3 AUGUST 1912, Page 2

On the Ulster question, as we have again and again

pointed out in these columns, the best thing ever said was) said by that great Unionist of happy and immortal memory, Abraham Lincoln :—

" By the way, in what consists the special sacredness of a State ? . . . I speak of that assumed primary right of a State to rule all which is less than itself, and ruin all which is larger than itself. . . . On what rightful principle may a State, being not more than one-fiftieth part of the nation in soil and population, break up the nation, and then coerce a proportionally larger subdivision of itself in the most arbitrary way ? What mysterious right to play tyrant is conferred on a district of country, with its people, by merely call- ing it a State?"