Government. Not a pennyworth of taxation is imposed on
the inhabitants of New Zealand, or of any colony whatever, by the
Imperial Parliament. Even the imposition of customs, though it has an
important bearing on the interest of the Empire, is in a self-governing
colony determined by the colonial, and not by the British, Parliament.
It is the Parliament of New Zealand, and not the Parliament of England,
which governs New Zealand. The Imperial Parliament, though for Imperial
purposes it may retain an indefinite supremacy throughout the British
Empire, has, as regards self-governing colonies, renounced, for all
other than Imperial purposes, executive and legislative functions. To
labour this point may savour of pedantry. But the distinction insisted
upon, whilst often overlooked, is of extreme importance. We risk being
deceived by words. The Imperial Parliament is supreme in the United
Kingdom, it is also supreme in New Zealand. But the supremacy of the
Imperial Parliament is a misleading expression; it means one thing in
the United Kingdom, and another thing in New Zealand or in Canada. In
the United Kingdom it means the exercise of real, actual, effective and
absolute authority. In New Zealand it means little more than the claim
to regulate matters of a distinctly and exclusively Imperial character.
The distinction is vital. The essential feature of the English
constitution is the actual and direct government of the whole United
Kingdom by the Parliament at Westminster. No change could be more
fundamental than a change which, in England, Scotland, or Ireland,
reduced this actual authority to the ultimate or reserved sovereignty
exercised, or rather claimed, by Parliament in Canada or in New Zealand.

The negative characteristic of the English constitution is the absence
of federalism or of the federal spirit.

The spirit of institutions is as important as their form, and the spirit
of English Parliamentary government has always been a spirit of unity.

The fundamental conditions of federal government are well known. They
are first the existence of States such as the Cantons of Switzerland or
the States of Germany, which are capable of bearing in the eyes of their
inhabitants an impress of common nationality, and next the existence
among the inhabitants of the federalised country of a very peculiar
sentiment, which may be described as the desire for political union
without the desire for political unity.[8] This conditi