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.