The definite disadvantages to England of the proposed revolution may be summed up under three heads:—First, the sovereignty of the Imperial Parliament would be destroyed and all English constitutional arrangements would be dislocated; secondly, the power of Great Britain would be diminished; thirdly, the chance of further disagreement with Ireland would certainly not be diminished, and would probably be increased.

First.—Under all the formality, the antiquarianism, the shams of the British constitution, there lies latent an element of power which has been the true source of its life and growth. This secret source of strength is the absolute omnipotence,^[34] the sovereignty, of Parliament. As to the mode in which King, Lords, and Commons were to divide the sovereign power between themselves there have been at different times disputes leading to civil war; but that Parliament—that is, the Crown, the Peers, and the Commons acting together—is absolutely supreme, has never been doubted. Here constitutional theory and constitutional practice are for once at one. Hence, it has been well said by the acutest of foreign critics that the merit of the English constitution is that it is no constitution at all. The distinction between fundamental articles of the constitution and laws, between statutes which can only be touched (if at all) by a constituent assembly, and statutes which can be repealed by an ordinary Parliament—the whole apparatus, in short, of artificial constitutionalism—is utterly unknown to Englishmen. Thus freedom has in England been found compatible at crises of danger with an energy of action generally supposed to be peculiar to despotism. The source of strength is, in fact, in each case the same. The sovereignty of Parliament is like the sovereignty of the Czar. It is like all sovereignty at bottom, nothing else but unlimited power; and, unlike some other forms of sovereignty, can be at once put in force by the ordinary means of law. This is the one great advantage of our constitution over that of the United States. In America, every ordinary authority throughout the Union is hampered by constitutional restrictions; legislation must be slow, because the change of any constitutional rule is impeded by endless difficulties. The vigour which is wanting to Congress, is indeed to a certain extent to be found in the extensive executive power left in the hands of the President; but it takes little acuteness to perceive that in point of pliability, power of development, freedom of action, English constitutionalism far excels the Federalism of the United States. Nor is it less obvious that the very qualities in which the English constitution excels that of the United States are essential to the maintenance by England of the British Empire. Home Rulers, whether they know it or not, touch the mainspring of the British constitution. For from the moment that Great Britain becomes part of a federation, the omnipotence of Parliament is gone. The Federal Congress might be called by the name of the Imperial Parliament. It might possibly be made up of the same elements, be elected by the same electors, and even in the main consist of the very same persons as the existing Parliament of the United Kingdom; but its nature would be changed, and its power would be limited on all sides. It might deal with Imperial expenditure, with foreign affairs, with peace and war, with other matters placed within its competence; on every other point the British Congress would, like the American Congress, be powerless. Nor would all the powers taken from the Congress be necessarily given to the local assemblies. Every analogy points the other way. If the example of the United States is to be followed, articles of the constitution would limit the power both of the Imperial Congress and of the local representative assemblies. This limitation of authority could not be measured by what appears on the face of the constitution. Some council, tribunal, or other arbiter—let us, for the sake of simplicity, call it the Federal Court—would have authority to determine whether a law was or was not constitutional, or, in other words, whether it was or was not a law. Let no one fancy that the restraint placed on the power of ordinary legislation by the authority of a Federal Court; which alone can interpret the constitution, is a mere form which has no practical effect. The history of the United States is on this point decisive. De Tocqueville, Story, and Kent are far safer and better instructed guides than authors who "cannot conceive how any conflict of authority could arise which could not be easily settled by argument, by conference, by gradual experience;" and who seem to hold that to deny the existence of a difficulty is the same thing as providing for its removal The following are a few of the instances in which the American judiciary have in fact determined the limits which bound the powers, either of Congress or of the State legislatures. The judiciary have ruled that a State is liable to be sued in the Federal Courts; that Congress has authority to incorporate a bank; that a tax imposed by Congress was an indirect tax, and therefore valid; that the control of the militia really and truly belongs to Congress, and not, as in effect contended by Connecticut and Massachusetts, to the governors of the separate States. The Federal judiciary have determined the limits to their own jurisdiction and to that of the State Courts. The judiciary have pronounced one law after another invalid, as contrary to some article of the constitution—e.g., either by being tainted with the vice of ex post facto legislation, or by impairing the obligation of contracts. These are a few samples of the mode in which a Federal Court limits all legislative authority. If any one wishes to see the extent to which the power of such a Court has gone in fact, he should study the decisions on the Legal Tender Act, which all but overset or nullified the financial legislation of Congress during the War of Secession. If he wishes to see the effect of applying the constitution of the United States, or anything like that constitution, to Great Britain and Ireland, he should consider what is implied in the undoubted fact that the Land Act of 1870 and the Land Act of 1881 would, whether passed by the central or by any local legislature under such a constitution, be at once treated as void, as impairing the obligation of contracts. If I am told that we might adopt Federalism without adopting the details of the American constitution, my reply is, not only that the remark comes awkwardly from innovators who wish to place Ireland in the position of Massachusetts, but that the very gist of my argument is that the existence of some arbiter (whether it be named Crown, Council, or Court), who may decide whether the constitution has or has not been violated, is of the essence of Federalism, while the existence of such an arbiter absolutely destroys the sovereignty of Parliament. Nor do the inferences to be drawn from the action of the Federal Court, and a study of the American constitution as it actually exists, end here. In the decisions of the Court we may trace the rise of question after question—that is, of conflict after conflict—as to the respective rights of the Federation and the individual States. From the history and from the immobility of the constitution, we may perceive the extent to which the existence of a Federal pact checks change, or, in other words, reform. Every institution which can lay claim to be based upon an organic law acquires a sort of sacredness. Under a system of Federalism, the Crown, the House of Peers, the Imperial Parliament itself, when transformed into a Federal Assembly, would be almost beyond the reach of change, reform, or abolition. Nor is it the Legislature of Great Britain alone which would suffer a fundamental change. The relations between the Executive and the country would undergo immense modification. The authority of the Crown might be enhanced by the establishment of a Federal Union. The King would become, in a very special sense, the representative of national or Imperial unity, and the weakening of Parliament might lead to the strengthening of the monarch. However this might be, it has, it is submitted, been now shown that Federalism would dislocate every English constitutional arrangement.

