Party in England and Scotland have supported, and we mean to
support to the end, the loyal minority. We support them not because
we are intolerant, but because their claims are just."

Meanwhile, Mr. Churchill's friends were seeking a building in Belfast
where the baffled Minister could hold his meeting on the 8th of
February, and in the course of the search the director of the Belfast
Opera-house was offered a knighthood as well as a large sum of money for
the use of his theatre,[20] a fact that possibly explains the statement
made by the London Correspondent of _The Freeman's Journal_ on the 28th
of January, that the Government's Chief Whip and Patronage Secretary was
busying himself with the arrangement.[21] Captain Frederick Guest, M.P.,
one of the junior whips, arrived in Belfast on the 25th to give
assistance on the spot; but no suitable hall with an auspicious _genius
loci_ could apparently be found, for eventually a marquee was imported
from Scotland and erected on the Celtic football ground, in the
Nationalist quarter of the city.

The question of maintaining order on the day of the meeting was at the
same time engaging the attention both of the Government in Dublin and
the Unionist Council in Belfast. The former decided to strengthen the
garrison of Belfast by five battalions of infantry and two squadrons of
cavalry, while at the Old Town Hall anxious consultations were held as
to the best means of securing that the soldiers should have nothing to
do. The Unionist leaders had not yet gained the full influence they were
able to exercise later, nor were their followers as disciplined as they
afterwards became. The Orange Lodges were the only section of the
population in any sense under discipline; and this section was a much
smaller proportion of the Unionist rank and file than English Liberals
supposed, who were in the habit of speaking as if "Orangemen" were a