Confederacy and the States, and that behind all the mechanism and
artifices of the constitution there lies, however artfully concealed,
some sovereign power which must have the means both to support the
principles of the constitution and, when occasion requires, to modify
its terms. Hence almost of necessity flow some further results. Under a
federation the law of the land must be divided into constitutional laws
(or, in other words, articles of the constitution), which can be
changed, if at all, only with special difficulty, say by an appeal to
the popular vote or by a constituent assembly, and ordinary laws which
may be changed by the central Congress or by the separate assemblies of
the States. The powers both of the central Parliament and of the local
parliaments, depending as they do upon the constitutional compact, must
be limited. Neither the National Assembly of Switzerland nor the
Congress of the United States have anything like the sovereign power of
the British Parliament: the same thing is obviously true of the Cantonal
or State Assemblies. Such are, under one form or another, the essential
characteristics of a Federal Government. A confederation of which
England and Ireland formed a part would further of necessity exhibit a
feature not to be found in the United States. The authority of the
Confederacy would in reality mean the power of one State--namely, Great
Britain. No artificial distribution of the whole country into separate
States would get rid of a fact depending upon laws or facts of nature
beyond the reach of constitutional arrangements.

[Sidenote: Advantages of Federalism to England.]

It is now possible to perceive pretty clearly the relation of Federalism
to British or English interests. It would, as compared with the
independence of Ireland, present three advantages. There would not be
the same obvious and patent failure in the efforts of British