Secondly.—The changes necessitated by Federalism would all tend to weaken the power of Great Britain. That this is so has been already to a great degree established, in considering the mode in which Federalism destroys the sovereignty of Parliament. But a system of Federalism would assuredly weaken the Government quite as much as the Legislature. The Executive, as the organ of the Federal Union, would be hampered by new conditions utterly unknown to an English Ministry. The language of Federalists exhibits a curious and ominous silence or ambiguity as to the disposal of the armed forces. Is the army to be a British army, with authority at the will of the Federal Government to enter every part of the new Union, or is Ireland to have an independent force of her own? This, again—and every specific criticism is open to the same retort—may be called a detail, but it is a detail which touches the root of the whole matter. If the Federal, that is in effect the English, Government is to retain the same control over the whole army as at present—if Ireland is not to have a local force under the control of local authorities—then the language as to Irish independence used by Irish Nationalists is singularly misleading. If, on the other hand, order is to be maintained, or not maintained, by a native army under the guidance of Irish commanders, then it passes the wit of man to see by what means the rights of the central government are to be enforced in any case of disagreement between the Imperial and the Irish Parliament. With the memory of the Irish volunteers before his mind, an historian, such, for example, as Mr. McCarthy, will hardly assert that the difficulty raised is one of which he cannot conceive the existence. For my part, I heartily join in the admiration he, no doubt, feels for the patriots of 1782, but no man in his senses will maintain that the moral of that year is that a local Irish army can, under no circumstances, prove an embarrassment to the central Government. The general tone, even more than the precise language of Irish Federalists, all but forbids the supposition that they are prepared to secure the supremacy of the Federal Government by giving it the sole control of the only armed force which is to exist in any part of the Union. They probably hope that some sort of compromise may be found with regard to a matter in which, as theory and experience alike prove, compromise is all but impossible. Under certain circumstances, and in certain cases, and subject to certain conditions, the use of the armed force throughout Great Britain and Ireland is, we may suppose, to be left in the hands of the Federal Executive; under other circumstances, and under other conditions, the local forces are probably to be controlled by the local or State Government. Whether such an arrangement would continue in working order for a year, is more than doubtful. Assume, however, that somehow it could be got to work, the fact still remains that a scheme, intended to secure local liberty, would certainly ensure Imperial weakness. The need, moreover, for bestowing some element of strength on a Federal Executive as a counterpoise to its many elements of weakness leads almost of necessity to a result which has scarcely received due notice. The executive authority must be placed beyond the control of a representative assembly. Neither in the United States, nor in Switzerland, nor in the German Empire, can the Federal administration be displaced by the vote of an assembly. Federalism is in effect incompatible with Parliamentary government as practised in England. The Canadian Ministry, it may be urged, can be changed at the will of the Dominion Parliament, and the common Ministry of Austria-Hungary is responsible to the Delegations. This is true; but these exceptions are precisely of the class which prove the rule which they are cited to invalidate. The Cabinet system of the Dominion is a defect in the Canadian Constitution, and could not work were not Canada, by its position as a dependency, under the guidance of a power beyond the reach of the Dominion Parliament. What may be the real responsibility to the Delegations of the common ministry of Austria-Hungary, admits of a good deal of doubt. No one, who will not be deceived by words, believes the responsibility to be at all like the liability of Mr. Gladstone or Lord Salisbury to be dismissed from office by a vote of the House of Commons. The Emperor-King is, as regards the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, the permanent and unchangeable head of the State. Turn the United Kingdom into a Federal State, and Parliamentary Government, as Englishmen now know it, is at an end. This may or may not be an evil, but it is a revolution which ought to give pause to innovators who deem it a slighter danger to innovate on the Act of Union than to remodel the procedure of the House of Commons.

