FEDERAL SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT. 483 



that phrase advancement in intellect, in virtue and in practical 

 pctivity and efficiency- and partly of the degree of perfection with 

 which they organise the moral, intellectual and active worth 

 already existing, so as to operate with the greatest effect on public 

 affairs. A government is to be judged by its action upon men, 

 and by its action upon things ; by what it makes of the citizens, 

 and what it does with them. . . . Government is at once a 

 great influence acting on the human mind, and a set of organised 

 arrangements for public business." 



If I may venture to paraphrase the passage I have quoted, 

 for my own purposes, I would suggest that any good form of govern- 

 ment must serve two purposes. First, it must be such as to induce 

 in individual citizens a high degree of active interest in the conduct 

 of public affairs and a keen sense of public responsibility. Second, 

 it must allow of a clear expression of the will of the community, and 

 the ready and effective translation of that will into action. These 

 two things are, of course, intimately connected, but it will be con- 

 venient for my purposes to consider them separately. It must be 

 borne in mind, of course, that in formulating this test, I am speaking 

 only of the form or structure of the governmental machine. The 

 character of the interest or of the will referred to, is a matter which 

 has to do rather with the policy than with the form of a govern- 

 ment. 



Historically, the Federal system, as every student of political 

 history knows, has always been adopted as a device to meet a par- 

 ticular set of political conditions. It is not, nor does it claim to be, 

 an ideally perfect system of government. There is probably no 

 Federal Constitution for which the authors would claim any higher 

 merit than that of being the best obtainable in the particular time 

 and place for which they were legislating. The case to which it has 

 been applied has always been the case of a collection of neighbouring 

 states, incapable of. or unprepared for. complete union which never- 

 theless desire common action for certain limited purposes. 



" It must be remembered," says Freeman in his "History of 

 Federal Government in Greece and Italy," " that of all political 

 systems in the world, the Federal Republic is the last which it would 

 be prudent in its admirers to preach up as the one political system 

 to be adopted in all times and places." The passage affords such 

 an admirable exposition of the historical conditions under which 

 the Federal system may be appropriately adopted that I cannot do 

 better than quote the whole of it. 



"It is a system eminently suited for some circumstances, eminently 

 unsuited for others. Federalism is in its place whenever it appears in the 

 form of closer union. Europeans accustomed to a system of large consoli- 

 dated States are apt to look upon a Federal system as a system of disunion, 

 and therefore a system of weakness. To a Greek of the third century B.C. 

 to an American in 1787 it presented itself as a system of union, and there- 

 fore of strength. The alternative was not closer union but wider separa- 

 tion. A kingdom of Peloponni.sos or of America was an absurdity too 

 great to be thought of. A single consolidated republic was almost equally 

 out of the question. The real question was — Shall these cities, these States, 

 remain utterly isolated, perhaps hostile to one another, at most united by 



