Mr. Do Valera and his friends, however, will make an
irre- parable blunder if they assume that the British people will allow the compact and strong minority of loyalists in the North to be sacrificed. The phrase " government by consent of the governed " must by no kind of juggling be made to mean that a Sinn Fein majority in Ireland as a whole justifies the coercion and suppression of the six counties. Such a thing is utterly
impossible. It is necessary to repeat this fact, obvious though
it may seem, as Mr. De Valera, who is scarcely an Irishman— his father was Spanish and he himself is an American citizen—is
evidently quite unversed in the ways in which Englishmen think and feel. The sense of Mr. Lloyd Georgie-latest suggestion may be described as American in motive and in sanction. He has refined the problem down to the simple issue of union within
the existing State as against secession. That was the issue upon which Lincoln fought the American Civil War, and which he placed above even the question of slavery.
