But, even if it be comparatively easy thus to fix upon the organs of sovereignty in a unitary state, what shall we say of a federal state? How apply our analysis to that? One is tempted to declare, with Dr. Merkel, of Strassburg, that federal states give direct contradiction of fact to prevailing theories respecting the necessity for unity of power, indivisibility of sovereignty. Here, as he says, we have organs and authorities in possession of powers exclusively their own, for the furtherance of functions necessary to the ends of the state as a whole, existing side by side with organs also in full possession of powers exclusively their own, for the furtherance of the local and special functions of the member states. We know, moreover, that these two sets of organs are in fact co-ordinate; that the powers of the states were not derived from the federal authority, were even antecedent to the powers of the federal government, and historically quite independent of them. And yet no one who ponders either the life or the formal structure of a federal state can fail to perceive that there is, after all, an essential unity in it, the virtual creation of a central sovereignty. The constituent act--the manner in which the government was created--can, I conceive, have nothing to do with our analysis in this matter. The way in which the federal state came into existence is immaterial to the question of sovereignty within it after it has been created. Originative life and action, the characteristic attributes of sovereignty, come after that. Character and choice are postponed to birth, sovereignty to the creation of the body politic. The constituent act creates a thing capable of exercising sovereignty. After the creative law has done its part, by whatever process, then the functions of independent life begin. Thereafter, in all federal states, even the amendment of the fundamental law becomes an organic act, depending, practically without exception, upon the initiative of the chief originative organ of the federal state. Confederations are here out of the question. They are, of course, associations of sovereigns. In the federal state self-determination with respect to their law as a whole has been lost by the member states. They cannot extend, they cannot even determine, their own powers conclusively without appeal to the federal authorities. They are unquestionably subject to a political superior. They are fused, subordinated, dominated. Though they do not exercise their powers by virtue of delegation, though their powers are indeed inherent and in a very important sense independent, they are yet inferior to a body whose own powers are in reality self-determined, however much that self-determination may be hedged about and clogged by the forms of the fundamental federal law. They are still states, because their powers are original and inherent, not derivative; because their political rights are not also legal duties; and because they