CHAPTER XVI.

BELFAST, Monday, June 25.—­I left Dublin yesterday at 4 P.M., in a train which went off at high pressure as an “express,” but came into Belfast panting and dilatory as an “excursion.”  The day was fine, and the line passes through what is reputed to be the most prosperous part of Ireland.  In this part of Ireland, too, the fate of the island has been more than once settled by the arbitrament of arms; and if Parliamentary England throws up the sponge in the wrestle with the League, it is probable enough that the old story will come to be told over again here.

At Dundalk the Irish monarchy of the Braces was made and unmade.  The plantation of Ulster under James I. clinched the grasp not so much of England as of Scotland upon Ireland, and determined the course of events here through the Great Rebellion.  The landing of the Duke of Schomberg at Carrickfergus opened the way for the subjugation of Jacobite Ireland by William of Orange.  The successful descent of the French upon the same place in February 1760, after the close of “the Great Year,” in which Walpole tells us he came to expect a new victory every morning with the rolls for breakfast, and after Hawke had broken the strength of the great French Armada off Belleisle, and done for England the service which Nelson did for her again off Trafalgar in 1805, shows what might have happened had Thurot commanded the fleet of Conflans.  In this same region, too, the rout of Munro by Nugent at Ballinahinch practically ended the insurrection of 1798.

There are good reasons in the physical geography of the British Islands for this controlling influence of Ulster over the affairs of Ireland, which it seems to me a serious mistake to overlook.

The author of a brief but very hard-headed and practical letter on the pacification of Ireland, which appeared in the Times newspaper in 1886, while the air was thrilling with rumours of Mr. Gladstone’s impending appearance as the champion of “Home Rule,” carried, I remember, to the account of St. George’s Channel “nine-tenths of the troubles, religious, political, and social, under which Ireland has laboured for seven centuries.”  I cannot help thinking he hit the nail on the head; and St. George’s Channel does not divide Ulster from Scotland.  From Donaghadee, which has an excellent harbour, the houses on the Scottish coast can easily be made out in clear weather.  A chain is no stronger than its weakest link, and it is as hard to see how, even with the consent of Ulster, the independence of Ireland could be maintained against the interests and the will of Scotland, as it is easy to see why Leinster, Munster, and Connaught have been so difficult of control and assimilation by England.  To dream of establishing the independence of Ireland against the will of Ulster appears to me to be little short of madness.