A mass meeting of something like fifteen thousand citizens of
Belfast was held on Tuesday evening in St. George's Market to protest against the Home-rule Bill, under the presidency of the Lord Mayor, Sir E. D. Dixon. The Lord Mayor said that the passing of Mr. Gladstone's Bill would be the greatest calamity that ever happened to any country, and would lead to the total separation of Ireland from England. The passing of Home-rule would mean the utter ruin of Bel- fast. The people of Belfast meant to keep one Queen and one Parliament, and on no terms would they have the Home-rule Bill. Mr. Thomas Sinclair proposed resolutions repudiating Home-rule in the most energetic language, and said that if their fathers were disloyal in 1798, it was because they were mis- governed. All their wrongs had been righted, and the town of 19,000 dissatisfied inhabitants had now grown into a city of 270,000 enthusiastically loyal inhabitants, which contributed over 22,000,000 in the last year to the finances of the United Kingdom. The President of the Methodist College, Dr. MacCutcheon, said that if the Bill passed, they would be justified in resisting by force the transfer of their allegiance to another power to which they felt no loyalty. They would be justified in following the example of other nations which had used force to resist violence of this kind, and had been exonerated from all blame by the judgment of history. The resolutions were then carried amidst universal enthusiasm, and the National Anthem was sung. There was no trace of any demand for Protestant ascendency.
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