BOOKS.

WE are disposed to think that even those who disagree with the conclusions of this book will concur in conceding its extra- ordinary lucidity, force, and dispassionateness. Indeed, on the the last head there can be no two opinions possible. Mr. Dicey presents both the arguments of his opponents and his own arguments without a trace of political passion. There is not a word in the book which the strongest Home-ruler could regard as unfair, or contemptuous, or perverse. Often the Home-rulers' view is expounded with a force far greater than that with which their own organs have presented it, though Professor Dicey weighs argument against argument, and finds an immense balance of weight in the opposite scale. Of this, at least, we are quite sure, —that Mr. Gladstone will not underrate the strength of the opponent whom he has found in Professor Dicey. The late Prime Minister has far too large and candid a mind to deny the immense value of this contribution to the discussion of the great issue, though, of course, he will attach a very different value to the arguments pro and con. from that given to them by Professor Dicey.

We are very glad that Mr. Dicey has confined his book to the discussion of England's case against Home-rule, and has entirely declined to deal with the view of those who regard Home-rule as merely a step gained towards Separation. This is a view which Mr. Gladstone and all his British followers earnestly repudiate, and which they reproach the Unionists with attri- buting to them. And it will be time enough to deal with it when any member of the party which follows Mr. Gladstone's lead shall openly advocate Home-rale as an advance towards Separation. To our minds, as we have often insisted, there is much more to be said for Separation than there is for any form of Home-rule,—a vast deal more from the Irish point of view, and a good deal more even from the British. But since with one accord the English and Scotch Home-rulers earnestly disavow any wish for Separation, and, indeed, urge their pro- posal on the express ground that it will " consolidate " the United Kingdom, it is only reasonable to treat their case as they submit it, and to discuss " England's case against Home-rule " on the assumption that Home-rule is suggested as the only legiti- mate means of preventing Separation; indeed, as the only hopeful method of stifling the wish for Separation, and substituting in its place a hearty attachment to the new system. And we are grateful to Mr. Dicey not only for putting this in the very front of his argument, but also for calling attention to the fact that there is no occasion to be ashamed of urging plainly the interest, of England as a matter of the most urgent moment. What with the talk about the expiation needed for the sins which brought about the Act of Union, and the demand that England shall reconsider the whole question of her relation to Ireland in moral sackcloth and ashes, men have shrunk from stating the English side of the question as one of plain self- interest, though it be self-interest of the highest kind, which imposes the most weighty and the most responsible duties. It is full time to recall us, as Professor Dicey does, to the recollection that "on any wide view of large public questions, expediency will be found to be only another name for justice. It can be neither the interest nor the duty of any nation to legislate in a way that produces more of suffering than of happiness." And he rightly insists that in complicated affairs involving questions both of money and of sentiment, " nothing so surely prevents quarrels as to separate in the clearest manner • England's Cass against Hosnefute. By A. V. Moly, Vineriaz Pro- fessor of Engliall Law in the University of Oxford. London: J. Money.

possible matters of business from matters of feeling." Thus to draw out the argument against Home-rule as it would affect England's interests in the clearest possible way, will not render us less likely to accord the full value to the considerations touching national sentiment, but, on the other hand, more dis- posed to weigh these considerations in their most impressive form. It may be quite right, for instance, for the Home-rulers to insist on the disgraceful way in which the Act of Union was carried for the purpose of illustrating the strength of the Irish national feeling which could only in that unworthy fashion have been overruled. But it is quite another matter to argue as if the infamy incurred by that Act could now be either lessened or washed away by repealing it. " To urge the repeal of an Act which has stood for nearly a century, because it was carried by corruption, is," says Mr. Dicey, " in the eye of reason as absurd as to question the title of modern French landowners because of the horrors of the Reign of Terror." Indeed, Mr. Gladstone himself virtually admitted as much when he contended that, the Act of Union once carried, it was the duty of English statesmen to give its provisions a fair and extended trial before raising the issue again. That contention altogether surrenders as unreasonable the sentimental view that until the wrong done by England is somehow expiated, the question of mere interest ought not to be raised.

