TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION. For EIGHT DOLLARS remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks, and moncy-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & Co. Single copies of the LIVING AGE, 18 cents. A LONDON LANDSCAPE. BEFORE me lies no purple distance wide, With faint horizon hills to bound my view. Tall houses close me in on every side, Pierced here and there by meagre slits of blue. 'Tis not for me to watch the slow dawn come But I can see one gracious growing thing: And when at eve the fires of sunset flare, And like bald beacon-lights, flash here and there The dingy warehouse windows manifold, The little leaves upon my poplar-tree All in the wondrous glory shake and shake, Transmuted by the sunset alchemy Each one into a burnished golden flake. Then by and by, from some dim realm afar, The dark comes down, and blots the world from sight, And 'twixt the trembling poplar-leaves, a star A MOTHER'S GARDEN. I SEE her in the dear, dead years, I catch some sweet or humorous phrase; A minute, and she comes again, And loiters where she loitered oft She loved the phlox on swaying stem, And many a fragrant flower that yet At eve, or after summer rain; PARIS SPARROWS. 'TWAS long ago in my student days, When I was wild and gay, I lived in a room in the old "Boul. Mich.”❤ On a couple of francs a day, And I used to watch the small brown birds And spared them a part of every meal, Across the cour was another room, I caught a glimpse of a pale sweet face And she too cared for the little brown birds 'Twas long ago in my student days, But I often think of the old Boul. Mich. For my sweet little neighbor is now my wife, The students' name for the Boulevard St. Michel, Quartier Latin. From The Nineteenth Century. I. ON the morrow of the defeat of Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule Bill the English public were too busy wondering what would happen next at Westminster to think of anything else. Had they been at leisure, however, to fix their attention upon the city of Belfast, they would have been witnesses of a spectacle well worth their consideration. The rejection of the bill of 1886 was the signal for rejoicings of a kind to which the modern world is little accustomed, though the manner of these rejoicings was eminently characteristic of the last of the Puritan cities. Belfast remained awake to hear the result of the division, and when the news that saved Ulster flashed across the wires the whole city "fraternized." Strangers, as they passed each other in the streets, stopped to shake hands and to express their thankfulness and delight, for a common peril and a common relief made all men acquainted. But the enthusiasm was not confined to the streets. Bands of working men went through the suburb roads, knocking at the doors of houses "to pass the word," knowing that even at that hour of the night they would be sure of a welcome. All this might perhaps have happened in other towns under similar circumstances, but in Belfast a touch was added that showed the special temper of the people. After a band of men engaged in spreading the good tidings had given their message to the household in some villa on the outskirts of the town, they would fall on their knees in the garden and join in prayer and thanksgiving for the mercy vouchsafed to Ulster. Such acts strike the moral key-note of Belfast. We may sneer at its inhabitants as religious bigots and as belated upholders of fanaticism, but we cannot ignore facts like these. Whether we like or dislike the circumstance, there is alive in the Belfast of to-day the old Puritan spirit-the spirit which overthrew Charles, and raised in his stead the reign of the saints. This is the spirit, these the people, which the Gladstonians expect to see submit to the rule of a Dublin Parliament without a struggle. I have no desire to write a word which may encourage the people of Belfast and Ulster to resist the application to them of a Home-Rule act. There are circumstances, no doubt, under which the right of resistance accrues, but it is the men of Ulster alone who can decide whether those circumstances have arisen. On them falls the terrible responsibility of the decision, and no English Unionist who does not share that responsibility has any right to interfere. The less the Unionists of Great Britain have to do with the resolves of the northern Protestants the better. But though I have no intention of saying anything to stimulate the movement which is now taking place in Ulster, I am anxious to do what I can to help the English electorate to understand the facts with which they are dealing, and to make them realize the temper of the people who at the beginning of this month are to meet in convention at Belfast. Before the people of Great Britain determine that they will not listen to the