FOOTNOTES:
[2] There are one or two other rather curious uses of the word “imperial” with regard to weights and measures, which it cannot be supposed had any reference to India or the colonies.
[3] See an article by Mr. Forster in the Nineteenth Century for February, 1885, from which I have made some extracts.
[4] This is historically true of the Achaian cities, of the Swiss cantons (in 1848), and of the original American States. All these really did cede certain powers and keep others. Of the American States admitted since the acceptance of the Federal Constitution by all the original States, it is not historically true, but it is true by a legal fiction. Massachusetts really ceded certain powers to the Union. Missouri never did, as a historical fact; but it did so by a legal fiction when it was admitted to the same rights and the same obligations as Massachusetts.
[5] The second union of Greek cities under the headship of Athens comes nearest to such a change; but it is not a real precedent. The cities which formed the second Athenian alliance had once been subjects of Athens; but, when the second alliance was formed, they were subjects of Athens no longer; they entered the union as independent states. And the union was not really a federation, but only a close alliance. Moreover, before very long, Athens was at war with her own allies.
[6] When I wrote this a year ago, I did not foresee that the question of Home Rule would become an immediately practical one before the question of Imperial Federation.
[7] I am speaking here of political position, not of political power, still less of extent of territory or population. Bern is small, New York is great; but the political position of the two is the same; each is the greatest member of an equal confederation. And that political position is higher than that of any British colony, even though the Legislature of the colony may actually have, as in some cases it has, greater powers than the Legislature of the American State or Swiss canton. For the greater powers of the colony are mere grants from a higher authority; they are bestowed by royal charter or by Act of Parliament. But the smaller powers of the American State or Swiss canton are the inherent powers of an independent state. They are those powers which an independent state kept to itself and did not cede to the federal authority.
[8] The use of the word Congress for the Federal Assembly of the United States is a curious instance of the survival of a word when the thing expressed by it has wholly changed its nature. Up to 1789 the United States had a body which had naturally borrowed the name of Congress from the diplomatic gatherings with which it had much in common. In 1789 this mere Congress gave way to a real Federal Parliament. But the Federal Parliament kept the name of the imperfect institution which it supplanted.
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