The positive characteristic is the absolute and effective authority of the Imperial Parliament throughout the length and breadth of the United Kingdom.
To this characteristic Englishmen are so accustomed that they hardly recognise its full importance. A government may make its power felt in three different ways—by the action of the Executive, including under that head all the agents of the Executive, such as the judiciary and the armed forces—by legislation—and by the levying of taxes. Take any of these tests of authority, and it will be found that the British Parliament is not only theoretically, but actually and effectively, supreme throughout the whole of Great Britain and Ireland. The Cabinet is virtually appointed by the Houses of Parliament; the army, the judges, the magistracy, all officials who throughout the country exercise executive power in any form whatever are directly or indirectly appointed by Parliament, and hold office subject to the will of Parliament. Of the legislative authority of Parliament as regards the United Kingdom it is scarcely necessary to speak. Any law affecting the United Kingdom not only lawfully may, but can in fact, be changed by the Imperial Parliament. Of the unlimited legislative authority ascribed to, and exercised by, Parliament in the United Kingdom the Home Rule Bill itself is sufficient evidence; and the Gladstonian Ministry, at any rate, see no reason why Parliament should not within the course of a few weeks remodel the fundamental laws of the realm. The right to impose taxes is historically the source of Parliamentary power, and in all matters of taxation Parliament has absolute freedom of action from one end of the United Kingdom to the other; whether the income tax is to be lowered, raised, or abolished, whether some new duty, such as the cart and wheel tax, shall be imposed, whether the United Kingdom shall maintain free trade, or return to protection, how taxes shall be raised and how they shall be spent—all matters in short connected with revenue are throughout the United Kingdom determined and determinable in the last resort by Parliament alone.
Hence, as things now stand, no kind of governmental action in any part of Great Britain and Ireland escapes Parliamentary supervision. The condition of the army, the management of the police, the misconduct of a judge, the release of a criminal, the omission to arrest a defaulting bankrupt, the pardon of a convicted dynamiter, the execution of a murderer, the interference of the police with a public meeting, or the neglect of the police to check a riot in London, in Skye, or in Tipperary, any matter, great or small, with which the executive is directly or indirectly concerned, is, if it takes place in any part of the United Kingdom, subject to stringent and incessant Parliamentary supervision, and may, at any moment, give rise to debates on which depend the fate of ministries and parties. If there be such a thing as supreme actual and effective authority, such authority is throughout the whole of the United Kingdom exercised by the Imperial Parliament, not occasionally and in theory, but every day and in the ordinary course of affairs.
This exertion of actual and effective power by the Imperial Parliament throughout the United Kingdom is a totally different thing from the supremacy or sovereignty exercised by Parliament throughout the whole British Empire. As a matter of legal theory Parliament has the right to legislate for any part of the Crown's dominions. Parliament may lawfully impose an income tax upon the inhabitants of New South Wales; it may lawfully abolish the constitution of the Canadian Dominion, just as some years ago it did actually abolish the ancient constitution of Jamaica. But though Parliament does in fact exert a certain, or rather a very uncertain, amount of power throughout the whole Empire, we all know that the Imperial Parliament neither exercises, nor claims to exercise, in a self-governing colony such as New Zealand,[7] that kind of effective authority which Parliament exercises in the United Kingdom. The Cabinet of New Zealand is not appointed at Westminster; the action of a New Zealand Ministry as regards the affairs of New Zealand is not controlled by the English Government. Not a pennyworth of taxation is imposed on the inhabitants of New Zealand, or of any colony whatever, by the Imperial Parliament. Even the imposition of customs, though it has an important bearing on the interest of the Empire, is in a self-governing colony determined by the colonial, and not by the British, Parliament. It is the Parliament of New Zealand, and not the Parliament of England, which governs New Zealand. The Imperial Parliament, though for Imperial purposes it may retain an indefinite supremacy throughout the British Empire, has, as regards self-governing colonies, renounced, for all other than Imperial purposes, executive and legislative functions. To labour this point may savour of pedantry. But the distinction insisted upon, whilst often overlooked, is of extreme importance. We risk being deceived by words. The Imperial Parliament is supreme in the United Kingdom, it is also supreme in New Zealand. But the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament is a misleading expression; it means one thing in the United Kingdom, and another thing in New Zealand or in Canada. In the United Kingdom it means the exercise of real, actual, effective and absolute authority. In New Zealand it means little more than the claim 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 absence of the federal spirit is seen in two matters which may appear of subordinate, but are in reality of primary, consequence. Every member of Parliament has always stood on a perfect equality with his fellows; the representatives of a county or of a borough, English members, Scottish members, Irish members, have hitherto possessed precisely equal rights, and have been subject to precisely the same duties. They have been sent to Parliament by different places, but, when in Parliament, they have not been the delegates of special localities; they have not been English members, or Scottish members, or Irish members, they have been simply members of Parliament; their acknowledged duty has been to consult for the interest of the whole nation; it has not been their duty to safeguard the interests of particular localities or countries. Hence until quite recent years English parties have not been formed according to sectional divisions. There has never been such a thing as an English party or a Scottish party. Up to 1832 the Scottish members were almost without exception Tories; since 1832 they have been for the most part Liberals or Radicals; they have kept a sharp eye upon Scottish affairs, but they have never formed a Scottish party. The same thing has, to a great extent, held good of the Irish members. The notion of an Irish party is a novelty, and in so far as it has existed is foreign to the spirit of our institutions. Hence further, the Cabinet has been neither in form nor in spirit a federal executive. No Premier has attempted to constitute a Ministry in which a given proportion of Irishmen or Scotchmen should balance a certain proportion of Englishmen. English politicians have as yet hardly formed the conception of an English party. Not a single Prime Minister has claimed the confidence of the country on the ground that his colleagues were, or were not, English, Scottish, or Irish. That a Premier should glory in his pure Scottish descent is an innovation; it is an innovation ominous of revolution; it betrays a spirit of disintegration. If at the moment it flatters Scottish pride, Scotchmen and Irishmen would do well to recollect that it is a certain presage of a time when some Englishman will rise to power and obtain popular support on the ground of his staunch English sympathies and of his unadulterated English blood.