CHAPTER III
A PROVINCIAL CAREER. BELFAST
My position in Belfast—New friends James M'Knight—Rev. James Godkin—A bolder policy advised—Derry, Bally bay and Belfast supposed strongholds of Unionism—Muster of Ulster Catholics in nearly a hundred meetings—Effect on O'Connell—He determines to hold a provincial meeting in Belfast—Rage and resistance of the Orangemen—Anxiety of the country on his behalf He arrives at Belfast, is entertained at a public dinner, and sails for Scotland—Political and social studies Literature in the Vindicator—Clarence Mangan—National songs—Conference in Dublin with Thomas Davis and John Dillon—the Nation projected—Davis visits Belfast—Conference in Dublin with John Dillon and John O'Hagan—Become a law student and am engaged to be married—Visit to Edinburgh.
I went to Belfast to be a Catholic journalist among an unfriendly majority, and my first business was to take stock of our resources for defence or attack. There were about fifty thousand Catholics in Belfast, and we were a moiety of the population of Ulster. We were the descendants of the men to whom the entire territory had belonged of old, but laws designed to turn us into helots had snatched away our possessions, and left us poor, ill-educated, and often pusillanimous. The malign laws had been at length repealed, but the change was ignored or only reluctantly acknowledged by our fellow citizens, and was ill understood even by those whom it emancipated. A small section of the Belfast Catholics had refused from the beginning to have any share in the new journal, for which they would recognise no necessity, and among many of those associated with it the prevailing virtue was prudence.
My position was essentially one of isolation and aggression, but I had never held aloof from honourable opponents, and I had no disposition to do so in my new home. My friends
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