The great strength of this book consists in its analysis and discussion of the various forms of Home-rule,—of which Mr. Dicey, rightly we think, regards the form accorded to our self- governing Colonies as, amongst dangerous experiments, the least dangerous for Ireland,—and of their applicability and inappli- cability to the relations between Great Britain and Ireland. Perhaps nothing in the book is so strong as the discussion of Federalism in its various forms, and the proof that all of them would bring the most serious dangers on the United Kingdom. As regards the example of Germany, Professor Dicey gives a very terse though brief demonstration of its complete irrelevance to the issue before us. In Germany, the Federation has arisen out of a very strong mutual attraction of independent States, and, as he says, why the fact that in Germany a number of separately constituted States, earnestly desiring a closer union, have adopted a "clumsy form of confederacy," should encourage the United Kingdom, not consisting of such independent units, but already closely united in one Kingdom, to relax the bonds and dissolve itself into a clumsy Confederacy of which the units would have to be artificially determined, it passes the wit of man to see. Besides, the very central feature of the German Confederacy is the power of the Emperor, and the weak- ness of the Confederate Parliament to which Prince Bismarck steadily refuses to concede any authority at all like that of our Parliament at Westminster. German Liberals acquiesce, as Mr. Dicey says, in the evils of personal rule, just because they are perfectly aware that without the Emperor, the unity of the Empire would soon disappear. Germany is travelling in the opposite direction to that in which it is recommended that we shall travel. Of course, we should not take a case in which the centripetal forces are rapidly overpowering the centrifugal, as our guide in a case in which the centrifugal forces are gaining fast upon the centripetal.

As to the Confederation of Austria and Hungary, Professor Dicey discusses it more at length, and sums it np thus :—

" The Austro-Hungarian system is therefore briefly this. Two separate States, each having a separate administration, a separate Parliament, and separate bodies of subjects or citizens, are each ruled by one and the same monarch ; the two portions of the monarchy are linked together mainly as regards their relation to foreign powers by an assembly of delegates from each Parliament and by a Ministry which is responsible to the Delegations alone, and which acts in regard to a limited number of matters which are of absolute necessity the common concern of the monarchy. This is the Dual system held up for our imitation. Picture it for a moment as actually existing in what is still the United Kingdom. We should have an English Ministry and an English Parliament at Westminster which had not the least authority in Ireland ; we should have an Irish Ministry and an Irish Parliament at Dublin which had not the least authority in England. Each Parliament would in point (say) of foreign policy be hampered by the superior authority of a third Parliament consisting of sixty English and sixty Irish members who sat alternately at West- minster and at Dublin to transact or perplex or obstruct the affairs common to the whole Empire. To imagine such an arrangement, to sketch out in one's fancy, for example, how the common budget decreed by the Delegations would be provided for by taxation imposed by the Irish Parliament, is enough to show that the Dual system is absolutely inapplicable to our circumstances. It could not last for a, year, and if by any miracle it did last fcr that time, the whole liritiah Empire would be reduced to omfusion or ruin. The advocates of innovation exhibit the most singular mixture of despair and hopefulness. The presence in Parliament of eighty-six Parnellites makes them despair of the British constitution, which has existed for centuries. They hope or expect that three Parliaments, in two of which these very Parnellitea, or men like them, would reappear, would harmo- niously legislate for England, Ireland, and the British Empire, and this hope is based on the alleged success of that Daal system which has not without difficulty been kept going for not quite twenty years. The alliance of scepticism and credulity, of which we have often heard in the sphere of theology, is a startling phenomenon in the province of politics."

Of course, the inapplicability of this sort of Confederacy to- the case of Ireland and Great Britain is conspicuous. To give equal weight in the Delegations to Great Britain and Ireland would be simply absurd. To give their due relative weight to the two would so completely extinguish the influence of Ireland it the joint affairs of the two countries as to render the system most irritating to the Irish. Yet Ireland would be placed in a. position to embarrass very gravely all that the United Kingdom might attempt in relation to the Empire, and at the same time- would resent more than ever the grievance of her paltry influence in the lop-sided Confederacy invented for her.

