LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
DR. ARNOLD AND THE UNION.
[To THE EDITOR Or THE " SPECTATOR:]
Sur,,—Mr. Cruickshank's quotation from Dr. Arnold is a very apt one, and he has certainly found among the Liberal leaders of the past a pair for Archbishop Whately. In considering such problems, did not Dr. Arnold attach too much importance to the centrifugal forces ? He seems to have done so in one instance at least. Many years before the cry of Secession was raised in the United States, Dr. Arnold said, in one of his
"Lectures on History :"—" What is it which threatens the
permanence of the union between the Northern and Southern States of the American Confederacy but the physiological fact that the soil and climate of the Southern States render them essentially agricultural, while those of the Northern States, combined with their geographical advantages as to seaports, dispose them no less naturally to be manufacturing and commercial ?" But when the Southern States set up for "a distinct nation entitled to govern itself," this pretension was resisted in a fearful contest, throughout which the sympathies of our Liberals were with the Unionists. Here Dr. Arnold failed to see that the centripetal forces would overcome the centrifugal. Experience has proved the weakness of separatist tendencies where they have acted at much greater advantage than in Ireland. Even in Austria-Hungary they have not triumphed, and they have vainly struggled against the forma- tion of the Kingdom of Italy and the Empire of Germany. Liberals who applauded the action of the Northern States in America, who assisted in the formation of Italy, and, like the late Emperor Frederick, would have carried out the plan of a united Germany "by force if necessary," cannot be in perfect sympathy with Separatists like Dr. Tanner.
With all my respect, amounting to reverence, for Dr. Arnold, I willingly give him up to Mr. Cruickshank, for in this matter the current of modern history has shown that he is not on the
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