A secession of Scotland or Wales is as
unlikely as a secession of Normandy or Languedoc. The part of the island
which is not thoroughly assimilated in language, that part which still
speaks Welsh or Gaelic, is larger in proportion than the non-French part
of modern France. But however much either the northern or the western
Briton may, in a fit of antiquarian politics, declaim against the Saxon,
for all practical political purposes he and the Saxon are one. The
distinction between the southern and the northern English--for the men
of Lothian and Fife must allow me to call them by this last name--is,
speaking politically and without ethnological or linguistic precision,
much as if France and Aquitaine had been two kingdoms united on equal
terms, instead of Aquitaine being merged in France. When we cross into
Ireland, we indeed find another state of things, and one which comes
nearer to some of the phenomena which we shall come to in other parts of
the world. Ireland is, most unhappily, not so firmly united to Great
Britain as the different parts of Great Britain are to one another.
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