July is so complete that it would be an excess of politeness to describe it as being due to loose thinking. It is due to loose speaking and no thinking at all. By American presidents as well as by Hyde Park tub-thumpers democracy and liberty are mentioned in one breath as if they represented the same ideal. They may both be ideals, but they are not the same.

They are both ideals. The world has outgrown the conception of the paternal monarch ruling by divine right; it has equally outgrown the conception of the privileged classes ruling by right of wealth and education; the only possible conception for the government of the present and the future is a system in which all citizens shall have a right to share on terms as nearly equal as possible in constituting the government to which they have to submit. That is democracy. It is both an ideal and a necessity.

Liberty is quite another matter. It also is an ideal, and a much older one than democracy. It needs no definition. We all understand what we mean by liberty the moment we are threatened with the loss of it. Liberty may to a large extent co-exist with monarchy or with aristocracy. Under the autocratic rule of the Roman Emperors a large part of the world enjoyed probably at least as much liberty as the citizens of the republic of the United States to-day. A still better, because more recent, example of the combination of liberty with autocracy is presented by India. The government of British India is essentially autocratic, but probably in no part of the world, not even in England, is the private citizen so perfectly free to follow his own fancies without any interference on the part of the government. No such striking example can be furnished of the combination of liberty with aristocracy; but during the greater part of the Victorian era, when England was governed by a quasi-aristocracy, composed of the well-to-do classes, the maintenance of liberty was definitely recognized as a fundamental principle of government.

We have now left that period behind. The very improvements secured during the Victorian era have stimulated the desire for still greater progress. It is the man who is already on the up-grade who is ambitious to move higher, not the man who has long been stationary. Just as the Reform Bill of 1832 was forced upon the landed aristocracy by the increasing

wealth of the middle classes, so the constitutional changes which are now taking place are the result of the increased prosperity of the working classes. They demand power for themselves, partly because growing strength generally brings with it a desire for power for its own sake, and partly because they believe that they can use political power to improve their own material position relatively to that of other classes.

This hope springs from past experience. In the past each class as it has climbed into power has tended to use its control of the machinery of government for its own benefit. The working class proposes to do likewise, and it is this implicit programme which helps to explain the verbal confusion between democracy and liberty. One of the things which the working man most wants is liberty. Few well-to-do people can fully realize how comparatively narrow are the limits within which a weekly wage-earner is a free man. He has to be at his work in the factory or the shipyard on the stroke of the bell or the hoot of the siren. His movements are directed by a foreman, whose methods of command probably do not err on the side of excessive courtesy; he has little choice of residence except between one dull street and another; his holidays are extremely brief and his range of possible travel limited accordingly. With more money in his pocket and with more book knowledge in his brain he demands a larger and a freer life; he thinks he can get it through parliamentary action, and that is why he confuses the two distinct ideals of democracy and liberty.

The practical question to be considered is whether it is possible so to reform the government of England as to secure both of these distinct but not necessarily conflicting ideals. That on present political lines we shall not secure them both is certain. Democracy in fact is at present moving rapidly in the direction of tyranny, and the proposals so far made for reforming our constitution are not likely to mitigate that tyranny.

The momentarily fashionable scheme of constitutional reform, namely, the proposal for the establishment of some system of federal government for the United Kingdom, seems to have been first put forward by Mr. Joseph Chamberlain as far back as 1885 for the purpose of parrying

the Irish demand for Home Rule. It has been raked up for the same purpose by Mr. F. S. Oliver, who has written at length upon it recently in The Times. Apart from this Irish aspect of the question, which has been dealt with above, the only argument ever urged in favour of federalism is the contention that it would relieve the pressure of work upon our present single parliament. No evidence is adduced to show that this would be the case. If we may judge from what Professor Wallace writes, American experience points in the contrary direction. He says:

"The mother of parliaments" has some peculiar and interesting ways all her own. But before taking up these let us emphasize the fact that the House of Commons and the House of Lords are true deliberative assemblies. There is a strong tendency for a large body to become a mere machine for registering the decrees of a ring of leaders or a set of committees. That such has not been the fate of Parliament is largely due to the fact that it is not overwhelmed with the thousands of bills which crush the freedom of debate out of some legislatures' (page 72.)

