illustration with which Mr. Dicey supports this thesis. But
unfortunately the arguments by which he assails Irish federalism might
be, or might have been, used against all federations whatever. They
might have been used, as I shall try to show, against the most
successful of them all, the Government of the United States. I was
reminded, while reading Mr. Dicey's account of the impossibility of an
Anglo-Irish federation, of Mr. Madison's rehearsal in the _Federalist_
(No. 38) of the objections made to the Federal Constitution after the
Convention had submitted it to the States. These objections covered
every feature in it but one; and that, the mode of electing the
President, curiously enough, is the only one which can be said to have
utterly failed. A more impressive example of the danger of _a priori_
attacks on any political arrangement, history does not contain. Mr.
Madison says: "This one tells me that the proposed Constitution ought to
be rejected, because it is not a confederation of the states, but a
government over individuals. Another admits that it ought to be a
government over individuals to a certain extent, but by no means to the
extent proposed. A third does not object to the government over
individuals, or to the extent proposed, but to the want of a bill of
rights. A fourth concurs in the absolute necessity of a bill of rights,
but contends that it ought to be declaratory not of the personal rights
of individuals, but of the rights reserved to the states in their
political capacity. A fifth is of opinion that a bill of rights of any
sort would be superfluous and misplaced, and that the plan would be
unexceptionable but for the fatal power of regulating the times and
places of election. An objector in a large state exclaims loudly against
the unreasonable equality of representation in the Senate. An objector
in a small state is equally loud against the dangerous inequality in the
House of Representatives. From one quarter we are alarmed with the
amazing expense, from the number of persons who are to administer the
new government. From another quarter, and sometimes from the same
quarter, on another occasion the cry is that the Congress will be but
the shadow of a representation, and that the government would be far
less objectionable if the number and the expense were doubled. A patriot
in a state that does not import or export discerns insuperable
objections against the power of direct taxation. The patrio