Last week a girl of twelve years old was fined the usual forty shillings and costs for proclaiming in the public streets that she was "a Protestant." The usual cry is, "To hell with the Pope!" or "To hell with the Protestants!" according to the utterer's system of salvation.
One of Belfast's local jokes was very good.

It referred to the uniform and inevitable fine of forty shillings and costs for uttering a party cry--and it is no economical fine for a poor man, either, by the way.
They say that a policeman found a drunken man lying on the ground, up a dark alley, entertaining himself with shouting, "To hell with!" "To hell with!" The officer smelt a fine--informers get half.
"What's that you say ?" "To hell with!" "To hell with who?
To hell with what ?" "Ah, bedad, ye can finish it yourself--it's too expinsive for me!" I think the seditious disposition, restrained by the economical instinct, is finely put in that.
THE FACTS CONCERNING THE RECENT RESIGNATION [Written about 1867] WASHINGTON, December, 1867.
I have resigned.

The government appears to go on much the same, but there is a spoke out of its wheel, nevertheless.

I was clerk of the Senate Committee on Conchology, and I have thrown up the position.
I could see the plainest disposition on the part of the other members of the government to debar me from having any voice in the counsels of the nation, and so I could no longer hold office and retain my self-respect.
If I were to detail all the outrages that were heaped upon me during the six days that I was connected with the government in an official capacity, the narrative would fill a volume.

They appointed me clerk of that Committee on Conchology and then allowed me no amanuensis to play billiards with.