ate legislatures would
refrain, in obedience to the Constitution, from passing any law which
local sentiment strongly favoured or local convenience plainly demanded,
such as a law impairing the obligation of obnoxious contracts, or
levying duties on imports or exports. The possibility that the State
militia could ever be got to obey federal officers, or form an efficient
part of a federal army, he would have scouted. On the feebleness of the
front which federation would present to a foreign enemy he would have
dwelt with emphasis, and would have pointed with confidence to the
probability that in the event of a war some of the states would make
terms with him or secretly favour his designs. National allegiance and
local allegiance would divide and perplex the feelings of loyal
citizens. Unless the national sentiment predominated--and it could not
predominate without having had time to grow--the federation would go to
pieces at any of those crises when the interests or wishes of any of the
states conflicted with the interests or wishes of the Union. That the
national sentiment could grow at all rapidly, considering the maturity
of the communities which composed the Union and the differences of
origin, creed, and manners which separated them, no calm observer of
human nature would believe for one moment.

The American Constitution is flecked throughout with those flaws which a
lawyer delights to discover and point out, and which the framers of a
federal contract can only excuse by maintaining that they are
inevitable. It is true that Mr. Dicey does not even now acknowledge the
success of the American Constitution to be complete. He points out that
if the "example either of America or of Switzerland is to teach us
anything worth knowing, the history of these countries must be read as a
whole. It will then be seen that the two most successful confederacies
in the world have been kept together only by the decisive triumph
through force of arms of the central power over real or alleged State
rights" (p. 192).

It is odd that such objectors do not see that the decisive triumph of
the central power in the late civil war in America was, in reality, a
striking proof of the success of the federation. The armies which
General Grant commanded, and the enormous resources in money and
devotion from which he was able to draw, were the product of the Federal
Union and of nothing else. One of the greatest arguments its founders
used in