LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
[Letters of the length of one of our leading paragraphs are often more read, and therefore more effective, than those which fill treble the spare.] THE PARALLEL CASE OF WEST VIRGINLL
Fro The E011011. Of THY .1i3PECTAT011.'l Snt,—I have just read in the New York Literary bigest for June its comment, with extracts from the Spectator, on your plea for a treatment of the Irish bused on the treatment of Weet Virginia by the B.S. Congress and Executive following the secession of Virginia in BBL I am sending you two historical publications of mine, one—The Rending of Virginia: a History—detailing, the other—a pamphlet—outlining, the procedure which resulted, fire, In the restoration of the abdicated Virginia Government, and, second, in the division of the territory into two States, two years later. Why not divide Ireland into two distinct British States. fencing the Ulster Protestants into one, and the Catholic Nationalists in the other, as closely as this may be effected by a line of division, giving each a distinguishing name ?—each to have a relationship to the British Union, and to the Empire, correspond- ing, as nearly as the difference in your system will permit, to the relation of an American State to the United States; each to be self-governing in all domestic affairs, as the American States are; each to have representation in the House of Commons, corresponding with our representation in the House of Repre- sentatives; and, I suppose, under your system each could have alas a voice in the Lords. In all other relations each would dead to the other just as any two of our States do, joining fences on an imaginary line. That woukl leave them nothing to fight about, any more than Wales and Scotland or Scotland and England would have. Territorially, I suppose, the southern would be much the larger State; commercially, perhaps, 'Ulster would outweigh for a time. In the pamphlet (The Two Virginias) you may find in a footnote some historical precedents cited ill addresees In the two Houses of Congress' on the occasion of the unveiling of a statue of Governor Peirpoint. placed In the Hall of Fame some years ago by the State of West Virginia.—I am, Sir, de.,
Ditsavnis D. Hai..
Glencoe, Illinois, U.S.A., July 101h.
[When we receive letters like this from the United States we rejoice in the knowledge that the Irish problem is being die- covered over there to be much less simple—and the British Government consequently being found much less unreasonable— than was formerly supposed. The Exclusion of Ulster from the Home Rule Act has long been advocated by the Spectator (on the Irish Home Rulers own principle that the local majority has the right to choose its own form of government), and for a least time it was alone In its advocacy. Unhappily, the majority of the Irish will nol agree to the "partition of Ireland."—En. Spectator.]
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