78 TRANSACTIONS. I9OI-2 



At the time of the outbreak of tlie American Revohi- 

 tion the United States, though confederated, did not constitute 

 a Stale becau'-e the central Government had no direct relat- 

 ions with the people, no power to enforce its decrees, and was 

 therefore dependent up >n the assistance of the several State 

 governments to carry out its policy. But by the con-titutional 

 change of 1789 the character of a true State was impressed 

 upon the Union, which it has ever since maintained. 



The Dominion of Canada has a constitution more favour- 

 able to national solidarity than that of the United States of 

 America, seeing that all the unnamed sovereign powers are 

 vested in the federal authority — the very converse of the pro- 

 visions of the American constitution in regard to undefined 

 political powers ; but of course Canada is not an independent 

 State. Yet, with such a constitution, she is splendidly 

 equipped for becoming an integral part of the mighty pan- 

 Britannic State that is to be. 



I am sure the practical lawyer, who is above all things 

 opposed to decking out the plain facts of legal science with 

 bizarre costumes from the wardrobe of pure theoretics, will 

 approve my resolve not to leave this part of my subject 

 withoat recording my opinion of the futility, to say the least, 

 of the attempts ot such thinkers as Herbert Spencer, in 

 England, Von Stein and Schafifle in Germany, and Proudhon 

 in France, to treat society as an actual, living organism. 

 According to the ingenious Schaffle (r) there is a very close 

 analogy, both physiologically and psychologically, between 

 society and the human individual. Other German writers 

 have made the comparison still more intimate, and have 

 likened the function of the State in relation to Society to that 

 of the brain in the human body To appreciate the absurdity 

 of the more general parallel, namely, that between the human 

 being and the State, is to remember that, granting the lattrr 

 could be treated as a true organism — a biological hypothesis 

 which I stoutly deny — Man is more than an organism. He, 



(1) See his Bau unci Leben des Socialen Korpers, passim. 