The central Government would again, merely from that division of powers which is of the essence of Federalism, be as feeble against foreign aggression as against local resistance. Home Rule, it is constantly said, has at least this advantage, as compared with Irish independence, that it prevents any alliance between Ireland and a foreign enemy. This gain might turn out rather nominal than real. Neither the United States nor France could, of course, send an Embassy to any State comprised within the British Union; but, if war impended, they might and would attempt to gain the favour of the Irish Ministry, or the Irish party who controlled the Irish Parliament, or exercised the authority of the local Government of Ireland. Suppose that when war was about to be proclaimed between the British Federation and France, the Irish Parliament objected to hostilities with the French Republic. Can it be denied that the local Parliament and the local executive could, by protests, by action, or even by inaction, give aid or comfort to the foreign enemy? The local legislature would, in the supposed case, be aided by a minority of the central Parliament or Congress. Obstruction would go hand in hand with sedition. Loyalty to the Union was strong throughout the Northern States during the War of Secession; but the tale used certainly to be told that had Meade been defeated at Gettysburg, the leaders of the New York democracy would have attempted "to carry the State out of the Union." Moreover, Great Britain would perhaps find it easier to control the action of an independent than of a confederated Ireland. Blockades and embargoes are, as already pointed out, modes of persuasion applicable to foreigners, but inapplicable to citizens; the Government of the Union found it harder to check the latent disloyalty of South Carolina than it would have found it to deal with the open enmity of Canada. This topic is too odious and too far removed from the realm of practical politics, to need more than the allusion required for the completeness of my argument.

A Federal Government is, of all constitutions, the most artificial. If such a government is to be worked with anything like success, there must exist among the citizens of the confederacy a spirit of genuine loyalty to the Union. The "Unitarian" feeling of the people must distinctly predominate over the sentiment in favour of "State rights." To require this is to require a good deal more than the mere general submission to the Government which is requisite for the prosperity of every State, whatever be the nature of its polity. In a Federation every citizen is influenced by a double allegiance. He owes fealty to the central Government; he owes fealty also to his Canton or State. National allegiance and local allegiance divide and perplex the feelings even of loyal citizens. Unless the national sentiment predominate, the Federation will go to pieces at any of those crises when the interest or wishes of any of the States conflict with the interest or wishes of the Union. So keen an observer and profound a critic as De Tocqueville believed that both the American and the Swiss Federations would make shipwreck on this rock. He was mistaken; he did not allow for the rapid development of national sentiment. But his error was pardonable. The leaders of the Sonderbund did prefer the interest of Lucerne to the unity of Switzerland. Lee and Jackson were disloyal to the Union, because they were loyal to Virginia. Leading officers of the United States army, soldiers educated at Westpoint, trained the armies of the Confederates. They were men of unblemished honour; they were, some of them, not originally zealous in the cause of secession, but they believed that their duty to their State—to Virginia, to South Carolina, or to Georgia—was paramount over their duty to the Government at Washington. If Virginia had stood by the Union, General Lee might, in all probability, have been the conqueror of the Confederate States, of which he was the hero. Ireland has had far graver causes for disaffection towards the English Government than any of the reasons alleged for the secession of Virginia; but Irish officers and Irish soldiers have always been perfectly loyal to England. The reason of the difference is obvious; the officers of the English army have never been distracted by the difficulties of divided allegiance. Make Ireland one of the States of a Confederacy, and these difficulties will at once arise. Irish officers and Irish soldiers, members of the Irish State—paid by and to a certain extent under the command of the Irish Government—can hardly be blamed if in times of civil differences, leading it may be to civil war, they should feel more loyalty to their State than to the Union. This Union, be it remembered, would in such a case be nothing but Great Britain under a new and less impressive title.

"Give Ireland," writes Mr. Finch,^[35] "the management of her own affairs, and you will see called into her service the ablest and most capable of her sons; while, as things now stand, the intellect of Ireland is shut out from all share in the administration. With careers at home worthy of the best and ablest of the people, much of the wealth which is now drained off from Ireland without any return, will be expended in developing the industrial resources of the country; industry will revive, and with the revival of industry will come employment for the people. 'It is the difficulty of living by wages in Ireland,' says Sir G.C. Lewis, 'which makes every man look to the land for maintenance.' With employment for the people, half the difficulty of the land question will be solved. If, then, we wish to promote the moral and material welfare of the Irish people, let us make them masters of their own affairs."

"I have indicated what I believe," writes Mr. O'Neill Daunt,^[36] "to be the radical disease of Ireland: the want of a domestic legislature racy of the soil, and acting in harmony with the national sentiment. God has created Ireland with the needs of a separate nation, and with the needs are associated the rights. 'Our patent to be a State, not a shire,' said Goold in 1799, 'comes direct from Heaven. The Almighty has in majestic characters signed the great charter of our independence. The great Creator of the world has given our beloved country the gigantic outlines of a kingdom.'

"If Ireland had been left the unfettered use of the natural materials of wealth in her soil and in her people, and of the facilities of internal and external commerce supplied by her physical configuration and her geographical position—if her interests were protected by a Parliament sitting in her capital, securing the expenditure at home of her annual revenue, both public and private, rendering impossible that destructive hæmorrhage of her income by which she is impoverished, aiding the development of her industries, and resisting all aggression on her commercial and political rights—in a word, if the Irish Constitution had not been treacherously undermined and overthrown, we should now have been the best support of the Empire, instead of being its scandal and its weakness."

