to regulate matters of a distinctly and exclusively Imperial character.
The distinction is vital. The essential feature of the English
constitution is the actual and direct government of the whole United
Kingdom by the Parliament at Westminster. No change could be more
fundamental than a change which, in England, Scotland, or Ireland,
reduced this actual authority to the ultimate or reserved sovereignty
exercised, or rather claimed, by Parliament in Canada or in New Zealand.

The negative characteristic of the English constitution is the absence
of federalism or of the federal spirit.

The spirit of institutions is as important as their form, and the spirit
of English Parliamentary government has always been a spirit of unity.

The fundamental conditions of federal government are well known. They
are first the existence of States such as the Cantons of Switzerland or
the States of Germany, which are capable of bearing in the eyes of their
inhabitants an impress of common nationality, and next the existence
among the inhabitants of the federalised country of a very peculiar
sentiment, which may be described as the desire for political union
without the desire for political unity.[8] This condition of opinion
leads to a division of powers between the federal or national government
and the States. Whatever concerns the nation as a whole is placed under
the control of the federal power.

All matters which are not primarily of common interest remain in the
hands of the States. Now each of these conditions upon which federalism
rests has, as a matter of history, been absolutely unknown to the people
of England. In uniting other countries to England they have
instinctively aimed at an incorporative not at a federal union. This