demand of the northern counties to remain under the Parliament at Westminster, and attempt to force them under the domination of the south, they ought to face the Ulster problem as a whole. Now undoubtedly the most important factor in that problem is the question, Will the Protestant north really resist the execution of powers of legisla tion and administration conferred upon a Dublin Parliament? Whether they ought to resist is another matter. The question is, Will they resist? and if they do, Will their resistance be of a kind that will cancel the advantages sought to be obtained from Home Rule? How, in a word, will the resistance of the north affect the profit and loss account of Home Rule? The admitted object of Home Rule is to content and pacify Ireland. How will the resistance of Ulster affect that object?' The matters, then, that I desire to discuss here are: (1) the genuineness or lack of genuineness of the threatened resistance of the north; (2) the character that such resistance is likely to assume; (3) the results that the attempt to suppress resistance are likely to produce. It may seem presumptuous for an Englishman with but a slight personal acquaintance with the north of Ireland to attempt to deal with these problems. I can only plead in defence that lookers-on often see the best of the game, that I have endeavored to the best of my ability to study and understand the temper of the Ulster people, and that I have always felt a special sympathy for what before 1886 might have been called the Nonconformist attitude in politics the attitude of the Independents in the seventeenth century, and of Mr. Bright and Mr. Cobden in modern times—an attitude, though with variations, characteristic of the Ulster of to-day. II. THAT the movement which has resulted in the summoning of the convention which will consider the best methods of resisting Home Rule was spontaneous there can be no sort of doubt. The Gladstonians, lay. ing hold of some unguarded remarks by Lord Salisbury remarks which had much better not have fallen from the mouth of a prime minister have at tempted to represent the convention as a mere piece of party tactics, a great public meeting ordered from London, and no more worth attending to than the Newcastle Conference or the grand council of the Primrose League. Nothing in reality could be further from the truth. The summoning of the convention was a purely spontaneous act—the result of the double determination not to be caught unprepared if Home Rule should pass, and to address to the electors of Great Britain a collective appeal on behalf of the Protestants of the north. A group of Belfast merchants and men of business of Liberal Unionist views (it would be more correct to say merely Liberal merchants, since in Belfast the whole Liberal party and organization remained Unionist in 1886, rendering the descriptive adjective unnecessary), considering that the time had arrived for organizing a body that could speak in the name of Ulster Protestantism, agreed to take steps for convoking a gathering of representa. tive Ulstermen. Accordingly, a deputation crossed to England and pressed their scheme upon the Ulster members of Parliament. The result was the Downshire House meeting and the calling of the con vention. "Ah! but," the Gladstonians will say, " even admitting its spontaneity, the convention does not matter. We have seen plenty of similar movements in Ul ster, but they have never come to anything. Did not the Ulstermen threaten to kick the queen's crown into the Boyne if the Irish Church Bill was passed, and yet when the act was put into operation there was not the slightest difficulty." No doubt that is very true. The Orangemen in 1869 and 1870 talked a great deal of nonsense and did nothing; but that does not show that when, in 1892, men who are not Orangemen say quietly that they will not acknowledge the laws passed by a Dublin Parliament, they are also talking nonsense. The Orangemen who gasconaded in 1869 represented only a portion of the Protestant population – those belonging to the Established Church. The rest of the Protestants were as anxious for disestablishment as the Catholics. The Liberal Protestants of Ulster were then in politics working hand in hand with the Catholics, and they would not only have given no support to, but would have actively opposed resistance to, the Irish Church Act. Things are very different now. The threat of Home Rule has brought the whole of the Protestants into line, and Protestant Liberals, and Protestant To. ries, Episcopalians, and Presbyterians, once so bitterly opposed in Ulster, have found a common standpoint in a common danger. People in England may find it difficult to realize fully what this means, for they are apt to talk as if the Protestants in Ulster had always been united against the Catholics. This is