Whatever else Home Rule might give to Ireland, one gift it assuredly would not bring with it. It would not endow the country with wealth. To Irish enthusiasm and patriotism illusions on this matter are pardonable. In the English advocate of Home Rule they are unpardonable. Ireland is, and must, under any form of government conceivable, for a length of time remain a poor country. Capital knows nothing of patriotism or sentiment. Commerce has no partiality for the masses. Credit cherishes no trust towards the people. The one prediction which we may make with confidence is that a measure of Home Rule would not increase Irish capital, and would shake Irish credit. The rumour of Home Rule has already, it is said, disturbed the course of business in Ireland. From the nature of things, then, the establishment of Federalism would lead to bitter disappointment. The country would not enjoy the dignity of independence; it would not enjoy the comfort of wealth. Every Irishman would feel that he had been cheated of his hopes, and this not because he is an Irishman, but because he is a man. It is human to expect far more from even the most beneficial of revolutions than any political change can bring. The unity of Italy was well worth all the price it cost. The unity of Germany gave intense gratification to natural feelings of national pride. Yet there are probably many even in the Italian Kingdom who sigh for the light taxes of the Bourbon or Papal rule, and Germans who glory in the greatness of the Empire flee by thousands to the United States that they may escape the burden of conscription. The disappointment which naturally attends a great change would in the case of Ireland be specially bitter. To what cause would the disappointment be attributed? The answer is easy to find. If taxation increased—as it probably would; if wealth did not increase—as it certainly would not; if the sense of semi-independence did not produce the hope, the energy, the new life, the regeneration which enthusiasts consider to be the natural result of nationality—if anything, in short, failed to go according to the hopes of men who had formed hopes which a miracle itself could hardly satisfy—the blame for the non-fulfilment of groundless anticipations would rest upon the Confederacy—that is in other words, upon England. To suppose this, is not to attribute special unreasonableness to Irishmen. If Italy had been forced to accept, instead of her longed-for independence, the local self-government which might be conceded to the State of an Austrian Federation, we may be quite sure that the Grist Tax, the Sicilian Banditti, the intrigues of France in Tunis, the perversity of the Pope, the poverty of Italian workmen, the factiousness of Italian politicians, every evil, in short, real or imaginary, under which Italy now suffers, or has suffered since 1870—would have been attributed to her connection with a Union presided over by the Austrian Emperor. National independence, like every other form of independence, has at least this merit, that it compels men to take their fate into their own hands, and to feel that they themselves or the circumstances of the world are the causes of their misfortunes. Semi-independence makes it easy for men to attribute every mishap to the absence of absolute freedom.

If the existence of a Federal constitution would of itself supply the cause for discontent, it is of the very nature of such a constitution to supply the occasions of dispute. Nothing can prevent the rise of burning questions about Federal and State rights. Is nullification or secession, or the refusal to pay Federal taxes a State right? If these questions arise, by whom are they to be settled? Suppose they are referred to a Federal Court, say the Privy Council, is it reasonable to fancy that Irishmen or Englishmen, for that matter, will acquiesce in the decision of grave political issues (say the right of the Federal Government to proclaim martial law at Dublin, or the validity of the Land Act) by any tribunal? For when political issues are referred to the decision of a Court the difficulty is great of enlisting public opinion in favour of its decrees. The theory of the constitution and the expectation of the people is that references to the judges will be events of rare occurrence, and that the Bench, when it acts at all, will act only as interpreter of the constitutional pact. Things are certain to turn out far otherwise. The intervention of the tribunals will in one form or another be constantly evoked, and will be evoked to determine the most burning questions of the day. The Constitution of the United States would be unintelligible without reference to a long line of determined cases; its principles are to be found quite as much in the decisions of the Supreme Court as in its Articles. Swiss Constitutionalists have greatly increased as years have gone on the originally limited powers of the Federal tribunal. The statesmen who drafted the Act constituting the Canadian Dominion fancied they could in effect avoid the necessity for judicial interpretation, but a long series of reports proves the futility of their expectation. Each day increases the mass, and it must be added the importance, of the judgments by which the Privy Council determines questions of constitutional law for the Colonies. Moreover, even laymen soon perceive that interpretation means legislation. It is technically correct to say that the Supreme Court of the United States acts only as interpreter of the Constitution, but we must not be deceived by fictions. The Supreme Court has legislated as truly, and perhaps more effectively than Congress. It has achieved, and from the nature of things was compelled to achieve, a feat forbidden to Congress; it has added to or enlarged the Articles of the Constitution. The good fortune of the United States gave to them in Judge Marshall a profound and statesmanlike lawyer, and the judgments of the great Chief Justice have built up the existing Constitution. He may be counted, if not among its founders, at any rate as its main architect. In this instance judicial authority was combined with political wisdom, and Marshall's opinion was, it is said, rejected by the Court in but two cases, and had it in these instances been followed, would have improved the Constitution. Unfortunately, while one may often secure the fairness one cannot ensure the wisdom of the Bench. Judges err; a final Court of Appeal must often give decisions which are or are supposed to be erroneous, i.e., not a just deduction from the facts and principles which the Court is called upon to consider. No historian will, it is likely, now defend the doctrine of the House of Lords about marriage laid down in Reg. v. Millis. Competent authorities question some of the most important ecclesiastical judgments given by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. The decision in the Dred Scott Case, whether right or wrong, did not approve itself to eminent lawyers in the United States. One of the decisions of the Supreme Court in the Legal Tender Cases must have been wrong; whether the last was sound is open to debate. It is when a Court gives what is thought to be an erroneous decision on matters exciting the feelings of large classes that the difficulty of obtaining acquiescence in its judgments is palpable. The judges decided, and it is quite possible decided rightly, that Ship Money was a legal exaction, and that the Crown's dispensing power was authorized by law. Popular opinion branded the judges as sycophants and traitors. Chief Justice Taney and his colleagues decided in effect, and from a legal point of view may have been right in deciding, that slavery was recognised by the Constitution of the United States. Their decision was denounced by the best men in the Union as infamous. The Privy Council have laid down doctrines on matters of ritual which are held to be erroneous by a large body of the clergy, and Ritualists have gone to prison rather than treat the judgment of the Privy Council as of moral validity. Clergymen are not perhaps the most reasonable of mankind, but they are not more unreasonable than political enthusiasts. How then is it possible to expect that a Federal tribunal would command an obedience not yielded willingly to the laws of the Imperial Parliament? Englishmen, indeed, might, it is possible, acquiesce in the ruling of Federal judges, and this for two reasons: they are a legally-minded nation; and (what is of far more consequence) a Federal Court must represent in the main the opinions of the Federal Government—that is, of Great Britain. But it is idle to suppose that Mr. Parnell and Mr. Parnell's followers would find it easier to respect an Imperial or Federal tribunal than to bow to the will of the Imperial Parliament.

