There is no common form for federal contracts, and no rules describing what such a contract must contain in order that the Government may be federal and not unitarian.  There is no hard and fast line which must, under the federal system, divide the jurisdiction of the central Government from the jurisdiction of each State Government.  The way in which the power is divided between the two must necessarily depend on the traditions, manners, aims, and needs of the people of the various localities.  The federal system is not a system manufactured on a regulation model, which can be sent over the world like iron huts or steam launches, in detached pieces, to be put together when the scene of operation is reached.  Therefore I am unable to see the force of the argument that, as the conditions under which all existing federations were established differ in some respects from those under which the proposed federal union between England and Ireland would have to be established, therefore the success of these confederations, such as it is, gives them no value as precedents.  A system which might have worked very well for the New England States would not have worked well for a combination which included also the middle and southern States.  And the framers of the American Constitution were not so simple-minded as to inquire, either before beginning their labours or before ending them—­as Mr. Dicey would apparently have the English and Irish do—­whether this or that style of constitution was “the correct thing” in federalism.  Assuming that the people desired to form a nation as regarded the world outside, they addressed themselves to the task of discovering how much power the various States were willing to surrender for this purpose.  That was ascertained, as far as it could be ascertained, by assembling their delegates in convention, and discussing the wishes and fears and suggestions of the different localities in a friendly and conciliatory spirit.  They had no precedents to guide them.  There had not existed a federal government, either in ancient or modern times, whose working afforded an example by which the imagination or the understanding of the American people was likely to be affected in the smallest degree.  They, therefore, had to strike out an entirely new path for themselves, and they ended by producing an absolutely new kind of federation, which was half Unitarian, that is, in some respects a union of states, and in others a centralized government; and it was provided for a Territory one end of which was more than a month’s distance from the other.

It is not in its details, therefore, but in the manner of its construction, that the American Constitution furnishes anything in the way of guidance or suggestion to those who are now engaged in trying to find a modus vivendi between England and Ireland.  The same thing may be said of the Swiss Constitution and of the Austro-Hungarian Constitution.  Both of them contain many anomalies—­that is, things that are not set down in the books as among the essentials of federalism.  But both are adapted to the special wants of the people who live under them, and were framed in reference to those wants.