LOWELL ON FEDERALISM. [To THE EDITOR or THE "SPECTATOR, "] Srn,—The
enclosed quotation from Russell Lowell's essays has point in modern conditions when the idea of Federal Home Rule for the various parts of the United Kingdom is becoming familiar to all and finding favour with too many. The danger which be foresaw in the United States is a far more real one in the conditions which exist here. Ireland and its Parliament will become thoroughly parochial and limited. Scotland, which through her sons, has done so much for Great Britain, will become equally self-centred. Wales will be more intensely Welsh than ever, and to her own detriment; while England will suffer also through a similar concentra- tion. Nothing more short-sighted and more essentially pro- vincial, not to say parochial, has been evolved by responsible statesmen who are supposed to be acquainted with history and
capable of grasping wide issues. We would need one like the ant hor of " The Biglow Papers " to expose with his satiric power the gross opportunism and the cynical contempt for the well-being of our United Kingdom which are displayed by our present Government. It is not statesmanship but the negation of statesmanship to disinherit a province and dis- establish a Church at the dictation of the avowed enemies of each, and that, too, at a time when those who might see justice done have had their hands tied. Where is the sense of fair play which Britons boast of P Can they really stand and look on while such an outrage on all fairness is being committed P If the Government ran straight, it would resign and appeal to the country on a straight issue, and if the country said Ireland must have Home Rule and in Wales the Church must be disestablished, then so be it ; but as things are now " Ulster will fight, and Ulster will be right."
" Lincoln showed that native force may transcend local boundaries, but the growth of such nationality is hindered and hampered by our division into so many half-independent com- munities, each with its objects of county ambition, and its public men great to the borders of their district. In this way our standard of greatness is insensibly debased. To receive any national appointment, a man must have gone through precisely the worst training for it; he must have so far narrowed and belittled himself with State politics as to be acceptable at home. In this way a man may become Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs because he knows how to pack a caucus in Catawampus County, or be sent Ambassador to Barataria because he has drunk bad whisky with every voter in Wildcat City."
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