisanship. Viewed in might happen to be identified. They would suppose that the this light, the events which have within the past few days Queen's forces had been employed not to restore order, but to frightened Belfast out of its propriety, and brought to a pause, secure the triumph of a party. The mischief that such a in sheer terror, the instinctive industry of the canny Ulster- belief would do might make even a strong man pause in carry- men, seem to read us a lesson which Englishmen are very lug out what ought to be the primary duty of a magistrate. slow in learning, but which they will have to learn, if they It is well known that in Ireland the suspicion attaching to the would understand and reconcile Ireland, as they must do, in acts of the unpaid magistracy does not extend to the conduct
order successfully to rule her. of the stipendiary staff, though the latter are too few in
The repeal of the Party Processions' Act, and the political numbers and too unskilfully selected to do the magisterial changes that Mr. Gladstone's Government has effected, coin- work properly. In Belfast almost the first thing that the cided, in point of time, with each other, and a hope was enter- helpless local magistrates resolved upon doing, when they tamed that the Orangemen, recognising the fact that their found themselves unable to cope with the riots without call- ascendancy was a thing not only dead but buried, would frankly lug in the aid of the military, was to summon several stipen- accept equality ; and that the Roman Catholics on their side diaries to their assistance. The position of these, however, would abstain from taking offence at unmeaning celebrations cramped as their freedom of action is by the nominal equality which had ceased to represent a substantial reality. The pro- of the local Justices, and without plenary powers over the testations of Mr. Johnstone and other members identified with military forces, by no means adequately represents the real the Orange party in Ulster, affirming that the Orangemen were services which an organised official magistracy might render to willing to stand by the rule of "live and let live," received a Ireland. Such a body of men, chosen by competition from the certain measure of credit. It was thought not wholly im- people themselves, and promoted by merit, would rival the
message to deliver. It is a strange proof of the unmarked possible that even in Belfast the two factions might continue dislocation which exists in our society, that no trade could without a breach of the peace, to hold their demonstrations, fall into confusion without attracting the attention of states- and to parade their list of victories, past, present, and to come, men except the most important of all. There was scarcely a in the face of their enemies ; what had occurred in Derry was member in England who did not deliver himself upon the taken as evidence that Mr. Johnstone's promises would be cattle plague, yet in presence of an indefinitely greater dan- fairly fulfilled. But Derry, though heated to a degree of ger, of a real and permanent scission between employers and party-spirit scarcely paralleled in any other community, has employed, they are all silent, and appear determined either to not yet become infected with the peculiar vices of great remain so, or to content themselves with soothing platitudes towns. In Derry, too, organisation exists, both among which, as they perfectly understand, guide nobody. the Protestants and the Catholics, and this year the
Apprentice Boys, whose annual glorification passed off without interruption, gave the mot d'ordre that the Catholics were not
THE BELFAST RIOTS. to be molested, and both parties have thus been enabled,
IT is not very wise to conclude, as most English critics have without coming to blows, to relieve their historical consciences done, that the ferocious outbreak of faction-fighting which of the memories of 1689. In Belfast it was different ; neither has this week disgraced Belfast, is an evidence that an " im- among Orangemen nor Catholics is there, as it seems, any portant experiment " in the treatment of Ireland has failed. dominant influence, except the ferocious spirit of bigotry, We never valued the Party Processions' Act, the repeal of which allies itself so readily with lawlessness. The latter which constitutes the "important experiment " in question, as party, notwithstanding, so far accepted the spirit of Mr. John- a measure preservative of order. Year after year its pro- stone's promises, and improved upon the traditions of previous visions were openly defied by the Orangemen of Ulster, and years, as to allow the Orange anniversaries of the battles of the result of their defiance was much the same as that which is Boyne and Aughrim to pass by without disturbance. But by at present agitating the most prosperous and progressive corn- way of compensation for this forbearance, and as a test of the • munity in the sister-kingdom. There was, to be sure, a certain reality of the truce proclaimed by the leaders of the Orange- suspicion of inequitable administration, a certain perception of men, it was resolved that a great Catholic and Home-Rule injustice in the scope and purposes of the law, that irritated demonstration should be held in Belfast on the 15th inst. Irish Protestantism against the Imperial Government, but there The Orangemen affected to see in this proposed gathering— was no real restraint upon the desire of the contending sects to which was not characterised, so far as we can understand, insult each other and to provoke noisy and not always bloodless by any more disorderly or dangerous incidents than those quarrels. To challenge an attack, by the display of banners usual on the other side—a menace against the Union. and badges and the inharmonious iteration of party-tunes, was They turned out in semi-military array, and