Putting on one side for the moment the question whether Home Rule is Federalism or not, I am inclined to enter a protest against all these attempts to fit the Bill into the categories of the jurist. It is very doubtful whether any two constitutions in the world, even federal constitutions, can be brought under one species. Two of the most successful “federal” constitutions present the gravest anomalies to the theorist. The Canadian Constitution, according to Professor Dicey, betrays a logical fallacy in the very words of its preamble;(2) and German jurists have wrangled no less inconclusively than incessantly about the legal character of the Empire and as to where its sovereignty resides;(3) yet in neither case has the practical operation of these constitutions been much the worse for the legal solecisms which they present. Indeed, it would not be too much to say with Aristotle that the “mixed” and not the “pure” type of government is the most successful, and that when Federalism is, as in the United States, at its purest, it is also at its weakest. The constitution of Imperial Germany ought, on this kind of reasoning, to be a flagrant perversion, and yet it has persisted in enduring for some forty-one years, and the prestige of its principal organ, the Bundesrath, although violating all Mr. Balfour’s principles as to “equality” in its constitution, is, according to the doyen of the constitutional lawyers of Germany, increasing every day.(4) The argument that “Federalism” is incompatible with the preponderance of the “predominant partner,” and that no “federal” union is possible in these islands owing to the superior position occupied by England, would, even if it were relevant, be easily refuted by the example presented by the hegemony of Prussia.