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It may perhaps be allowable to remind them that a book consisting of actually delivered lectures must , even though revised for publication , exhibit the characteristics inseparable from oral exposition , and that a treatise on the principles of the law of the constitution differs in its scope and purpose , as well from a constitutional history of England as from works like Bagehot 's incomparable English Constitution , which analyse the practical working of our complicated system of modern Parliamentary government . The above considerations taken as a whole afford some explanation of a demand for that referendum which , though it originates in Switzerland , flourishes in reality , though not in name , in almost every state of the American Commonwealth . Take as countries which exhibit this state of feeling the United States , the English federated colonies , the Swiss Confederation , and the German Empire , and contrast with this special condition of opinion the deliberate rejection by all Italian patriots of federalism , which in the case of Italy presented many apparent advantages , and the failure of union between Sweden and Norway to produce any desire for unity or even for a continued political connection , though these Scandinavian lands differ little from each other in race , in religion , in language , or in their common interest to maintain their independence against neighbouring and powerful countries . The perplexity of such men arises from the idea that , at any rate under a democratic government , any law is unjust which is opposed to the real or deliberate conviction of a large number of citizens . It may be added , that on the particular occasion the Conservatives gained both influence and prestige by the ability with which Peel , though in a minority , resisted in Parliament the attempt to compel his resignation from office ; for during this parliamentary battle he was able to bring home to the electors the knowledge that the Conservative minority , though defeated at the election , had gained thereby a great accession of strength . 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 . But , on the other hand , the other states , if they should possess under the constitution rights equal to the rights or the political power left to the dominant partner , may easily combine to increase unduly the burdens , in the way of taxation or otherwise , imposed upon the one most powerful state . 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 . They sometimes talk as though they were in some mysterious manner precluded from a fair share in the benefits accruing from the unity of Great Britain . 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 . In explaining the succession which is worked out between buyer and seller for the purpose of creating a prescriptive right , such as a right of way over neighboring land to the land bought and sold , it was shown that one who , instead of purchasing the land , had wrongfully possessed himself of it by force , would not be treated as a successor , and would get no benefit from the previous use of the way by his disseisee . But the possession of theoretically equal political rights does certainly give in England , or rather to be strictly accurate in the United Kingdom , to every British subject an equality which some British subjects do not possess in some of the Dominions . For there are social conditions under which legal fictions or subtleties afford the sole means of establishing that rule of equal and settled law which is the true basis of English civilisation . It is supposed , lastly , though the grounds for the supposition are not very evident , that the federalisation of the United Kingdom is necessary for , or conducive to , the development of Imperial federalism .