To the Nationalist claim that Ireland was a nation she replied that it was either two nations or none, and that if one of the two had a right to "self-determination," the other had it equally.

Thus the axiom of democracy that government is by the majority was, as Maine said, "paralysed by the plea of nationality," since the contending parties appealed to the same principle without having any common ground as to how it should be applied to the case in dispute.
If the Union with Great Britain was to be abrogated, which Pitt had only established when "a full measure of Home Rule" had produced a bloody insurrection and Irish collusion with England's external enemies, Ulster could at all events in the last resort take her stand on Abraham Lincoln's famous proposition which created West Virginia: "A minority of a large community who make certain claims for self-government cannot, in logic or in substance, refuse the same claims to a much larger proportionate minority among themselves." The Loyalists of Ulster were successful in holding this second line, when the first was no longer tenable; but they only retired from the first line--the maintenance of the legislative union--after a long and obstinate defence which it is the purpose of the following pages to relate.
FOOTNOTES: [1] _Henry Edward Manning_, by Shane Leslie, p.

406.
[2] Sir S.H.Maine, _Popular Government_, p.

28..