the units have power unqualified to alter their laws as well as to preserve them. And the range of their exclusive authority is far wider than that of the Canadian Provinces. A striking exemplification of this is the fact that Australian and American units have every power which is not expressly taken from them, and given to the Central Government: in Canada the Central Government has every power which is not expressly conceded to the units. In the case of South Africa, Canada and Australia, of course, we have to reckon with the possibility of Imperial legislative interference. It is the fashion to dismiss this possibility. But it is important in two ways. It may be invoked by the Colonies as a deus ex machinà, or substitute for revolution, when the rigidity of the federal constitution is felt as a clog. And it is by no means certain that it might not be exercised under the plea of Imperial interests, especially if these were identified with those of the English working-man.

America remains a true Federal type. But it is a type with a strong tendency to revert to simple central government. Professor Dicey has suggested that the American people do not care about State Rights. Whether that be so or not, the modern State of the Union, without any very remarkable history or cohesion, is indeed scarcely a thing which anybody can be enthusiastic about. The enthusiasm of an American, especially since the Civil War, is clearly, and perhaps properly, for America, and not for Kansas or Vermont. The old sentiment of locality, which the Federal constitution was framed to gratify, received its quietus in the Civil War. It is as romantic now as Jacobitism. Everybody admires it and nobody believes in it.

It is in Switzerland that the Federal system is at its most perfect development. And Switzerland is a small country a country of really vivid local life. The cantons fulfil the "Localist" canon of self-knowledge with something of an approach to completeness. Zurich and Berne have

each half-a-million of population: Unterwalden-le-Bas has 13,000, and ten cantons have on an average 27,000 a-piece. That is, no canton in Switzerland has more than an English town: many have less than a small town.

It is arguable that Federation meets with peculiarly favourable conditions in Switzerland, which it could not enjoy in the British Isles. But we may fairly point to the example of the German Empire before 1807. The Holy Roman Empire was a tremendous instrument for good. If it did not entirely prevent war between ambitious states within its orbit, it did undoubtedly go far to substitute law for force. At the same time it fostered a local individuality which gave us the memorable culture of Weimar, of Leipsic, and of Münich. Its great defect was the besetting sin of Federalism — over-legalism. "owleries" of the Aula are the constant butt of Carlyle's irony. It was not because Frederic II was, in Austin's tiresome phrase, "in the habit of beating its armies," that the Empire fell, but because its "wiggeries" failed, as they deserved to fail, to keep the armies of the Empire together.

The

There are three dangers which that great authority, Professor Dicey, considers attend Federalism. These are weakness, legalism, and undue conservatism. There is not the slightest inherent reason why a Federal constitution should be the cause either of weakness or backwardness. Both these defects, when they do occur, flow directly from legalism; from the attempt to cast the structure of Federalism into a forensic mould. This is the real and pressing, though the accidental, danger of Federalism. A political organisation must be rooted in deep understandings and postulates, in their nature incapable of being once and for all expressed in black and white formulæ. Lawyers will tell you that the English Bench is seen at its worst in the interpretation of a Statute. Internationalists like Von Bar

proclaim that International law cannot trust its development to the interpretation of treaties. It is the old story of the delusive advantages of the letter that killeth. What is needed for the establishment of a Federal system is the Federal spirit. What is wanted is a general conviction of the limits which separate the spheres of the central and local powers. To catalogue them is not enough. Items will run into each other. If you give the military to the central power and commerce to the local, what is to happen when a question of army trade, or apprentice enlistment, arises?

For a real Federalism, the elaborate cataloguing of powers is out of the question. The Federal compact must be written in the minds and consciences of all the people. It must be engraven on the fleshy tablets of their heart. And if this is to be the case, it must be a simple one. In the case of the States of Europe, I have elsewhere suggested1 that the preservation of the peace, on whatever provocation short of invasion, is the sole article on which a Federation could be at present established. For so much, I think, Europe is ripe. But if we turn to the case of the United Kingdom (leaving out for the moment the Colonies and India), we find a clear possibility of leaving a great deal to the Central Government, which already has all. The one thing which must not be done is to reserve the power of the Central Parliament in all matters. That would prevent the Federation from being a Federation at all; unless it were, and were known to be, a dead letter. To be members of a Federation, the local units must have complete sovereignty in some departments of government, however few. Of course, complete constitutional sovereignty is meant. International sovereignty is another thing. To invest Ireland, Ulster, Scotland, and Wales, with seats in the family of nations, would be almost too good to be 1 International Law. (London: J. Murray. 1909.)

true. To the eye of the foreigner, Britain must remain one undivided whole.

Too great care, then, cannot be taken in providing that the Federal compact shall not be a legal document, subject to forensic interpretation and forensic dispute. On the contrary, it must be a diplomatic instrument, resting for its sanction on the common conviction of the whole people, and subject as regards disputed details to the give and take of diplomacy, and not to the special pleading and chicanery of Courts of law. It follows as a corollary that no Federal tribunal ought to exist. Logically, it is quite impossible to justify the existence of Federal tribunals as impartial mediators between the local and the central authorities. If the local Courts are too local, then by exact parity of reasoning, the Federal Courts are too central. If a supreme Court is desired at all, as an institution interposed between the localities and the Federation, it should evidently be neither local nor central. And this is impossible. Unless a foreign tribunal is invoked, it is obvious that any Court which is not local must have a Federal character. Nor is any such supreme common tribunal necessary. Its existence at once swamps the Constitution in a sea of logic-chopping, disastrous to statesmanship. We get such phenomena as we observe with respectful astonishment in America, where it is held constitutional to interfere with miners and not with bakerswhere it is constitutional to forbid a woman to work and unconstitutional to impose an income tax-where a bale of goods is under one system of law in the warehouse and under another in the shop: in short, such delightful perplexities as arise under our own Food and Drugs Acts and Workmen's Compensation Acts. These puerilities must at all costs be kept out of high politics.

The very theory of judicial impartiality and impeccability, which is used to acclaim the Federal tribunal, cuts both

ways. It equally justifies the local Courts as fit to pronounce on all questions of law. To meet the case of conflicts such as must arise when Courts take different views, we want statesmanship and diplomacy-not more litigation. In the United Kingdom such a possibility might well be avoided. Scotland only accepts the judicial decisions of the House of Lords because it has been customary to do so during a long period of some two centuries. There is no legal process by which a party can directly enforce a decision of the House, in any part of the three Kingdoms-except, conceivably, by the extraordinary process of arbitrary committal. Any question which might arise under a Federal system might quite well be determined finally, so far as the law was concerned, by the Courts of the several Kingdoms. Adjustment of the law could be brought about by friendly accommodation,

At any rate, an omnipotent Federal Court composed of a limited number of lawyers must never be left to pronounce finally on the terms of the Federal compact. It is forgotten that for a hundred years England and Scotland were virtually a Federation, without a Federal Court. While James I and Charles II were kings, England and Scotland were in truth a Federation (though not, I think, for long an International Federation), of the kind technically called a "personal union," having resigned the power of making war upon one another, and of treating one another's subjects as aliens.

It is very hard to define what should be the powers of local divisions of these Islands; and a close adherence to the Federal models which exist would be a great mistake. These have all grown up by the coming together of separate communities, which have resigned a greater or smaller part of their cherished independence (generally more than necessity required) for the sake of mutual help. In our case, Federation would come about by the reverse process. Conglomerated communities which are getting in each other's way would receive a measure of independence