Home Rulers would, moreover, soon discover a reason for resistance to the Federal Court or the Federal Government, which from their point of view would be a perfectly valid reason. The Federal Government would, in effect, be the Government of England; the Federal Court would in effect be a Court appointed by the English Government. In a Confederacy where there are many States, the Government of the Federation cannot be identified with even the most powerful of the States; it were ridiculous to assert that the Government at Washington is only the Government of New York under another name. Where a Confederacy consists in reality, if not in name, of two States only, of which the one has at least four or five times the power of the other, the authority of the Confederacy means the authority of the powerful State. "Irish Federalism," if in reality established, would soon generate a demand from Ireland, not unreasonable in itself, under the circumstances of the case, that the whole British Empire should be turned into a Confederacy, under the guidance of a general Congress. Thus alone could Ireland become a real State, the member of a genuine Confederation. Hence arises a new danger. Apply Federalism to Ireland and you immediately provoke demands for autonomy in other parts of the United Kingdom, and for constitutional changes in other parts of the British Empire. Federalism, which in other lands has been a step towards Union, would, it is likely enough, be in our case the first stage towards a dissolution of the United Kingdom into separate States, and hence towards the breaking-up of the British Empire. This is no future or imaginary peril; the mere proposal of Home Rule, under something like a Federal form, has already made it an immediate and pressing danger. Sir Gavan Duffy, by far the ablest among the Irish advocates of Home Rule, predicts that before ten years have elapsed there will be a Federation of the Empire.^[37] A majority of Scotch electors support the policy of Mr. Gladstone, and forthwith a most respectable Scotch periodical puts forward a plan of Home Rule for Scotland. Canon MacColl already suggests that we should make tentatively an experiment capable of development into a permanent system on the lines of the American Constitution, and make it not only in Ireland, but also perhaps gradually in Scotland, and even in Wales.^[38] It is unnecessary to discuss Canon MacColl's argument at length. When he tells his readers that "the Constitution which Mr. Gladstone desires to create in Ireland is modelled on the system existing in the great colonies of the Empire; there are certain variations and some novelties in the Irish scheme, but these are the lines on which it is drawn;" he ventures a statement on which, as a lawyer, I need make but one comment. It is a statement as erroneous and misleading as can be any assertion made in good faith by a writer who must be presumed to have studied the measure of which he is speaking. When the same authority asks why should a system which imparts strength to America, to Austria, and to Germany, disintegrate and ruin the British Empire, he raises an inquiry which does not admit of an answer, since it assumes the identity of things which are radically different. The system which may or may not impart strength to Austria is no more the system which imparts strength to America, than the system which imparts strength to England is the same as the system which does or does not impart strength to Russia. To lump under one head every policy which can by any straining of the terms be brought under the heads of "Federalism" or "Home Rule," is neither more nor less absurd than to classify together every Constitution which can be called a monarchy.

But while I write these pages a more significant indication of this danger has appeared. Mr. Gladstone's own method of interpreting his own past utterances makes it the duty of his critics to weigh well not only his direct statements, but his suggestions; and there is, I think, no possible unfairness in construing the language of his pamphlet on the Irish Question as an intimation that he already entertains, if he does not favour, the idea of applying the Federal principle to Scotland and to Wales.^[39] Federalism is the solvent which, if applied to one part of the United Kingdom, will undo the work not only of Pitt, but of Somers, of Henry VIII., and of Edward I. Meanwhile, the one prediction which may be made with absolute confidence is that Federalism would not generate that goodwill between England and Ireland which, could it be produced, would, in my judgment at least, be an adequate compensation even for the evils and the inconveniences of the Federal system.

To the view of Federalism here maintained there exist one or two objections, so obvious that without some reference to them my argument would lack completeness.