attacked under the Party Processions' Act illegal; but under the ordinary the Catholics. The latter, exasperated not only by the law rioting, the almost inevitable consequence of such pro- outrage itself, but by the breach of an honourable understand- vocations, is forbidden ; yet we have seen this week the capital ing which it involved, accepted the challenge with fierce of Ulster ravaged by two raging mobs, and the authorities delight. For a week Belfast has presented the appearance of seemingly powerless to control the factions. In truth, when a a city in a state of siege, with the superadded horrors of population is determined—as the men of Belfast on one side popular insurrection and magisterial imbecility. The list of and the other appear to be—to break the Queen's peace, the killed and wounded after each day's field operations was re- existence of an additional legal barrier, like the Party Proces- ported as regularly and received with as little surprise as sions' Act, is simply a vexatious futility. The Belfast Orange- though war had actually broken out in the capital of Ulster. The men had resolved, according to their time-honoured customs, worst feature to be observed is the facility with which this to insult their Catholic fellow-citizens, and the latter were faction-fighting has degenerated into a vulgar revelling in ready, and even eager, to take up the gauntlet. In these cir- pillage and outrage. The sacking of private houses which cumstances, an Act forbidding party processions would are suspected to belong to the party opposed to the dominant merely have removed to another point the breach of body of rioters has become quite common. Attacks upon the law which was predetermined. No statutory pro- private individuals by gangs of ruffians lying in ambuscade are hibition by itself would have controlled the spirit of reported as one of the usual hazards of the Belfast streets. vengeance, outrage, and rapine that has run its course un- It appears only too certain that the riots which reckless bigotry checked in Belfast during the week. It is not a law of repres- has instigated are being used to cover scandalous burglaries sion, new or old, that Ulster needs to curb the frenzy of her and highway robberies. These scenes are allowed to continue factions ; it is an administration of the existing laws, firm, because the police are too weak to separate the ferocious mobs, courageous, and above all, impartial. With these laws we while the authorities shrink from the responsibility of using manage to keep the peace throughout the rest of the kingdom, with vigour and resolution the military forces at their disposal. and until we have tried how such laws properly administered In fact, the magistrates who hold the reins of power at will work in Ireland, we have no right to draw vague morals present in Irish cities cannot act with energy, because they are, from the failure of that important experiment, the repeal of the or are believed to be, the champions of one faction or the Party Processions' Act. We have a strong opinion that the other. This is particularly the case in Ulster, where party law will never be administered in Ireland by the existing spirit runs so high, and it is not too much to say that a Mayor Magistracy so as to convince the people that public justice is of Belfast who used his power during a crisis like that of the at once strong and impartial ; yet if it is to impress the Irish past week as it should be used would be a marked man for imagination, and to control popular action, the law must be his lifetime. However impartial he might be in the work of seen to be strong, so as not to admit the faintest suspicion of restoring order, the masses in Ireland would never believe that weakness;and impartial, so as to stand removed by an im- he had not acted as a partisan of that faction with which he passable gulf from any suspicion of partisanship. Viewed in might happen to be identified. They would suppose that the this light, the events which have within the past few days Queen's forces had been employed not to restore order, but to frightened Belfast out of its propriety, and brought to a pause, secure the triumph of a party. The mischief that such a in sheer terror, the instinctive industry of the canny Ulster- belief would do might make even a strong man pause in carry- men, seem to read us a lesson which Englishmen are very lug out what ought to be the primary duty of a magistrate. slow in learning, but which they will have to learn, if they It is well known that in Ireland the suspicion attaching to the would understand and reconcile Ireland, as they must do, in acts of the unpaid magistracy does not extend to the conduct
order successfully to rule her. of the stipendiary staff, though the latter are too few in Indian Civil Service in efficiency of administration and in severe impartiality. Irishmen would quickly understand that the magistrate under the new system was a man of no party, whose first duty it was to preserve order, if possible without shedding blood, but, if necessary, by sweeping the streets with cavalry and cannon. Such firmness, especially when recog- nised as the characteristic, not of an individual here and there, but of a class, would win respect, even though now and then the duty of the magistrates will come into contact with the vvill of the people. The country would feel that if governed somewhat sternly, it was self-governed, and a respect for law and dislike of disorder would gradually grow up. This primary condition of progress we are not likely to see in Ireland while our system of government consists of feeble prohibitory laws, which we allow to be broken with impunity, and then repine at repealing, and of reliance on a magistracy which dares not use the military strength of the State to keep order.
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