He goes on to state that the number of bills brought into the House of Representatives at Washington is enormously in excess of the number introduced into the House of Commons at Westminster. Yet, in addition to Congress, the United States possesses some forty legislatures, each enjoying very wide powers under the guarantee of a written constitution.

Apparently the advocates of federalism for the United Kingdom do not propose to have a written constitution with its necessary concomitant of a Supreme Court endowed with the power to annul any act of any legislature which conflicts with the Court's interpretation of the constitution. On the contrary, the imperial parliament is to maintain a real sovereignty throughout the United Kingdom for the express purpose, among other objects, of safeguarding the interests of Ulster. Consequently, the House of Commons would have power to interfere with all the proceedings of the subordinate legislatures. That it would do so we may infer from what happens daily in connexion with local governing bodies. Popularly elected county councils have been in existence now for a considerable period of years. In theory their existence ought to have relieved parliament of a good deal of work. In practice the congestion is as great, if not greater, than before,

the reason being that the imperial parliament continues to interfere with the work which it has deliberately entrusted to other elected bodies.

This statement applies not merely to remote counties; it applies also to the capital of the Empire. The London County Council is a popularly elected body, representing a population greater than that of either Scotland or Ireland, and more than double that of Wales. It is treated by the House of Commons and by the bureaucrats of Whitehall as if it were a child in leading strings. If the federalists wish to induce belief in their bona fides let them begin by demanding the liberation of the great borough councils and county councils of the kingdom from the irritating, time-wasting, and money-wasting interference of the House of Commons and its attendant tribe of ministers and officials.

When we proceed to ask what the new 'national' but subordinate parliaments are to do no answer is forthcoming. We are told with much emphasis what they are not to do. They are not to interfere with the crown, or with the army or navy, or with the national debt, or with customs, or with excise. These restrictions cover a fairly considerable area of activities. Other restrictions remain. Take for example a question that has already arisen in Germany-the question of the control of direct taxation. At present in Germany the right of imposing direct taxation rests with the separate States; the imperial government in view of the cost of the war wants to share in that right; the States object; and the controversy is not yet settled. In the United Kingdom the income tax is the main staple of the public revenue, and its importance for meeting the interest on the national debt and other post-war expenditure for which the whole kingdom will be liable is fairly obvious. It is extremely improbable that any Chancellor of the Exchequer would consent to part with control of this tax. But if the subordinate parliaments are not to be allowed to levy customs duties or excise duties or income tax where are they to get their revenue?

Take again the question of factory legislation. Is it proposed that there shall be one factory law for Birmingham, another for Glasgow, a third for Belfast? A kindred question has already arisen in connexion with the scheme of national insurance. Apparently for the sole purpose of conciliating

what the Germans call particularist' sentiment, Mr. Lloyd George, in his national insurance scheme, provided separate bodies of insurance commissioners for England, Scotland Wales, and Ireland. Not only do these separate bodies cost a great deal of money for salaries, but they involve an immense amount of clerical labour and expense in accounting for insured persons who transfer themselves, say, from Bristol to Cardiff or vice versa—a change that a man may make two or three times both ways in the course of a year.

Finally it may be asked, What are to be the working relations between the parliament of England and the parliament of the United Kingdom? If a federal system is to be set up England will speedily acquire a separate feeling of nationality akin to that already existing in a deliberately hostile form in Ireland, and in a form of friendly jealousy in Scotland and Wales. Suppose some question arises between the sovereign parliament of the United Kingdom and the nominally subordinate parliament of England. In the parliament of the United Kingdom the English representatives will outnumber by three to one the combined representatives of the other nationalities, and they will in the case of such a conflict almost invariably vote in support of the view expressed by the parliament of their 'nation.' The consequence will be that England -instead of sharing power as she now does on absolutely equal terms with Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, and frequently permitting a government to be imposed upon her against the wishes of the majority of her representatives-will use her superior voting power to impose her will upon the whole kingdom. Thus federalism, though it might mean a gain of constitutional liberty for England, treated as a single nationa unit, would imply a corresponding, and in substance a much more serious, loss to Scotland and Wales and Ireland.

As regards individual liberty-the liberty that most matters to human beings-there is no reason to believe that any gain would result from federalism to any section of the community Federalism only means the multiplication of parliaments, and in a democratic country, parliaments, as the experience of the United States has shown, are to a large extent instruments of tyranny. The most notable of modern political movements in the United States is the revolt against parliamentary government. Americans have found by