Federalism, it is urged, has succeeded in Switzerland and in America; it may, therefore, succeed in the United Kingdom.

If the general drift of my argument does not sufficiently answer this objection, two special replies lie near at hand. In the case both of Switzerland and of America, a Federal Constitution supplied the means by which States, conscious of a common national feeling, have approached to political unity. It were a rash inference from this fact, that when two parts of one nation are found (as must be asserted by any Home Ruler) not to be animated by a common feeling of nationality, a Federal Constitution is the proper means by which to keep them in union. The more natural deduction from the general history of Federalism is, that a confederation is an imperfect political union, transitory in its nature, and tending either to pass into one really united State, or to break up into the different States which compose the Federation.

Nor ought we to stop at this point. Citizens of the Union filled with justifiable pride at the success of the American Constitution assume that a Federal Government is in itself absolutely the best form of government, that in any country where it can be adopted it must be an improvement on the existing institutions of the land, and that as compared with the constitutional monarchy of England federalism exhibits no special faults from which English constitutionalism is free. This assumption is perfectly natural; it resembles that absolute faith in the virtues of the British Constitution which reached its culminating point when Burke's intimate friend and pupil, Gilbert Elliott, himself no mean statesman, went to Corsica to establish a miniature copy of English Parliamentary institutions. But in each case a faith which is natural will also be pronounced by any candid judge to be unfounded. Federalism has in its very essence, and even as it exists in America, at least two special faults. It distracts the allegiance of citizens, and what is even more to the present point, it does not provide sufficient protection for the legal rights of unpopular minorities. There is not, and never was, a word in the Articles of the Constitution forbidding American citizens to criticise the institutions of the State. An American Abolitionist had as much right to denounce slavery at Boston, or for that matter at Charlestown, as an English Abolitionist had to denounce slavery in London or Liverpool. It were ridiculous to maintain that the right was one which either Lloyd Garrison or his disciples were able to exercise. Mr. Godkin^[40] has repeated with perfect fairness the tale of the persecutions suffered by Prudence Crandall in Connecticut because she chose in exercise of her legal and moral rights to educate young women of colour. Mr. Godkin apparently draws, as I have already pointed out, from the fact an inference—which I confess myself not well able to follow—against all attempts to enforce an unpopular law. The more natural conclusion is that the Federal Government was not able to protect the rights of individuals against strong local sentiment. This moral at any rate has an obvious application to any scheme of Federalism for Ireland.

The answer is, that the case of Canada is as regards Federalism irrelevant. Canada is not part of a British Federation. The Dominion as a whole is simply a colony, standing essentially in the same relation to England as Victoria or New South Wales. The laws of the Parliament that meets at Ottawa need the Royal sanction, or, in other words, may be vetoed, or rather not approved, by the English Ministry of the day. The Act itself on which the existence of the Canadian constitution depends is an Act of the British Parliament, and cannot be modified by any other authority. The British Parliament is supreme in Canada as throughout the British dominions; and Canada sends no representatives to the British Parliament. The provinces, no doubt, which compose the Dominion are under an Act of Parliament a Federation; but the dangers and difficulties of Federalism are to a great extent avoided by the supremacy of the British Crown. These difficulties, however, do arise. If any one will study the "Letellier case," he will soon perceive that Canada has exhibited the germ of the conflict between the central authority of the Dominion and the "State right" of the provinces; he will also perceive that the conflict was determined by a reference to the English Ministry, who in effect gave judgment in favour of the Dominion. The example of Canada suggests, if anything, that Irish difficulties might be solved by turning Ireland into a colony without representatives in the Imperial Parliament.

The national independence of Ireland entails on England three great evils—the deliberate surrender of the main object at which English statesmanship has aimed for centuries, together with all the moral loss and disgrace which such surrender entails; the loss of considerable material resources in money, and still more in men; the incalculable evil of the existence in the neighbourhood of Great Britain of a new, a foreign, and, possibly, a hostile State. For these evils there are, indeed, to be found two real though inadequate compensations—namely, the probability that loss of territory might restore to England a unity and consistency of action equivalent to an increase of strength, and the possibility that separation might be the first step towards gaining the goodwill, and ultimately the alliance of Ireland. It is, however, hardly worth while to calculate what might be the extent of the possible deductions from evils which no English statesman would knowingly bring on Great Britain. By men of all parties and of all views it is practically conceded that England neither will nor can, except under compulsion, assent to Irish independence.

Federalism, on the other hand, has the appearance of a compromise. It does not avowedly break up the unity of Great Britain and Ireland; it does not wholly deprive England of Irish resources; it does not, directly at least, lay Great Britain open to foreign attack. Federalism has, however, special evils of its own. It revolutionizes the whole Constitution of the United Kingdom; by undermining the sovereignty of Parliament, it deprives English institutions of their elasticity, their strength, and their life; it weakens the Executive at home, and lessens the power of the country to resist foreign attack. The revolution which works these changes holds out no hope of reconciliation with Ireland. An attempt, in short, to impose on England and Scotland a constitution which they do not want, and which is quite unsuited to the historical traditions and to the genius of Great Britain, offers to Ireland a constitution which Ireland is certain to dislike, which has none of the real or imaginary charms of independence, and ensures none of the solid benefits to be hoped for from a genuine union with England.

