This on the ground, as I understood, that Mr. Balfour’s administration of the law has been the firmest, least wavering, and most equitable known in Ireland for many a day.

Later in the day I had the pleasure of a conversation with the Rev. Dr. Kane, the Grand Master of the Orangemen at Belfast.  Dr. Kane is a tall, fine-looking, frank, and resolute man, who obviously has the courage of his opinions.  He thinks there will be no disturbances this year on the 12th of July, but that the Orange demonstrations will be on a greater scale and more imposing than ever.  He derides the notion that “Parnellism” is making any progress in Ulster.  On the contrary, the concurrence this year of the anniversary of the defeat of the Great Armada with the anniversary of the Revolution of 1688 has aroused the strongest feelings of enthusiasm among the Protestants of the North, and they were never so determined as they now are not to tolerate anything remotely looking to the constitution of a separate and separatist Government at Dublin.

BELFAST, Tuesday, June 26.—­Sir John Preston, the head of one of the great Belfast houses, and a former Mayor of the city, dined with us last night, and in the evening Sir James Haslett, the actual Mayor, came in.

I find that in Belfast the office of Mayor is served without a salary, and is consequently filled as a rule by citizens of “weight and instance.”  In Dublin the Lord Mayor receives L3000 a year, with a contingent fund of L1500, and the office is becoming a distinctly political post.  The face of Belfast is so firmly set against the tendency to subordinate municipal interests to general party exigencies, that the Corporation compelled Mr. Cobain, M.P., who sits at Westminster now for this constituency, to resign the post which he held as treasurer and cashier of the Corporation when he became a candidate for a seat in Parliament.  I am not surprised, therefore, to learn that the city rates and taxes are much lower in the commercial than they are in the political capital of Ireland.

Both Sir John Preston and Sir James Haslett have visited America.  Sir John went there to represent the linen industries of Ireland, and to urge upon Congress the propriety of reducing our import duties upon fabrics which the American climate makes it practically imposssible to manufacture on our side of the water.  Senator Sherman, who twenty years ago had the candour to admit that the wit of man could not devise a tariff so adjusted as to raise the revenue necessary for the Government which should not afford adequate incidental protection to all legitimate American industries, gave Sir John reason to hope that something might be done in the direction of a more liberal treatment of the linen industries.  But nothing practical came of it.  Sir John ought to have known that our typical American Protectionist, the late Horace Greeley, really persuaded himself, and tried to persuade other people, that with duties enough clapped on the Asiatic production, excellent tea might be grown on the uplands of South Carolina!