Empire nor the Austro-Hungarian monarchy suffer inconvenience from the
looseness of the connection between the States which they each contain
is one of those assertions more easily made than proved to be true; but
supposing its truth to be, for the moment and purely for the sake of
argument, admitted, there will still be found considerable difficulty in
showing that either German Imperialism or the Dual system of
Austria-Hungary contains lessons of practical value for the guidance of
English statesmen.

What indeed is the precise inference which one is to draw from the fact
that the constitution of the German Empire leaves, for example, to
Bavaria a large amount of independence it is not very easy to
understand. The whole circumstances of the German Empire are as
different from the circumstances of Great Britain as the position of one
civilised European country can well be from the situation of another.
The salient characteristic of German history is that Germany consists of
States which until quite recently have never been politically
consolidated into a nation. The United Kingdom has for nearly a century
formed a political unit, and has now for something nearly approaching
two centuries been subject in reality if not in name to one sovereign
Parliament. The whole scheme of the Empire, with its independent or
semi-independent sovereigns, with its kings, princes, and free towns, is
something to which there is absolutely nothing to correspond in the
present condition or in the historical development of England. The
German Empire is the natural though strange growth of a special and
strange history. The sober English statesmen who advocate Home Rule
assuredly never dreamt any dream so wild as that the Imperial Federalism
of Germany could in any way be reproduced in the United Kingdom. But if
this be so, it is a little difficult to understand references to the
lessons to be drawn from the position of such countries as Bavaria. For