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 dee