This immense
religious club has to support in the modern age that theory of
religious incompatibility which nearly every other community has long
ago abandoned. It has to justify itself in excluding from the municipal
honours of Belfast almost every Roman Catholic. It has to justify the
majority of 300,000 Belfast Protestants in giving a small and
inadequate representation among the rulers of this great wealthy town
to the minority of 100,000 Catholics. To maintain this policy of
Ulster ascendancy the Orange chiefs watch every document that comes
from Rome with a lynx eye, and try to catch a glimpse of the "Scarlet
Woman" behind every Latin rescript.
All this may appear to some good politics; but surely it is past
tolerance when these manufacturers of intolerance talk of the
intolerance of others.
In all these respects Belfast stands almost alone in Ireland. A canon
of the Catholic Church--a man of winning manners and charming
personality, who lives on quite friendly terms with his Protestant
neighbours in the South of Ireland--told me that on the only occasion
when he visited Belfast he was spat at in the streets. The story is
quite credible to those who have watched the deliberate manipulation of
the worst religious passions by the party organisers of Ulster, not
always unassisted by their colleagues in London.
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