ny one wishes to see the extent to which the
power of such a Court has gone in fact, he should study the decisions on
the Legal Tender Act, which all but overset or nullified the financial
legislation of Congress during the War of Secession. If he wishes to see
the effect of applying the constitution of the United States, or
anything like that constitution, to Great Britain and Ireland, he should
consider what is implied in the undoubted fact that the Land Act of 1870
and the Land Act of 1881 would, whether passed by the central or by any
local legislature under such a constitution, be at once treated as void,
as impairing the obligation of contracts. If I am told that we might
adopt Federalism without adopting the details of the American
constitution, my reply is, not only that the remark comes awkwardly from
innovators who wish to place Ireland in the position of Massachusetts,
but that the very gist of my argument is that the existence of some
arbiter (whether it be named Crown, Council, or Court), who may decide
whether the constitution has or has not been violated, is of the essence
of Federalism, while the existence of such an arbiter absolutely
destroys the sovereignty of Parliament. Nor do the inferences to be
drawn from the action of the Federal Court, and a study of the American
constitution as it actually exists, end here. In the decisions of the
Court we may trace the rise of question after question--that is, of
conflict after conflict--as to the respective rights of the Federation
and the individual States. From the history and from the immobility of
the constitution, we may perceive the extent to which the existence of a
Federal pact checks change, or, in other words, reform. Every
institution which can lay claim to be based upon an organic law acquires
a sort of sacredness. Under a system of Federalism, the Crown, the House
of Peers, the Imperial Parliament itself, when transformed into a
Federal Assembly, would be almost beyond the reach of change, reform, or
abolition. Nor is it the Legislature of Great Britain alone which would
suffer a fundamental change. The relations between the Executive and the
country would undergo immense modification. The authority of the Crown
might be enhanced by the establishment of a Federal Union. The King
would become, in a very special sense, the representative of national or
Imperial unity, and the weakening of Parliament might lead to the
strengthening of the monarch. Ho