II. Home Rule as Colonial Independence.—The modern Colonial policy of England has, or is thought to have, achieved two results which impress popular imagination:—it has relieved English statesmanship from an unbearable burden of worry and anxiety; it has (as most people believe) changed Colonial unfriendliness or discontent into enthusiastic or ostentatious loyalty. Some politicians, therefore, who are anxious to terminate the secular feud between England and Ireland, and to free Parliament from the presence, and therefore from the obstructiveness, of the Home Rulers, readily assume that the formula of "Colonial independence" contains the solution of the problem how to satisfy at once the demand of Ireland for independence and the resolution of Great Britain to maintain the integrity of the Empire. This assumption rests on no sure foundation, but derives such plausibility as it possesses from the gross ignorance of the public as to the principles and habits which govern the English State system. A mere account of the constitutional relations existing between England and a self-governed colony is almost equivalent to a suggestion of the reasons which forbid the hope that the true answer to the agitation for Home Rule is to be found in conceding to Ireland institutions like those which satisfy the inhabitants of New South Wales or Victoria. To render such a statement at once brief and intelligible is no easy matter, for, among all the political arrangements devised by the ingenuity of statesmen, none can be found more singular, more complicated, or more anomalous than the position of combined independence and subordination occupied by the large number of self-governing colonies which are scattered throughout the British Empire. Victoria, which may be taken as a type of the whole class, is, for most purposes of local and internal administration, and for some purposes which go beyond the sphere usually assigned to local government, an independent, self-governing community. Victoria is at the same time, for all purposes in theory and for many purposes in fact, a merely subordinate portion of the British Empire, and as truly subject to the British Parliament as is Middlesex or the Isle of Wight.

Victoria enjoys a Constitution after the British model. The Governor, the two Houses, the Ministry, reproduce the well-known features of our limited monarchy. The Victorian Parliament further possesses in Victoria that character of sovereignty which the British Parliament possesses throughout the dominions of the Crown, and is (subject, of course, to the authority of the British Parliament itself) as supreme at Melbourne as are Queen, Lords, and Commons at Westminster. It makes and unmakes Cabinets; it controls the executive action of the Ministry; who, in their turn, are the authorized advisers of that sham constitutional monarch, the Colonial Governor. The Parliament, moreover, recognizes no restrictions on its legislative powers; it is not, as is the Congress of the United States, restrained within a very limited sphere of action; it is not, as are both the Congress and the State Legislatures of the Union, bound hand and foot by the articles of a rigid Constitution; it is not compelled to respect any immutable maxims of legislation. Hence the Victorian Parliament—in this resembling its creator, the British Parliament—exercises an amount of legislative freedom unknown to most foreign representative assemblies. It can, and does, legislate on education, on ecclesiastical topics, on the tenure of land, on finance, on every subject, in short, which can interest the Colony. It provides for the raising of Colonial forces; it may levy taxes or impose duties for the support of the Victorian administration, or for the protection of Colonial manufactures. It is not forbidden to tax goods imported from other parts of the Empire; it is not bound to abstain from passing ex post facto laws, to respect the sanctity of contracts, or to pay any regard to the commercial interests of the United Kingdom. It may alter the Constitution on which its own powers depend, and, for example, extend the franchise or remodel the Upper House. To understand the full extent of the authority possessed by the Victorian Parliament and the Victorian Ministry—which is, in fact, appointed by the Parliament—it should be noted that, while every branch of the administration (the courts, the police, and the Colonial forces) is, as in England, more or less directly under the influence or the control of the Cabinet, the Colonies have, since 1862, provided for their own defence, and, except in time of war, or peril of war, are not garrisoned by British troops.^[41] It is, therefore, no practical exaggeration to assert that Victoria is governed by its own Executive, which is appointed by its own Parliament, and which maintains order by means of the Victorian police, supported, in case of need, by Victorian soldiers. An intelligent foreigner, therefore, might reside for years in Melbourne, and conceive that the supremacy of the British Government was little more than nominal. In this he would be mistaken. But should he assert that, as to all merely Colonial matters, Victoria was in practice a self-governed and independent country, his language would not be accurate, yet his assertion would not go very wide of the truth.

