But while I write these pages a more significant indication of this danger has appeared.  Mr. Gladstone’s own method of interpreting his own past utterances makes it the duty of his critics to weigh well not only his direct statements, but his suggestions; and there is, I think, no possible unfairness in construing the language of his pamphlet on the Irish Question as an intimation that he already entertains, if he does not favour, the idea of applying the Federal principle to Scotland and to Wales.[39] Federalism is the solvent which, if applied to one part of the United Kingdom, will undo the work not only of Pitt, but of Somers, of Henry VIII., and of Edward I. Meanwhile, the one prediction which may be made with absolute confidence is that Federalism would not generate that goodwill between England and Ireland which, could it be produced, would, in my judgment at least, be an adequate compensation even for the evils and the inconveniences of the Federal system.

To the view of Federalism here maintained there exist one or two objections, so obvious that without some reference to them my argument would lack completeness.

Federalism, it is urged, has succeeded in Switzerland and in America; it may, therefore, succeed in the United Kingdom.

If the general drift of my argument does not sufficiently answer this objection, two special replies lie near at hand.  In the case both of Switzerland and of America, a Federal Constitution supplied the means by which States, conscious of a common national feeling, have approached to political unity.  It were a rash inference from this fact, that when two parts of one nation are found (as must be asserted by any Home Ruler) not to be animated by a common feeling of nationality, a Federal Constitution is the proper means by which to keep them in union.  The more natural deduction from the general history of Federalism is, that a confederation is an imperfect political union, transitory in its nature, and tending either to pass into one really united State, or to break up into the different States which compose the Federation.

If, again, the example either of America or of Switzerland is to teach us anything worth knowing, the history of those 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.  General Dufour in Switzerland, General Grant and General Sherman in America, were the true interpreters and preservers of the constitutional pact.  This undoubted fact hardly suits the theories of Irish Federalists.