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.