When Professor Dicey comes to the discussion of Federalism proper,—such Federalism as is found in the United States or in Switzerland,—the force of his argument to show the paralysis such federalism would bring on England is irresistible. It would be impossible, he says, to obtain again anything like the power of our present Parliamentary system. You might, if you please, call the Federal Congress by the name of the Imperial Parliament ; but you could not possibly give it the power which the Imperial Parliament actually possesses. You must divide the jurisdiction of the Federation from the juris- diction of the component States. You must have some sort of Federal Court for the purpose. You could not prevent a real loss of power in this division of jurisdictions. " Let no one fancy," he says, " that the restraint placed on the power of ordinary legislation by the authority of a Federal Court, which alone can interpret the Constitution, is a mere form which has no practical effect :"— " The following are a few of the instances in which the American, judiciary have in fact determined the limits which bound the powers,. either of Congress or of the State legislatures. The judiciary have ruled that a-State is liable to be sued in the Federal Courts ; that Congress- has authority to incorporate a bank ; that a tax imposed by Congress was an indirect tax, and therefore valid ; that the control of the- militia really and truly belongs to Congress, and not, as in effect contended by Connecticut and Massachusetts, to the governors of the eeparate States. The Federal judiciary have determined the- limits to their own jurisdiction and to that of the State Courts. The judiciary have pronounced one law after another invalid, as con- trary to some article of the constitution—e.g., either by being tainted- with the vice of ex post facto legislation, or by impairing the obligation- of contracts. These are a few examples of the mode in which a Federal Court limits all legislative authority. If any one wishes to see the extent to which the power of such a Court has gone in fact,. he should study the decisions on the Legal Tender Act, which all but overset or nullified the financial legislation of Congress during the War of Secession. If he wishes to see the effect of applying the constitution of the United States, or anything like that constitution,, to Great Britain and Ireland, he should consider what is implied in the undoubted fact that the Land Act of 1870 and the Land Act of 1881 would, whether passed by the central or by any local legislature under such a constitution, be at once treated as void, as impairing- the obligation of contracts."

Worse still, not only would such legislation as that of the Irish Land Act have been declared void under the American Consti- tution, whether it had been passed by State or by Federal legislation ; but the machinery requisite for any grave Consti- tutional change would become so cumbrous and difficult as to render it, in ordinary circumstances, impossible. Such a change could only be effected in some fashion analogous to that in which. an amendment to the American Constitution is now effected :—

" From the history and from the immobility of the constitution,. we may perceive the extent to which the existence of a Federal pact checks change, or, in other words, reform. Every institution which can lay claim to be based upon an organic law acquires a sort of sacredness. Under a system of Federalism, the Crown, the House of Peers, the Imperial Parliament itself, when transformed into a Federal Assembly, would be almost beyond the reach of change, reform, or abolition. Nor is it the Legislature of Great Britain alone which would suffer a fundamental change. The relations between the Executive and the country would undergo immense modification. The authority of the Crown might be enhanced by the establishment of a Federal Union. The King world become, in a very special sense, the representative of national or Imperial unity, and the weakening of Parliament might lead to the strengthening of the monarch. However this might be, it has, it is submitted, been now shown that Federalism would dislocate every English constitutional arrangement."

The Radicals who are so hot for the sweeping away of the

House of Lords should think three times before they ask for a form of Constitution which would render Constitutional change all but impossible.

Again, Federalism must mean reducing the central authority of our small Kingdom to a position as perilous as that of the central authority of the United States at the outbreak of the War of Secession

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" Home-rule, it is constantly said, has at least this advantage, as oompared with Irish independence, that it prevents any alliance between Ireland and a foreign enemy. This gain might tarn out rather nominal than real. Neither the United States nor France could, of course, send an Embassy to any State comprised within the British Union ; but, if war impended, they might and would attempt to gain the favour of the Irish Ministry, or the Irish Party who controlled the Irish Parliament, or exercised the authority of the local Government of Ireland. Suppose that when war was about to be proclaimed between the British Federation and France, the Irish Parliament objected to hostilities with the Preach Republic. Can it be denied that the local Parliament and the local executive could, by protests, by action, or even by inaction, give aid or comfort to the foreign enemy ? The local legislature would, in the supposed case, be aided by a minority of the central Parliament or Congress. Obstruction would go band in band with sedition. Loyalty to the Union was strong throughout the Northern States daring the War of Secession ; but the tale used certainly to be -told that had Meade been defeated at Gettysburg, the leaders of the New York democracy would have attempted to carry the State out of the Union.' Moreover, Great Britain would perhaps find it easier to control the action of an independent than of a confederated Ireland. Blockades and embargoes are, as already pointed out, modes of persuasion applicable to foreigners, but inapplicable to citizens ; the Government of the Union found it harder to check the latent dis- loyalty of South Carolina than it would have found it to deal with the open enmity of Canada. This topic is too odious and too far 'removed from the realm of practical polities, to need more than the allusion required for the completeness of my argument. Federalism, in short, would mean the weakness of Great Britain, both at home and abroad. As the head of a Confederacy, England, as the bead also of the British Empire, would meet undiminished responsibilities with greatly diminished power."

In other words, let us go back from unity to federalism, and so far from being in the position of the States, which are going forward from federalism to closer unity, we should raise up formidable centres of local patriotism at the very time when we were paralysing the central power which alone expresses the patriotism of the Kingdom as a whole.

We shall return next week to this very remarkable book, and -show how Mr. Dicey treats the Colonial solution of the problem, and that composite solution which Mr. Gladstone actually proposed.