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It is not in its details, therefore, but in the manner of its construction, that the American Constitution furnishes anything in the way of guidance or suggestion to those who are now engaged in trying to find a modus vivendi between England and Ireland. The same thing may be said of the Swiss Constitution and of the Austro-Hungarian Constitution. Both of them contain many anomalies–that is, things that are not set down in the books as among the essentials of federalism. But both are adapted to the special wants of the people who live under them, and were framed in reference to those wants.

The Austro-Hungarian Delegations are another exception to the rule. These Delegations undoubtedly control the ministry of the Empire, or at all events do in practice displace it by their votes. It is made formally responsible to them by the Constitution. All that Mr. Dicey can say to this is that “the real responsibility of the Ministry to the Delegations admits of a good deal of doubt,” and that, at all events, it is not like the responsibility of Mr. Gladstone or Lord Salisbury to the British Parliament. This may be true, but the more mysterious or peculiar it is the better it illustrates the danger of speaking of any particular piece of machinery or of any particular division of power as an essential feature of a federal constitution.

We are told by the critics of the Gladstonian scheme that federalism is not “a plan for disuniting the parts of a united state.” But whether it is or not once more depends on circumstances. Federalism, like the British or French Constitution, is an arrangement intended to satisfy the people who set it up by gratifying some desire or removing some cause of discontent. If that discontent be due to unity, federalism disunites; if it be due to disunion, federalism unites. In the case of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, for instance, it clearly is a “plan for disuniting the parts of a united state.” Austria and Hungary were united in the sense in which the opponents of Home Rule use the word for many years before 1867, but the union did not work, that is, did not produce moral as well as legal unity. A constitution was therefore invented which disunites the two countries for the purposes of domestic legislation, but leaves them united for the purposes of foreign relations. This may be a queer arrangement. Although it has worked well enough thus far, it may not continue to work well, but it does work well now. It has succeeded in converting Hungary from a discontented and rebellious province and a source of great weakness to Austria into a loyal and satisfied portion of the Empire. In other words, it has accomplished its purpose. It was not intended to furnish a symmetrical piece of federalism. It was intended to conciliate the Hungarian people. When therefore the professional federal architects make their tour of inspection and point out to the Home Ruler what flagrant departures from the correct federal model the Austro-Hungarian Constitution contains, how improbable it is that so enormous a structure can endure, and how, after all, the Hungarians have not got rid of the Emperor, who commands the army and represents the brute force of the old regime, I do not think he need feel greatly concerned. This may be all true, and yet the Austro-Hungarian federalism is a valuable thing. It has proved that the federal remedy is good for more than one disease, that it can cure both too much unity and too little. The truth is that there are only two essentials of a federal government. One is an agreement between the various communities who are to live under it as to the manner in which the power is to be divided between the general and local governments; the other is an honest desire on the part of all concerned to make it succeed. As a general rule, whatever the parties agree on and desire to make work is likely to work, just as a Unitarian government is sure to succeed if the people who live under it determine that it shall succeed. If a federal plan be settled in the only right way, by amicable and mutually respectful discussion between representative men, all the more serious obstacles are certain to be revealed and removed. Those which are not brought to light by such discussions are pretty sure to be comparatively trifling, and to disappear before the general success of arrangement. But by a “mutually respectful discussion” I mean discussion in which good faith and intelligence of all concerned are acknowledged on both sides.