ULSTER AND THE MAINE ANALOGY. [To SIKH EDITOR or THII
"Bracrazos.")
Sin,—The Senator for an important New England Slate writes me from Washington (March 25th) :—
" Naturally, being an American, accustomed to the State system, I believe, and always have believed, in Home Rule for Ireland. I also believe in Home Rule for Ulster. I do not see why Ulster has not the same right to be set off from Ireland and have a Government of her own, as Maine had to be set off from Massachusetts. Massachusetts did not want separation, but the people of Maine did, and they were separated. If you are going to have Home Rub and local self-government, it must be applied fairly."
The analogy to which my friend draws attention is interest- ing. The relation of Ulster to Ireland is not unlike that of Maine to Massachusetts, of which State Maine was formerly a part. Maine has roughly a million people and Massachu-
setts four millions. A century ago Massachusetts objected to separation because the State Debt was a formidable one,
and, looking to the interest of a later generation, the immense
forest asset of "the District of Maine" offered good security for the State Debt. But more important than this in a generation of voters suckled overmuch on Patrick Henry and "the Rights of Man," Maine was in politics " Demo- cratic "—that is, Maine believed not merely in "State-right," but in State-sovereignty, whereas Massachusetts, the pre- dominant partner, was in politics what had already come to be called "Federal," and was thus opposed to that theory of State.sovereignty which was decided forty years later by Grant at Appomattox, a theory which is semi-con- sciously at the back of the Irish movement. The majority in the old "Bay State," the descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers, were just such men, religious fanatics, as the men of Ulster, and yet they let Maine go. It is an historic precedent this in the making of a Federal State, and we shall hear of it again. The Legislature of Massachusetts submitted the partition issue to a Maine Referendum in 1816 in these words :— "Shall this Legislature be requested to give its consent to the separation of the District of Maine from Massachusetts and the creation of the said District into a separate State ? "
Partition was agreed to by a vote of 10,393 to 8,501, but was held up because less than one half the vote of Maine had been elicited. It was again voted on, the Legislature this time requiring a majority of five to four. The majority was not obtained (11,969 to 10,347), and union was upheld ; but three years later separation was arranged, and in 1820 Maine, consisting of some twenty-six counties, was admitted at Washington a State of the Union. Since 1820 the record of the State of Maine in great leaders subscribed to the Federal service constitutes a" record." In the case of Maine the great
men have indeed "come from the North." I need mention only two Speakers of the House of Representatives, James G. Blaine and Thomas B. Reed.
If the province of Ulster should poll five to four in favour of statehood, then, on the Maine analogy, it seems to he within her rights to separate. But the idea of the partition of Ireland is so painful to a race so widely scattered by British misrule in the past, that it would be beyond measure deplor- able should this prove the Home Rule evolution. It becomes more and more evident that were this partition accomplished we should discover three provinces in Ireland without a.single responsible leader remaining, and the Anglophobe explosion in America and in our Dominions might involve some irre- parable disaster. If, then, Ulster, cornered and savage, can be coaxed out of her "State-right," might it yet be possible to assemble her at Edinburgh for a few years P I am, of course, assuming that a complete Federation of four States shall have been accepted. The Edinburgh compromise, unlike statehood at Belfast, would have an appearance so evidently transitional that it would be no shock to Greater Ireland. After all, the vast bulk of British Columbia is represented in a Parliament at Victoria, a clear seventy miles away across the ocean.
We shall not make progress and we shall not avoid blood- shed unless we start "thinking federally" from the very rock-bottom foundation—namely, that deep down in the minds of free men there is this half-conscious and wholly inarticulate determination toward what philosophers describe as"the State-right." The writer has been, if not advo- cating, yet at least contemplating, the Two-State solution for Ireland, but when a Tory friend who is thinking ahead, and not without repugnance, to Federalism, said recently, "A Federal system will necessitate two, if not three, States within England," I, who had been visualizing a single English Parlia- ment at Oxford or at York, was shocked, almost as the Irish are shocked by partition. The fact is, and this is in full measure true of the editor of the Spectator, we English regard what may be ahead of us as some surgical operation. We are "frightened," and the men of advanced years are inclined to say half despairingly, "Surely it can last my time."
One word more. The Federal State of Maine, the Federal State of Queensland, the Federal State of Quebec, the Federal State of West Virginia—how did these States discover them- selves in their present Federal trappings P In every instance by secession from Union, as, indeed, the thirteen original American States seceded from Union. Maine, as we have seen, seceded from Massachusetts ; Queensland from the parent State of New South Wales; and Quebec by breaking out of the "Durham Settlement" almost at the point of the sword. West Virginia, herself seceding from the secessionist State Virginia, went with the North in the bloody struggle. If Ulster—if a further sacrifice by Ireland is required—must needs become a Federal State, these precedents and analogies do indeed go far to justify her determination; but she wreaks the most precious thing in the world—namely, a sentiment dear to all Irishmen and almost planetary in its orbit.—I am,
[Why, we wonder, is it so dreadful to split Ireland, and not in the least dreadful to split the United Kingdom P It cannot. be because Ireland is an island, and that islands have an indefeasible right to self-contained self-government, for that knocks Home Rule for Scotland and Wales on the head. It cannot be because nationalities homogeneous in blood and religion must not be split, because Ireland is not homogeneous in these particulars. It cannot be because you must not split ancient kingdoms, whether islands or not, if they were ever "national units" in the past, for Ireland was never such a "national unit," but was as much divided when she passed under the English Crown as she is now. The only real reason why you must not split Ireland is because the Southern Irish want to hold dominion in Ulster and have got eighty votes, and the Liberal Party want those eighty votes. Mr. Lincoln, in the case of West Virginia, asked why it was a virtue to split a united nation and a crime to split a State. There is no answer available, as the seceding State of Virginia found when she cursed West Virginia for seceding, except: "Because we will that it shall be so." But that is an answer which the Liberals have not the courage to give, and so they sink them- selves in a slough of sophistries.—En. Spectator.]
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