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Public Opinion and Popular Government , pp . Still less , however , did they show any active wish to take part in controlling the policy of the Empire , or to share the cost of Imperial defence . No one can rate more highly than myself the success with which a complicated system is worked by the members of the Swiss Council or , to use expressions familiar to Englishmen , by the Swiss Cabinet . In 1914 the colonial policy of England is to grant to every Dominion absolute , unfettered , complete local autonomy ,38 in so far as such perfect self-government by a Dominion does not dearly interfere with loyalty of the Dominion to the Empire . This topic is one on which I have no wish to dwell , but it cannot be forgotten by any sensible observer who reflects upon the history of secession in the United States , or of the Sonderbund in Switzerland , or who refuses to forget the preeminently uneasy connection between the different parts of the Austrian Empire and the deliberate determination of Norway to sever at all costs the union with Sweden . Cf. Lyle v. Barker , 5 Binn . 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 . Mr. Gardiner 's History of England has suggested to me the conclusion on which , confirmed as I found it to be by all the information I could collect about French administrative law , stress is frequently laid in the course of the following pages , that the views of the prerogative maintained by Crown lawyers under the Tudors and the Stuarts bear a marked resemblance to the legal and administrative ideas which at the present day under the Third Republic still support the droit administratif of France . i. There is no trace whatever of the existence of the federal spirit throughout the United Kingdom . 441-447 ; Public Opinion and Popular Government , partii . Public opinion approves and public expediency requires the observance of contracts , yet contracts are not always observed , and would ( presumably ) be broken more often than they are did not the law punish their breach , or compel their performance . It is by no means obviously true ; it is open to the following ( among other ) objections that admit of dear statement . Not a page of my lectures could have been written without constant reference to writers such as Blackstone , Hallam , Hearn , Gardiner , or Freeman , whose books are in the hands of every student . They give no satisfactory answer to the inquiry how it happens that the understandings of politics are sometimes at least obeyed as rigorously as the commands of law.10 To refer to public opinion and to considerations of expediency is to offer but a very inadequate solution of a really curious problem . The habit has now grown up that conferences should be held from time to time in England , at which shall be present the Premier of England and the Premier of each Dominion , for consultation and discussion on all matters concerning the interest and the policy of the Empire , and that such conferences should be from time to time held may now , it is submitted , be considered a moral right of each Dominion . But England and English interests , just because Englishmen have identified the greatness of England with the prosperity of the United Kingdom and the greatness and good government of the Empire , are for the moment overlooked .