The foundation of the whole scheme is the admission of the complete and unquestioned supremacy of the British Parliament throughout every portion of the royal dominions. No Colonial statesman, judge, or lawyer ever dreams of denying that Crown, Lords, and Commons can legislate for Victoria, and that a statute of the Imperial Parliament overrides every law or custom repugnant thereto, by whomsoever enacted, in every part of the Crown dominions. The right, moreover, of Imperial legislation has not fallen into disuse. Mr. Tarring^[42] enumerates from sixty to seventy Imperial statutes, extending from 7 Geo. III. c. 50 to 44 & 45 Vict. c. 69, which apply to the Colonies generally, and to this list, which might now be lengthened, must be added a large number of statutes applying to particular colonies. The sovereignty of Parliament, moreover, is formally recorded in the Colonial Laws Act, 1865 (28 & 29 Vict. cap. 63), which itself may well be termed the charter of Colonial legislative authority. This essential dogma of parliamentary sovereignty, moreover, is not proclaimed as a merely abstract principle—it is enforced by two different methods. Every court, in the first place, as well in Victoria as elsewhere throughout the British dominions, is bound to hold void, and in fact does hold void, enactments which contravene an Imperial statute, and from Colonial courts there is an appeal to the Privy Council. The Colonial Governor, in the second place, though from one point of view he is a constitutional monarch acting under the advice given him by his Ministers, bears also another and a different character. He is an Imperial official appointed by the Crown—that is, by the English Cabinet, which represents the wishes of the Imperial Parliament—and he is, as such representative of the Imperial power, bound if possible to avert the passing of any Bill, and when he cannot avert the passing, then to veto any Act of the Colonial Legislature, which is disapproved of by the Home Government as opposed either to Imperial law or to Imperial policy. Thus, a Victorian Act, even when sanctioned by the Governor, must pass through another stage before it finally becomes law. It must receive the assent of the Crown, or, in other words, the assent of the English Secretary of State for the Colonies, and unless this assent be either actually or constructively given it does not come into force.^[43] The matter to be carefully noted is that the Crown, or in other words the English Ministry, which represents the House of Commons, has, as far as law goes, complete power of controlling the legislation even of colonies like Victoria. This power is both positive and negative. If the Victorian Parliament fails to pass some enactment necessary in the opinion of the British Parliament for the safety of the Empire, then the Parliament at Westminster can pass an Act for Victoria supplying the needful provisions. If on the other hand the Victorian Legislature passes a bill, (e.g. expelling Chinese from the Colony,) which the Home Government representing the British Parliament deems opposed to Imperial interests, then the Government can either direct the Governor to refuse his assent to the law, or cause the Crown to disallow it, and thus in any case make it void. When we add to all this that there are many occasions, which we can here only allude to, on which a Colonial Governor can, and does, act so as to hinder courses of action which conflict with English interests or policy, it becomes clear enough that, as far as constitutional arrangements can secure the reality of sovereignty, the Imperial Parliament maintains its supremacy throughout the length and breadth of the British Empire. It is of course perfectly true that Parliament having once given representative institutions to a colony, does not dream of habitually overriding or thwarting Colonial legislation. But it were a gross error to suppose that Colonial recognition of British sovereignty is a mere form. It is in the main cheerfully acquiesced in by the people of Victoria, because they gain considerable prestige and no small material advantage from forming part of the Empire. They have no traditional hostility with the mother country; they have every reason to deprecate separation, and—a matter of equal consequence—they believe that if they wished for independence it would not be refused them. England stands, in short, as regards Victoria, in a position of singular advantage. She could suppress local riot, or cause it to be suppressed, and she would not try to oppose a national demand for separation. Hence a complicated political arrangement is kept in tolerable working order by a series of understandings and of mutual concessions. If either England or Victoria were not willing to give and take, the connection between England and the Colony could not last a month. The policy, in short, of Colonial independence is, like most of our constitutional arrangements, based on the assumption that the parties to it are willing to act towards one another in a spirit of compromise and good-will, and though at the present moment the pride of England in her Colonial empire, and the appreciation on the part of our colonies of the benefits, moral and material, of the supremacy of Great Britain, keep our scheme of Colonial government in working order, it is well to realize that this system is not so invariably successful as might be inferred from the optimism which naturally colours official utterances. The names of Sir Charles Darling and Sir George Bowen recall transactions which show that a community as loyal as Victoria may adopt a course of policy which meets with the disapproval of English statesmen. The recent and deliberate refusal of the citizens of Melbourne to endure the landing on their shores of informers whose evidence had procured the punishment of an outrageous crime, combined with the fact that the populace of Melbourne were abetted in a gross, indubitable, patent breach of law by Colonial Ministers who were after all, technically speaking, servants of the Crown, gives rise to serious reflection, and suggests that, even under favourable circumstances, Colonial independence is hardly consistent with that enforcement throughout the Crown's dominions of due respect for law which is the main justification for the existence of the British Empire.^[44] A student, moreover, who turns his eyes towards dependencies less favourably situated than Victoria soon perceives how great may at any moment become the difficulty of working an artificial and complicated system of double sovereignty. In Jamaica the hostility of the whites and blacks led to riot on the part of the blacks, followed by lawless suppression of riot on the part of the Governor, who represented the feelings of the whites, and the restoration of peace and order ultimately entailed the abolition of representative government. At the Cape the pressure of war at once exposed the weak part of the constitutional machine. The pretensions of the Cape Ministry to snatch from the hands of the Governor the control of the armed forces met with successful resistance; but the question then raised as to the proper relation between the Colonial Ministry and the army, though for a time evaded, is certain sooner or later to re-appear, and will not always admit of an easy or peaceable answer.^[45]

Any reader interested in my argument should supplement this brief statement of the relation actually existing between England and her self-governing colonies by a perusal of Mr. Todd's most instructive 'Parliamentary Government in the British Colonies.' But the statement, brief and colourless though it be, is sufficient for its purpose; it shows that the proposal to give to Ireland the institutions of a colony is open to two fatal objections.

1st.—The concession to Ireland of Colonial independence would entail upon England probable peril and certain disgrace.