by no means the case. A very large number of Ulster Protestants, before the growth of Parnellism made co-operation impossible, habitually worked with the Catholics on Liberal lines. The Liberals of Ulster were brought up to hate two things equally — Orangeism and Ribbonism; and when the surrender of 1886 took the world by surprise, the Protestant Liberals and the Protestant Tories of the north found themselves, for the first time in their lives, with a common policy. Strange as it may seem, the convention will even now be the first occasion on which many of the Orange and 197 making our laws. With constitutional technicalities we have nothing to do. We claim a moral right to ignore and disobey a Parliament set up against our wishes. The laws of the Imperial Parliament we will obey, but we will not acknowledge a Parliament on College Green." If the convention adopts a policy based upon these propositions, as it can hardly be doubted that it will, the resistance offered by Ulster need be nothing but passive. What would happen, supposing Mr. Gladstone were to pass his bill, would be something like this. The Home Rule Act would probably direct that writs should be immediately issued for the return of Liberal leaders have ever met. Englishmen and Scotchmen should remember this fact when the solid resistance of the Protestants of Ulster is represented to them as something to be expected, and therefore as something which can be discounted. Nothing but the gravest danger would have united the Ulster Liberals and the Orangemen. With the Orangemen I do not desire to express much sympathy, for they have undoubtedly helped to keep alive the spirit of religious intolerance in Ireland, and have abetted in this evil work the efforts of the more extreme Irish Roman Catholics. It must not be forgotten, however, that the Orange organization has suffered a good deal of misrepresentation the Irish Parliament. In the north, the in England, and that, as a rule, its char- returning officers would throw the writs acter is misunderstood. Whether we like aside, risking the actions that would be it or not as a whole, we must acknowledge brought against them, and no election that it has not a few redeeming features, would take place. This, however, would and possesses a real hold on its members. not prevent the Dublin Parliament meetIt is, for example, a thoroughly democratic ing and falling to business. Presumably institution. Class distinctions have no that Parliament's earliest duty would be place in the Orange lodges, and laborer to fill its coffers, and taxation would be at and landlord are on an equality at their meetings. Again, it is to be noted that, though Orangeism and Episcopalianism usually go together, the Puritan spirit is still present. Every lodge opens its proceedings by a reading from the Bible. Unquestionably the resistance which will be offered to Home Rule will be perfectly genuine and perfectly spontaneous. Except for an infinitesimal minority, the Protestants of the north are determined to resist the rule of a Dublin Parliament. III. once imposed. Here, then, would come the first point of friction. The Ulstermen would, of course, refuse to pay a tax levied in Dublin, and then the Dublin Parliament would be face to face with a strike against taxes, in which every merchant of wealth and position in Belfast and Derry, and every landlord in the north would be engaged. The Dublin Parliament would, no doubt, prefer to have its officers meet with open resistance. It is, however, far more likely that they would not meet with that indulgence, but would be confronted with that most appalling of all forms of THE kind of resistance which the Prot- organized resistance a Quaker rebellion. estants of the north will offer to Home The Ulstermen would allow their goods to Rule can best be estimated by considering be seized, but what then? No one would the basis of that resistance. The Ulster- buy at the sales, and the Dublin Parliamen argue that, by whatever right the rest ment would find themselves spending of Ireland claims to withdraw from the thousands to raise a few pounds of taxarule of the Parliament at Westminster, by tion. We know what the tithe war did in that right Ulster can claim to remain una corner of a thinly inhabited Welsh der the direct rule of the Imperial Parlia- county. Though no public body was inment. "The Parliament of the United jured, it was felt that an impossible situaKingdom," say the Ulster Protestants, tion was being created. Imagine the "has a right to make laws for us itself, but it has no right to hand us over against our will to another Parliament, and to endow that Parliament with the right of effect not of a tithe but of a tax war, with the combatants the proprietors of factories and shipyards instead of small farmers, Meantime, Belfast and the north would |