□
[□]
□+
From each class he may learn much , but for reasons which I am about to lay before you for consideration , he is liable to be led by each class of authors somewhat astray in his attempt to ascertain the field of his labours and the mode of working it ; he will find , unless he can obtain some clue to guide his steps , that the whole province of so-called " constitutional law " is a sort of maze in which the wanderer is perplexed by unreality , by antiquarianism , and by conventionalism . Constitutional law , as the term is used in England , appears to include all rules which directly or indirectly affect the distribution or the exercise of the sovereign power in the state.12 Hence it includes ( among other things ) all rules which define the members of the sovereign power , all rules which regulate the relation of such members to each other , or which determine the mode in which the sovereign power , or the members thereof , exercise their authority . But such a conviction is almost certain to beget , on the part of persons suffering under what they deem to be an unjust law , the belief , delusive though it often is , that any kind of injustice may under a democratic government be rightly opposed by the use of force . Still it may be allowable to an author writing in 1914 , though more than half blinded , as must be every critic of the age in which he lives , by the ignorance and the partialities of his own day , to remember that the present has its teaching no less than the past or the future . But such men in many cases doubted whether the maintenance of the Colonial Empire was of real benefit to England , and thought that on the whole , with respect at any rate to any self-governing colony , the course of prudence was to leave things alone until it should have become manifest to every one that the hour for friendly separation had struck . No one , indeed , but a child , fancies that the King sits crowned on his throne at Westminster , and in his own person administers justice to his subjects . / 2 / ( That is to say , such obligations follow the analogy of easements , and , as the burden falls on the quasi servient estate , the benefit goes with the dominant land to assigns , whether mentioned or not , and they are not considered from the point of view of contract at all . Bagehot , indeed , points out that the equal power in the Senate of a small state and of a large state is from some points of view an evil . This no doubt was the law in the Anglo-Saxon period , but it was manifestly unsatisfactory . Parliament , in the second place , had long before 1884 practically admitted the truth of the doctrine in vain pressed upon his contemporaries by Burke ,23 when insisting upon the folly of the attempt made by the Parliament of England to exert as much absolute power in Massachusetts as in Middlesex , that a real limit to the exercise of sovereignty is imposed not by the laws of man but by the nature of things , and that it was vain for a parliamentary or any other sovereign to try to exert equal power throughout the whole of an immense Empire . The idea which lies at the bottom of federalism is that each of the separate states should have approximately equal political rights and should thereby be able to maintain the " limited independence " ( if the term may be used ) meant to be secured by the terms of federal union . This refusal to look an obvious fact in the face is facilitated by the use of that most ambiguous phrase , " Home Rule all round . No doubt the House of Lords did very rarely either alter or reject any Money Bill , and though the Lords have always claimed the right to alter or reject such a Bill , they have only on very special occasions exercised this power . Each judge thus selected would serve for a limited term , perhaps a year or two , perhaps only on a part-time basis . It is indeed largely copied from that source . The traditional feuds of Ireland and the ecclesiastical grievances of Wales , the demand of some further recognition of that Scottish nationality , for which no sensible Englishman shows or is tempted to show the least disrespect , all deserve and receive exaggerated attention . This is absolutely dear if we compare the position of an American historian with the position of an American jurist .