SELF-DETERMINATION.
[To THE EDITOR Or THE " SPECTATOR.") SIR,—A courteous correspondent, writing in your pages, asked me if I would justify by some logical process the idea of self- determination? I sent a letter endeavouring so to do. Its non-insertion was no doubt due to literary or other defects, but it would be a pity if your correspondent, and any others interested, were to have no reply. Will you permit me to say as follows? The right of self-determination, as regards inhabitants of Great Britain and of Ireland, flows' inevitably from (even apart from other considerations) their mere possession of the electoral suffrage. The possession of a vote, then, implies the right to elect representatives; but this right can have no meaning except that your representatives are to say how you are to be governed and that what they say must be decided according to your approval. That is, the possession of votes implies the right of self-determination. I do not mean that it confers that right. I should say the right existed antecedently. In any case, however, the suffrage is the formal and definitive recognition of the right.
As between England and Ireland, then, the only question is: Are the votes of both countries to be massed together, or sepa- rately considered? I do not hero wish to be dogmatic; but my impression is that the Irish are a race quite different from the English. If this is so, then their votes should form a distinct sphere of self-determination, otherwise their right (implied in having the franchise) to decide their destiny is nullified. The only remaining question is, What of "Ulster "? Again I do not wish to be dogmatic, but my impression is that there are two possible theories only: (1) Either the Unionist portion of Ulster is Irish, (2) or else it is not Irish. In the second of these alternatives the problem lapses, for, of course, self-determination would preclude the claim of non-Irish to decide Ireland's destiny. In the other of the alternatives (which-seems to me the true one, namely, that the Ulster Unionists arc Irish), self-determination, of course, loads to the conclusion that they should be' counted as part of the Irish nation, and that therefore local autonomy (which might still be, desirable for special local reasons) should not mean dis- memberment of Ireland into two definite sections. All the above is simply a logical analysis, not a dogmatic statement; but I also refer your correspondent to an interesting episode in French history, i.e., the wars of the Burgundian against the
Dauphinists : the seeming endlessness of these wars while en- couraged by our Plantagenets, and the unification of France when our interference ceased. I will hero leave the matter.—
[We must now leave Mr. Poynter's " logical process " to the judgment of our readers, as we cannot continue this corre- spondence.—En. Spectator.]
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