The Feilding Star. SATURDAY, SEPT. 25, 1886. Fighting in Ireland

Feilding Star, Volume VIII, Issue 45, 25 September 1886, Page 2

The Feilding Star. SATURDAY, SEPT. 25, 1886. Fighting in Ireland

! * ( To us who live far removed from thi ; influences which have led to the pre- ! sent pitiable condition of Ireland, il appears remarkablo that two section. of a nominal Christian community in Belfast, should be permitted to tear at , each others throats like wild beasts. ► The riots which have taken place thore, aro probably the most serious and bloody that have yet stained the history of the United Kingdom. The fighting has been conducted with an amount of military skill, which could only be exercised at the instance of trained soldiers, and has assumed almost the importance of a civil war. , For upwards of a month engagements 3 and skirmishes have taken place, all ; attended with heavy loss of life, not only among the combatants, but among the idle and curious spectators who had assembled to witness the several frays. Women, little children, and school boys have been cut down > in the fury of attack by the hands of their blood-relations and countrymen. What a blot is tbis on the boasted civilisation of Great Britain in the nineteenth contury ! Those muddling politicians who have permitted the bad government and administration _ which have brought such things to pass have the whole of this — and, unforti unately, more perhaps, because the fighting is really only at its beginning — to answer for. The innocent blood i they have caused to he shed will cry r from the earth for vengeance, and that cry has, unhappily, never been made in vain. It is notorious that for political purposes the animosity between the Catholics and Protestants in the north of Ireland has been worked up to a fever heat, yet now the collisions, which were made inevit- ' able, appear to have taken thoso most ' interested by surprise ; so in order to 1 restore peace and quiet Her Majesty's troops are employod to cut both parties to pieces. We learn from a telegram received on Thursday last that further serious rioting had occurred in Belfast, necessitating: calling out the Dragoons, who charged tbe rioters and cleared the streets. In all this trouble and bloodshed, we never hear a word from the Peace Society, the ; Society for the Protection of Aborigines, Exeter Hall, and other howlers i of that ilk, from the excellent reason, no doubt, that tbe tyranny aud oppression in this instance tire too near home to come wittiin their ken. They spare their energies for the savage a thousand leagues off. That the good, the wise, and the nobleheartod will strive hard to restore peace to a vi itraeted country, wo are confident ; but it makes the blood boil when wo hear tkat our country- ' men are shedding each others blood . in the name of ] Law and Order, i