A great City demonstration against the Home-rule Bill took place
in the Guildhall on Wednesday, which was attended by some eighteen hundred stockbrokers, who marched in three detachments from the Stock Exchange to the Guildhall, with the Irish flag borne by Mr. Henry Burke between two Union Jacks, and every one in the procession wore a Union-Jack favour in his hat or coat. The Guildhall was crowded to excess long before the hour for the Lord Mayor's taking the chair ; and when the Lord Mayor, attended by Mr. and Mrs. Chamberlain, arrived, the cheering was vehement and deafening, and was taken up again and again by the crowd outside which was not able to obtain an entrance. It was altogether a very remarkable scene, and showed the absolute unanimity of the City in its protest against Irish Home-rule as nothing else could have shown it. The Lord Mayor ex. plained, on taking the chair, that he could not have given per- mission for the meeting in the Guildhall without the authority of the Court of Common Council, but with that authority he thought it right to take the chair, but deprecated any violence of language. Sir John Lubbock, in seconding Sir R. Hanson's resolution asserting the vast mischief which the passing of the Home-rule Bill would do to the commerce of the United Kingdom, said that two thousand petitions, with seven hun- dred thousand signatures, had been presented against the Home-rule Bill; while only fifteen petitions, with twenty-four signatures, had been presented in its favour. The second reading could not have been passed if the South and West of Ireland had not been greatly over-represented in the House of Commons. Ireland had 103 Members in the House of Commons ; while London, which both had a larger popula- tion than Ireland, and contributed a larger amount to the revenue of the United Kingdom, had only 62 Members. Cer- tainly commercial wealth could not have spoken out with a less selfish and more genuinely popular voice than Sir John Lubbock's.
