and of the nature of the responsibility incurred. Our political classics may, no doubt, be made to yield in knowledge of general principles and in a general habit of mind in politics what will compensate for the lack of special knowledge regarding the activities and character of any one sphere of government, however important that sphere be. But political classics and the training they provide touch only a small number. To the British citizen of to-day our own political classics cannot seem to bear directly on the political problems that confront him and those who act for him. The citizen of the United States of America is more happily placed. In the wealth of her writings on politics since the sixteenth century—in their number and in their high worth—Britain is not surpassed even by France; and yet there is no work which the British citizen of to-day can read with so much benefit for the understanding of the political system of his country as that which the American citizen derives from the reading of The Federalist as a commentary on the written constitution of the United States at the time of its making, and as an exposition of rights and duties of an active citizenship. More may be said: there is no British work on politics that will better repay perusal and thought by the British citizen of to-day than this American political classic.
The Federalist contains lessons which recent discussions at Westminster that have not yet spent themselves make highly pertinent. The power of making treaties, it said, is plainly neither a legislative nor an executive function. Its objects are contracts with a foreign nation, which have the force of law, but derive that force from the obligation of good faith. We find Jay protesting against the democrat extremists of his time and country who claimed that treaties should be made by the same authority as acts of assembly, and should be subject to repeal at pleasure; and Alexander Hamilton saw
