20 JUNE 1914, Page 13

EXCLUSION A CANADIAN PARALLEL. [To TIM EDITOR OW TIEN . SPECTAT08...'1

Si,—One phase of the Home Rule controversy does not seem to have received the consideration it is entitled to. Taking it for granted now that the Home Rule Bill is an accomplished fact for the Romanists of Ireland, then every effort should be made to bring about the Exclusion, not of the six counties, but the whole of Ulster, under their own Govern- ment, with rights equal to those granted by the Home Rule Bill to the Romanist Irish. We have a parallel situation in Canada in the two neighbouring provinces of Ontario and Quebec. Quebec has an enormous majority of French Roman Catholics, with a small minority of English-speaking Protestants. Ontario, on the other hand, has a majority of Protestants with a strong minority of Roman Catholics. Any injustice to the minority in the one province would be promptly visited upon the minority in the next province. On the other hand, any fair play or privilege granted to the minority in the one case is looked upon as an argument that the same thing should be done with the minority in the other province, and so the thing balances very well, and affairs go along with very little friction. The best possible protection that can be given to the decreasing Protestant minority of the three provinces in Ireland would be the fact that there is a large minority of Romanists in the province of Ulster who

would be under the Ulster Parliament with precisely the same power as that now given to the Romanist provinces. Upon all principles of fair play, the Ulster province is mere entitled to ite own Parliament than the other three Romanist provinces