This discrepancy is everywhere observable. The Dublin Gas Management costs L14,850 against L8,060 in Belfast, with the result that the Ulster City Gasworks yielded in 1891 a profit of L27,105, charging 2s. 9d., while the Dubliners charge 3s. 6d. and make no profit at all. The Belfast markets yield a profit of about L3,500, while on the Dublin markets and abattoir there was a deficit of L3,012 to be made good by the ratepayers. Dublin, with property amounting to L20,000 a year and old-established Royal bounties, owes nearly twice as much as Belfast, which latter city spends more on what may be called the advance of civilisation. In 1892 Belfast spent L8,000 on a public park--Government providing for this matter in Dublin--L5,686 on public libraries, and L4,100 on baths and workhouses, against L1,217 and L1,627 for like purposes in Dublin. "Therefore," say the Belfast men, "we will not have our affairs managed by these incompetent men, who, besides their demonstrated incapacity to deal with finance, are dependent for their position on the illiterates of the agricultural districts, who are to a man under the thumb of the priests, and who, moreover, have shown that their rapacity is equal to their lack of integrity, and whose leading doctrine is the repudiation of lawful contracts," a point on which commercial Ulster is excessively severe. One thing is certain--Ulster will never pay taxes levied by an Irish Legislature in which Ulster would be utterly swamped. All classes are of this opinion, from the Earl of Ranfurly, who during a long interview repeatedly expressed his conviction that the passing of any Home Rule Bill would be fraught with most lamentable results, to the humble trimmer of a suburban hedge who, having admitted that he was from the county Roscommon, and (therefore) a Catholic Home Ruler, claimed to know the Ulster temper in virtue of 28 years' residence in or near Belfast, and said-- "What they say they mane, an' the divil himself wouldn't tur-r-n thim. Ah, but they're a har-r-d-timpered breed, ivery mother's son o' them. Ye can comether (gammon) a Roscommon man, but a Bilfast man, whillaloo!" He stopped in sheer despair of finding words to express the futility of attempting to take in a Belfast man. "An' whin ye ax thim for taxes, an' they say they won't pay--ye might jist as well whistle jigs to a milestone! 'Tis thrue what I tell ye."