‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ I wish to thank Lord Haldane and Mr. Birrell for the enjoyment of certain privileges in the preparation of the book, without the concession of which its appearance at this moment would have been impossible. I have also to thank Lord Haldane for reading the proofs of my own chapter on the Government of Ireland Bill, and giving me the benefit of that profound learning which is always so generously placed at the service of the student who seeks its guidance. To my friends, Lord Fitzmaurice, Mrs. J. R. Green, and Mr. J. A. Spender, I am indebted for many kind offices of a diplomatic character. Throughout the conduct of my editorial task I have had the wise counsel and unfailing support of Mr. Bourchier Hawksley, the Chairman of the Home Rule Committee of the Eighty Club, and to him I desire to express my grateful acknowledgments. J. H. MORGAN. The Temple. _May, 1912._ PART I. THE NEW CONSTITUTION I.—The Constitution: A Commentary. BY PROFESSOR J. H. MORGAN “Home Rule is at bottom Federalism,” we are told(1) by the most distinguished jurist among its opponents. It is urged against it that Federal Governments are almost invariably weak Governments, and that, in so far as they are strong, they are as “symmetrical” as the new constitution is unsymmetrical. Cornewall Lewis once thought it necessary to write a book on the Use and Abuse of Political Terms, and there is a great danger in the present controversy of our being enslaved by the poverty of our political vocabulary. The term “Federalism” is put to such new and alien uses as to darken counsel and confuse thought. That Federal Executives are usually weak, that in the dual allegiance of a Federal system men often prefer the State authority which is near to the Federal authority which is remote, that the respective limits of Federal and State legislation are defined with difficulty and observed with reluctance, that conflict of laws is more often the rule than the exception, that Federal constitutions are rigid rather than flexible, and, in a word, that progress is sacrificed to stability: all these things are true, and all these things are irrelevant. The Government of Ireland Bill is not, and cannot be, the corner-stone of a Federal system for the United Kingdom, although its duplication in the case of Scotland and of England would not be impossible, should it appear desirable. We may, for want of a better term, call it the foundation of a system of Devolution, but we must not call it Federalism.