that in the event of a war some of the states would make terms with him or secretly favour his designs.  National allegiance and local allegiance would divide and perplex the feelings of loyal citizens.  Unless the national sentiment predominated—­and it could not predominate without having had time to grow—­the federation would go to pieces at any of those crises when the interests or wishes of any of the states conflicted with the interests or wishes of the Union.  That the national sentiment could grow at all rapidly, considering the maturity of the communities which composed the Union and the differences of origin, creed, and manners which separated them, no calm observer of human nature would believe for one moment.

The American Constitution is flecked throughout with those flaws which a lawyer delights to discover and point out, and which the framers of a federal contract can only excuse by maintaining that they are inevitable.  It is true that Mr. Dicey does not even now acknowledge the success of the American Constitution to be complete.  He points out that if the “example either of America or of Switzerland is to teach us anything worth knowing, the history of these countries must be read as a whole.  It will then be seen that the two most successful confederacies in the world have been kept together only by the decisive triumph through force of arms of the central power over real or alleged State rights” (p. 192).

It is odd that such objectors do not see that the decisive triumph of the central power in the late civil war in America was, in reality, a striking proof of the success of the federation.  The armies which General Grant commanded, and the enormous resources in money and devotion from which he was able to draw, were the product of the Federal Union and of nothing else.  One of the greatest arguments its founders used in its favour was that if once established it would supply overwhelming force for the suppression of any attempt to break it up.  They did not aim at setting up a government which neither foreign malice nor domestic treason, would ever assail, for they knew that this was something beyond the reach of human endeavour.  They tried to set up one which, if attacked either from within or from without, would make a successful resistance, and we now know that they accomplished their object.  Somewhat the same answer may be made to the objection, which is supposed to have fatal applicability to the case of Ireland, that among the “special faults of federalism” is that it does not provide “sufficient protection of the legal rights of unpopular minorities,” and that “the moral of it all is that the [American] Federal Government is not able to protect the rights of individuals against strong local sentiment” (p. 194 of Mr. Dicey’s book).  He says, moreover, if I understand the argument rightly, that it was bound to protect free speech in the States because “there is not and never was a word in the Articles