ULSTER TO-DAY.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 89, 21 May 1914, Page 8

ULSTER TO-DAY.

JOBBERY AND SNOBBERY. "And what,'-* I asked the Presbyterian minister, as we walked in hia little garden among*the golden crocuses and daffodils, "what exactly do you mean by 'lowering the standards o* public life'?" He had said he was afraid this would be one result of Home Eule, so says H. Hamilton Fyfe in the "Daily Mail." For a few moments he walked\on in silence. "I do not like to think ill or speak ill of anyone," he answered at last, and I believed him, for he had as kindly an eye as ever I looked into. "But we cannot forget what we see going on around us. lam no politician. I have never spoken from a political platform. Until this unhappy -Home Eule question was revived, for no reason but that Mr Asquith needed the Nationalist vote, there had been very little politics in Ireland for a number of years. Everyone was more prosr perous. We were all getting on well together. Now " he lifted his arms and let them fall with a hopeless gesture. • "But don't mistake what you see in Ulster to-day for politics," he went on earnestly. "Polities is. a game. We are in earnest; And J was going to t;ell you one of the reasons why we are in earnest. It is that we are afraid of more power being given to the Nationalists. Throughout Ulster they are the more ignorant, the lower grade, of the population. I suppose vou have noticed that?"

SECTARIANISM. ..-;. I had noticed it "certainly in Londonderry, where the Nationalist quarter i$ a warren of frowsy slums. I had specially asked hi all the big works I visited whether there we're as many Catholics as Protestants among the skilled workers, and in every case I had been told, "No, nothing like so niany."?l had been struck one evening in Belfast by the contrast between a Nationalist audience in dirty working clothes, poor, weary-looking, and thin-cheeked fellow?, the casual labourer class, and' tfie smartly dressed working men I saw at a Volunteer "social," every one with a clean collar, their eyes bright, their shoulders square, their whole appearance telling of independent self-respect. "Well, put the power into the"hands of the less intelligent, less responsible, and harm is -sure _to follow. Already this Liberal Government has given us a taste of what we should suffer. Look at the partisan character of the revising barristers they have appointed. One frankly announced nis intention, of dishing the Unionists. Another accepted evidence which was clearly falsfc, and said cynically he was not there ; Jb punish perjury but to grant vote£. Hundreds of fraudulent voters" have been put on"the register. Then; take grand juries."

EFFECT ON JUSTICE. .■ "Yes," I said, "I wanted to a?k something about that." -I sawin ; a local paper a complaint that there was single Catholic on the grand jury at the Fermanagh Assizes. 1 • That is 'rather bad, isn't it?" " : * ■■').'.' } ; "It would be, "he l'eplied, '/if there \yere any?'qualified to in i;hat pajrt ,pf the'. country. The*6nly r "Catholic of. education A He could, not:both be #^rar^J juryman /arid attend; to his; assizel'jousiness. But a Home Rule Government could not ignore such a complaint. - Grand juries would be* stuff ed with people of no position or education. Justice would "suffer. It has suffered already. The ruffians who attacked a Sunday school excursion party for carrying Union Jacks and caused • the Belfast shipyard Tiots in 1912 were let off by Mr Bin;eli when they had served only half their sentences—because they belonged to Mr Devlin's Ancient Order of Hibernians. The same clemency was shown to a scoundrel convicted of terrorising a poor woman; a Hibernian again. "Even the judges would be affected in the way that the Lord Chief Justice of Ireland was affected when he, tried two Catholics for bigamy at Wexford. These people, man and woman, were cousins. Cousins in the Roman -Church require a dispensation to allow them to marry. They did not get a dispensation, but a priest married them. After a while they separated, and each married again, wit'a the natural result that they were charged" as' bigamists. The Lord Chief Justice would riot punish them. No moral blame attached..to them, he said.; You see what this means. Not only that Church law overrides State law, but that to a Catholic it is not the fact of living together which makes, marriage, nor even the solemn joining together before God at the altar. It is the fulfilment of formalities. If these are unfulfilled there has beeu no marriage. That is not i British but Vatican law. ..'-■'

SANE LOCAL OFFICIALS WANTED. "Another thing: Ireland needs competent local officials. Under a Nationalist Parliament jobbery, frequent already, would grow riionstrous. What do you say to this? A local body doirii--natetl by Home Rulers had to elect a coroner." There were three candidates—a doctor, a solicitor, and a man who had been a car driver. The car driver got the appointment! Then take the post offices. At present an effort is still made to distribute postmasterships by merit. This does not suit the Order of Hibernians. At a place called Glenfame, in County Leitrim, a young Protestant storekeeper was made postmaster. The Catholics objected. They threatened to boycott not only his store but all the stores owned by the same firm, and their mills also. For' nine months a post office clerk did the work at the rate of £2OO. a year instead of £SO. At last the authorities gave way and appointed someone else.'' BITTER FEELING. How anxious the Nationalists are to have the handling of all post office appointments I learnt from a Dublin paper, which said that Home Rula would not be real if local post offices were to be "foreign fortresses under foreign control." The same spirit is shown in offensively labelling as "importations" any Englishmen or Scotchmen who take positions in Irish houses of business, and the denunciation of Catholic travellers for Protestant Ulster firms as "these mercenaries, these hirelings. '' Belfast can well afford to smile when she is sneered at as "the selfstyled commercial capital of Ireland" (Carlow Nationalist). But she does not forget.