Imperial expenditure, with foreign affairs, with peace and war, with other matters placed within its competence; on every other point the British Congress would, like the American Congress, be powerless. Nor would all the powers taken from the Congress be necessarily given to the local assemblies. Every analogy points the other way. If the example of the United States is to be followed, articles of the constitution would limit the power both of the Imperial Congress and of the local representative assemblies. This limitation of authority could not be measured by what appears on the face of the constitution. Some council, tribunal, or other arbiter--let us, for the sake of simplicity, call it the Federal Court--would have authority to determine whether a law was or was not constitutional, or, in other words, whether it was or was not a law. Let no one fancy that the restraint placed on the power of ordinary legislation by the authority of a Federal Court; which alone can interpret the constitution, is a mere form which has no practical effect. The history of the United States is on this point decisive. De Tocqueville, Story, and Kent are far safer and better instructed guides than authors who "cannot conceive how any conflict of authority could arise which could not be easily settled by argument, by conference, by gradual experience;" and who seem to hold that to deny the existence of a difficulty is the same thing as providing for its removal The following are a few of the instances in which the American judiciary have in fact determined the limits which bound the powers, either of Congress or of the State legislatures. The judiciary have ruled that a State is liable to be sued in the Federal Courts; that Congress has authority to incorporate a bank; that a tax imposed by Congress was an indirect tax, and therefore valid; that the control of the militia really and truly belongs to Congress, and not, as in effect contended by Connecticut and Massachusetts, to the governors of the separate States. The Federal judiciary have determined the limits to their own jurisdiction and to that of the State Courts. The judiciary have pronounced one law after another invalid, as contrary to some article of the constitution--e.g., either by being tainted with the vice of _ex post facto_ legislation, or by impairing the obligation of contracts. These are a few samples of the mode in which a Federal Court limits all legislative authority. If any one wishes to see the extent to which the power of such a Court has gone in fact, he should study the decisions on the Legal Tender Act, which all but overset or nullified the financial legislation of Congress during the War of Secession. If he wishes to see the effect of applying the constitution of the United States, or anything like that constitution, to Great Britain and Ireland, he should consider what is implied in the undoubted fact that the Land Act of 1870