o India instead of minding their own very sufficiently
exacting business.

The Federal Council would be, we may suppose, deliberative and
executive, but we have not been told whence its executive would be
taken. If from its own members, then London (if that is to be the seat
of the Federal Government) would see not only two legislatures, but
two cabinets, because it would certainly happen that the Federal
Council would constantly give its confidence to men sent to it from
the colonies, and not having seats in the British Parliament. In that
case the mother of parliaments would sink into the condition of a
state legislature, though the contributions of Great Britain would
certainly be many times larger than those of all the colonies put
together. If, on the contrary view, Great Britain were to take the
lead in the Council, to shape its policy, and to furnish its
ministers, can anybody doubt that the same resentment and sense of
grievance which was in old times directed against the centralisation
of the Colonial Office, would instantly revive against the
centralisation of the new Council?

Nobody has explained what is to be the sanction of any decree, levy,
or ordinance of the Federal Council; in other words, how it would deal
with any member of the Confederacy who should refuse to provide money
or perform any other act prescribed by the common authority of the
Bund. If anybody supposes that England, for instance, would send a
fleet to Canada to collect ship-money in the name of the Federal
Council, it would be just as easy to imagine her sending a fleet in
her own name. Nothing can be more absurd than any supposition of that
kind, except the counter-supposition that no confederated state would
ever fail to fall cheerfully in with the requirements of the rest of
them. Mr. Forster has an earnest faith that the union would work well,
but that does not prevent him from inserting a possible proviso or
understanding that 'any member of the Federation, either the mother
country or any of its children, should have an acknowledged right to
withdraw from the mutual alliance on giving reasonable notice.' No
doubt such a proviso would be essential, but if a similar one had
been accepted in America after the election of President Lincoln, the
American Union would have lasted exactly eighty years, and no more.
The catastrophe was prevented by the very effective sanction which the
Federalists proved themselves to possess in reserve.