wever this might be, it has, it is
submitted, been now shown that Federalism would dislocate every English
constitutional arrangement.

_Secondly._--The changes necessitated by Federalism would all tend to
weaken the power of Great Britain. That this is so has been already to a
great degree established, in considering the mode in which Federalism
destroys the sovereignty of Parliament. But a system of Federalism would
assuredly weaken the Government quite as much as the Legislature. The
Executive, as the organ of the Federal Union, would be hampered by new
conditions utterly unknown to an English Ministry. The language of
Federalists exhibits a curious and ominous silence or ambiguity as to
the disposal of the armed forces. Is the army to be a British army, with
authority at the will of the Federal Government to enter every part of
the new Union, or is Ireland to have an independent force of her own?
This, again--and every specific criticism is open to the same
retort--may be called a detail, but it is a detail which touches the
root of the whole matter. If the Federal, that is in effect the English,
Government is to retain the same control over the whole army as at
present--if Ireland is not to have a local force under the control of
local authorities--then the language as to Irish independence used by
Irish Nationalists is singularly misleading. If, on the other hand,
order is to be maintained, or not maintained, by a native army under the
guidance of Irish commanders, then it passes the wit of man to see by
what means the rights of the central government are to be enforced in
any case of disagreement between the Imperial and the Irish Parliament.
With the memory of the Irish volunteers before his mind, an historian,
such, for example, as Mr. McCarthy, will hardly assert that the
difficulty raised is one of which he cannot conceive the existence. For
my part, I heartily join in the admiration he, no doubt, feels for the
patriots of 1782, but no man in his senses will maintain that 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