There is no more effective way of attacking them than by admitting the
right of the majority to govern, but denying that the majority so
entitled is the particular majority which claims the right."[2]

This is precisely what occurred in regard to Ulster's relation to Great
Britain and to the rest of Ireland respectively. The will of the
majority must prevail, certainly. But what majority? Unionists
maintained that only the majority in the United Kingdom could decide,
and that it had never in fact decided in favour of repealing the Act of
Union; Lord Rosebery at one time held that a majority in Great Britain
alone, as the "Predominant Partner," must first give its consent; Irish
Nationalists argued that the majority in Ireland, as a distinct unit,
was the only one that should count. Ulster, whilst agreeing with the
general Unionist position, contended ultimately that her own majority
was as well entitled to be heard in regard to her own fate as the
majority in Ireland as a whole. 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