DISORDER IN BELFAST.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1492, 15 July 1912, Page 5

DISORDER IN BELFAST.

ORANGEMEN AND HOME RULE. By Telcsrraph—rress Aesoeiation-CopyrifcU London, July 12. At the celebration in Belfast of tho anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne, notwithstanding a downpour of vain,'ss,000 Orangemen marched through the principal streets. An attempt by women Catholics to destroy an Orange arch led to stonetlirowing. Tho polico used their batons on the mob. A window was smashed, nnd some of tho policemen had to betaken to the hospital. There woro also disturbances in other districts. Mr. I'. 15.. Smith, Unionist member for Liverpool, was tho principal speaker. Ho said Home Eule was tho brownest paradox in modern politics. If he were an Ulster Protestant he would rather be rr.led by the Sultan from Constantinople than by Joseph Devlin.' • THE POWER OF TRADE. WHY ULSTER WILL NOT FIGHT. "Tho best organised, the most admirably stage-managed, and the most opulently financed bluff of modern times is the Ulster threat of civil war," says Mr. T. P. O'Connor in the London "Daily ChronS icle." "It is timo that the bladder should be pricked, and be understood to be the unreal thing it is. "My main ground for maintaining that this is all one gigantic bluff is that tho modern conditions of Belfast and Ulster would bo quite sufficientof themselves to demonstrate that all this tall talk means absolutely what tho American calls hot ah - . Tho populnr conception of Bolfast is of a city which turns its back to the rest of Ireland, and its face only to the great international worjd with which it carries on a gigantio international trade. It is quite true that Belfast has a great international trade—long may she continue to oiijoy and to increase it; she sends her great vessels and her linen to all parts of the earth. But Belfast does not turn her back on tho rest of Ireland; it .would , :bo much truer-to say that the greater pnrt of her income comes from tho rest of Ireland. "Take seeds: three groat seed houses ".h Belfast supply the greater, part of the farmers of Ireland with seeds. Take clothins: Belfast supplies th-e greater part of Ireland with tho cloth. Take tea or whisky.or food stuffs, sjgain Belfast is tho chief purveyor lo tho vest of Ireland. "Recently, with commendable enterprise, Belfast has t.tken to ready-mado clothing;,it .has driven Germany o.ut of tho Irish market; and ell the 'South of livtand'gote its ready-made clothing from Belfast. And one of tho signs'of tliis immonso intercourse between Belfast and the rest of Ireland is that you find Belfast commercial travellers in every town, in every village, in every hamlet, throughout the south and west, pushing Jvis goorts, Retting orders, and trr-ating his customers with that diplomatic suavity which is characteristic of the commercial traveller, nnd gives him the right lo be classed in tho ranks of diplomacy rather than of mere trade. The Custom House Facts. , "Another symbol of this gigantic trado between the northern capital and tho south is tho figiHOS of the' Custom House. It is common ground between Orangemen and Nationalists that Belfast pays twothirds of the whole Customs duties rnis; ed in Ireland. From this common fact two very opposite inferences, are drawn. Tho Orangeman gives it as a proof of the enormously, greater wealth of '.Grange Ulster; and that therefore Orange Belfast Iras reason for apprehensions as to its prosperity. l»ing destroyed by a . Nationalist Parliament in Dublin. "The Nationalist draws tho oppos : ta conclusion : : that as these, Customs have ultimately to .bo paid by the consumer, who', for the most part is a Nationalist and a southern, there is emphatic proof of liow much the. south goes to the north for its goods,,ami nnkss tno Notionalist Parliament be elected by criminals and composed of lunatics, it cannot well bp iniflg-, ined that it will' ruin Bolfast with tho certainty of helping to ruin tho rest of Irelandsat tho same time. ''This, then, is the real relation fa-tween Belfast and the rest of Ireland. It bears an analogy to ' the trade relations between England and Ireland. These trade relations htivo been rising by leapa and bounds within the last decade. In both the one caso and tho ofhor such relations are the answer to the feara of Unionists.Trado at one and tho same time is tho insuperable barrier to separation between' England and Ireland, and to civil war in Ulster. It. is tho solid fact which lays the two gibbering ghosts."