As to federalism.--All the conditions which make a federal constitution work successfully in the United States, in Switzerland, and possibly in Germany, are wanting in England and Ireland. No man till the last five or six years has even suggested that Englishmen or Scotsmen desire a federal government for its own sake. Whether Mr. Gladstone himself has any wish to federalise the whole United Kingdom is at least open to doubt. Where federalism has succeeded, it has succeeded as a means of uniting separate communities into a nation; it has not been used as a means of disuniting one State into separate nationalities. The United States, it has been well said, is a nation under the form of a federal government. Gladstonians apparently wish to bind together two, or shall we say three or four, nations, or nationalities, under the reality of a federation and the name of a United Kingdom. While all the powerful countries of the world are increasing their strength by union, the advocates of the new constitution pretend to increase the moral strength of the United Kingdom by loosening the ties of its political unity. If any one ask why federalism which has succeeded in America should not succeed in the United Kingdom, the true answer is best suggested by another question: Why would not the constitutional monarchy of England suit the United States? The answer in each case is the same. The circumstances and wants of the two countries are essentially different; and if this be not a sufficient reply, the reflection is worth making that in the three great Confederacies of the world unity has been achieved, or enforced by armed conflict.