England, Scotland, and Ireland, would bear to the whole union the same relation which Virginia and New York bear to the United States; they would bear towards each other the same relation which Virginia bears to New York, or which they both bear towards Massachusetts.  Such a constitution has, it must be at once admitted, no necessary connection with Republicanism.  The King or Queen of England for the time being would occupy the position of a hereditary president; this arrangement would, as Mr. Butt seems to have perceived, increase rather than diminish the authority of the Crown.  It must, on the other hand, be noted that Federalism necessarily involves the formation of a new constitution, not for Ireland only, but for the whole of the United Kingdom.  It is necessary to insist upon this point.  For half the fallacies of the arguments for Home Rule rest upon the idea that Home Rule is a matter affecting Ireland alone.  ‘Irish Federalism,’ the title of a pamphlet by Mr. Butt, is a term involving something like self-contradiction.  The misnomer is curious and full of instruction.

Whoever wishes to understand the relation of Federalism to the English Constitution and to English interests must give some attention to the nature of a Federal Union.

[Sidenote:  Characteristics of Federalism.]

A Federal constitution must, from its very nature, be marked by the following characteristics.

It must, at any rate in modern days, be a written constitution, for its very foundation is the “Federal pact” or contract; the constitution must define with more or less precision the respective powers of the central government, and of the State governments of the central legislature and of the local legislatures; it must provide some means (e.g., reference to a popular vote) for bringing into play that ultimate sovereign power which is able to modify or reform the constitution itself; it must provide some arbiter, be it Council, Court, or Crown, with authority to decide whether the Federal pact has been observed; it must institute some means by which the principles of the constitution may be upheld, and the decrees of the arbiter or Court be enforced against the resistance (if need be) of one or more of the separate States.  These are not the accidents but the essential features of any Federal constitution; and are found under the constitution of the Canadian Dominion and of the Swiss Confederacy, no less than under the constitution of the United States.  They all depend on the simple, but often neglected fact, that a Federal constitution implies an elaborate distribution and definition of political powers; that it is from its very nature a compromise between the claims of rival authorities, the Confederacy and the States, and that behind all the mechanism and artifices of the constitution there lies, however artfully concealed, some sovereign power which must have the means both to support the principles of the constitution