g characteristics of an imperial union are, that it
consists of an aggregate of communities, one of which is dominant, and
that the component communities have been brought into association, not
by arrangement between themselves, but by colonization, cession, and by
other means emanating from the resources or power of the dominant
community.

The above-mentioned distinction between a Government having communities
only for its subjects, and incapable of enforcing its orders by any
other means than war, and a Government acting directly on individuals,
must be constantly borne in mind, for in this lies the whole difference
between a confederate and federal union; that is to say, between a
confederacy which, in the case of the United States, lasted a few short
years, and a federal union which, with the same people as subjects, has
lasted nearly a century, and has stood the strain of the most terrible
war of modern times.

The material features of the Constitution of the United States have been
explained in a previous article.[61] All that is necessary to call to
mind here is, that the Government of the United States exercises a power
of taxation throughout the whole Union by means of its own officers, and
enforces its decrees through the medium of its own Courts. A Supreme
Court has also been established, which has power to adjudicate on the
constitutionality of all laws passed by the Legislature of the United
States, or of any State, and to decide on all international questions.

Switzerland was till 1848 an example of a confederate union or league of
semi-independent States, which, unlike other confederacies, had existed
with partial interruptions for centuries. This unusual vitality is
attributed by Mill[62] to the circumstance that the confederate
government felt its weakness so strongly that it hardly ever attempted
to exercise any real authority. Its present government, finally settled
in 1874, but based on fundamental laws passed in 1848, is a federal
union formed on the pattern of the American Constitution. It consists of
a federal assembly comprising two Chambers--the Upper Chamber composed
of forty-four members chosen by the twenty-two cantons, two for each
canton; the Lower consisting of 145 members chosen by direct election at
the rate of one deputy for every 20,000 persons. The chief executive
authority is deputed to a federal council consisting of seven members
elected for three years by the federal assembly,