eration is reached. Therefore I am unable to see the force of the
argument that, as the conditions under which all existing federations
were established differ in some respects from those under which the
proposed federal union between England and Ireland would have to be
established, therefore the success of these confederations, such as it
is, gives them no value as precedents. A system which might have worked
very well for the New England States would not have worked well for a
combination which included also the middle and southern States. And the
framers of the American Constitution were not so simple-minded as to
inquire, either before beginning their labours or before ending them--as
Mr. Dicey would apparently have the English and Irish do--whether this
or that style of constitution was "the correct thing" in federalism.
Assuming that the people desired to form a nation as regarded the world
outside, they addressed themselves to the task of discovering how much
power the various States were willing to surrender for this purpose.
That was ascertained, as far as it could be ascertained, by assembling
their delegates in convention, and discussing the wishes and fears and
suggestions of the different localities in a friendly and conciliatory
spirit. They had no precedents to guide them. There had not existed a
federal government, either in ancient or modern times, whose working
afforded an example by which the imagination or the understanding of the
American people was likely to be affected in the smallest degree. They,
therefore, had to strike out an entirely new path for themselves, and
they ended by producing an absolutely new kind of federation, which was
half Unitarian, that is, in some respects a union of states, and in
others a centralized government; and it was provided for a Territory one
end of which was more than a month's distance from the other.

It is not in its details, therefore, but in the manner of its
construction, that the American Constitution furnishes anything in the
way of guidance or suggestion to those who are now engaged in trying to
find a _modus vivendi_ between England and Ireland. The same thing may
be said of the Swiss Constitution and of the Austro-Hungarian
Constitution. Both of them contain many anomalies--that is, things that
are not set down in the books as among the essentials of federalism. But
both are adapted to the special wants of the people who live under them,
and were frame