THE FAILURES OF THE FEDERAL SYSTEM.
IT is becoming a commonplace with many Radicals to say that Federalism works well, and that it offers an acceptable alternative to centralised democracy; but do they ever look round them to gather up the true story ? That it is a possible form of government is certain, because it exists ; but that it is a successful one is an assumption contradicted by half the facts. Switzerland is the best example ; and even in Switzerland, with its grave and temperate people, its history of six hundred years, and its good fortune in being compelled to caution by the pres- sure of the great military States all around it, the nation barely escaped ruiti through the Federal war called the " war of the Sonderbund ; " it is shaken whenever a canton like Ticino revolts, and it is held together by a diplomacy as careful and as delicate as that which allows Europe long periods of peace. We think of the United States as the most prosperous of lands ; but the Federal Constitution had only existed seventy years, when it had to be defended at the cost of a.million lives, and a debt as great as that which Great Britain incurred in beating back all Europe. The loss of life signified nothing, because of immigration, and, the loss of treasure was speedily made up, because the national estate is so enormous ; but those were accidents which would have existed if America had been a Monarchy, and were wholly independent of the Federal principle. Nor can that Constitution be considered successful which in a part of the States allows justice to be superseded by Lynch-law, and in one-third of them leaves the defence of person and property to the man himself, almost as much as if he were dwelling among people who had not yet developed civil organisation. The happiest country in Europe in many respects is Austria-Hungary ; yet, though its federalism is the most imperfect in the world—foreign affairs,. military affairs, and the supreme right of arbitra- tion being alike in the hands of the Imperial government —its existence is constantly threatened by movements in favour of particularism,—movements not in the least confined to Bohemia, though, as Germans are threatened there, we hear of them mainly from Prague. Then look, as all the world is from time to time compelled to look, at the condition of Spanish and Portuguese America. Except in Chili, where the Government, whatever its nominal form, has always been oligarchical, the great capitalists ruling with a strong hand, the Spaniards and Portuguese, after their revolutions, universally organised their vast posses- sions on the Federal principle, and they had much _prim/. facie reason for so doing. Their possessions were far too large for their population, communication was slow and difficult, the commercial interests of districts were often at variance, and only local Governments could induce local notabilities to take an active interest in local affairs. The Spaniards, moreover, were accustomed at home to pro- vincial government, and retained across the water a jealousy of the central authority which their Kings had so overstrained. The system seemed a most reasonable one yet, during the whole period of liberty, it has produced little but mischief. In Mexico, in Central America, in Brazil, in the Argentine Republic, the first and ever- present difficulty has been to bind the provinces together. Some of them wish for other connections, many of them desire practical independence, all of them regard the central power as, even in financial transactions, their natural enemy. Whenever the people have been discontented, some leader, usually from the locality, has used the "plant of an armed Revolution," offered by the organisation of some one State, to revolt against the central authority. People in this country hardly notice such movements, but even in Mexico they have repeatedly occurred, though in Mexico the central. Government is strong, being supported by the Indians, whose tradition is of an undivided Monarchy. In Brazil, five provinces at least have always been on the point of revolt ; and at this moment, Bahia, Pernambuco, Matto Grosso, and Rio Grande are in open insurrection against the central power, which, even in the centre, hardly holds its own. In the Argentine Republic, supposed to be a comparatively civilised country, the grand difficulty has always been to keep the State of Buenos Ayres in good humour ; and at the present moment nearly half the States are either in furious revolt or held down like conquered territories by the troops of the central power. And it is quite natural that it should be so. Each subordinate State has its own life, its own revenue, its own debt, its own interests, and more important than all, its own group of prominent personages with centri- fugal ambitions. It hardly feels the benefit of the central authority, and it does feel its taxation and its competi- tion in the market as a borrowing power. It wants something from the nation to justify its obedience, and the want always resolves itself into two things,—more liberty to do as it pleases without attention to the general interest, and more aid in obtaining large supplies of money. Argentina is bankrupt, because of Provincial guarantees. From Texas to Patagonia, over the largest and. richest slice of earth which can be described as separate, the subor- dinate States are always in difficulties about money, partly because they want the costly luxuries of civilisation before they have the population to pay for them, partly because the local treasuries are plundered by local parties, who, under the system, are amenable to no impartial authority. It is found absolutely necessary, as a mere palliative, to invest the central President with a more than monarchical authority, and every now and then, the citizens, in despair, appoint a dictator, with a general licence, if he cannot succeed otherwise, to shed blood wholesale in maintaining unity and decent order. As we write, Mexico is practically governed by a General, who has the support of the Army ; Central America is pining for a dictator ; a dictator is making himself in Brazil by steady shelling of peaceable citizens ; and a dictator is "expected," in the person probably of General Roca, in the Argentine Republic.
It is the custom here to attribute all this permanent anarchy, which almost spoils the richest quarter of the world for the use of man, to the character of its people. The Indians, it is said, are savages, and have no notion of political order. The blacks are savages, too, and a social danger besides. The Brazilians have no energy, and are disinclined to fight ; and as to the Spaniards, though they will fight only too readily, they fail in everything they undertake. That is a very simple explanation ; but then, is it a true one ? Careful observers say the Indians, when they have not taken to governors they approve, and are as industrious and plac- found in his lodgings. In Vienna, a number of Anarchists able as Hindoos. The Mexicans have got on excallently have been arrested who had apparently made every pre- under two successive dictators, one an Indian of pure blood, paration for similar feats, their lodgings being full of and one a half-caste. The Brazilians, though they have the bombs ready to be filled, picrite, and the like ; and one of misfortune of much mixed blood, did verywell for a hundred their coats being fitted with hooks inside, evidently for years before the Monarchy fell, emancipated their slaves the secret conveyance of bombs to any desired spot. An without a civil war as easily as we did, and made them- American and his wife, too, have been blown up at selves by their cultivation and mining enterprises richer Pittsburg, the American Birmingham, because the lady than almost any people of their numbers. As to Chili, it knew too much of Anarchist designs, and had therefore to is always excepted by name from the general condemna- be " removed " as a measure of precaution. All that, it is tion. The Spaniards performed one of the greatest feats said, indicates an International Society acting in obedience in history in the conquest of South America ; they have to some central body, using always the same means, and. spread their ideas and their creed. throughout the con- prosecuting some secret but definite design, through the Client ; and they have, through all revolutions, succeeded old device of agents bound by oath to obedience, and liable in keeping at the top. In Mexico, they guide the Indians ; to death if they disobey. It may, of course, indicate in Chili, they have made a Government as successful and precisely that ; but we should think it much more pro. energetic as the one in Madrid ; and in Argentina, they bable that it does not, and that there are a considerable have so impressed the immense Italian immigration, that number of Anarchists everywhere, as there are a consider- the immigrants adopt their language. often assume their able number of despairing men, and that an epidemic of names, and, in fact, turn Spaniards. That they have plenty active anarchy breaks out, like an epidemic of suicide, from of faults nobody would deny ; but much of their failure is some cause which it is beyond the wit of man to trace. We due to the over-vastness of their territory,and the consequent all know that crime against individuals occasionally breaks adoption of the Federal principle as the only available out in this way ; and so may crime against the community. principle of government. They cannot, with their feeble That all Anarchists are connected after a fashion, just as strength, work a system which hardly works anywhere, all members of the same creed are, say, for instance, and which is peculiarly unsuited to lands where the the Theosophists, is doubtless true, and it is probable, nations are much divided by colour-differences, and where also, that they have leaders whose ideas they accept and they have no traditions leading them to insist that, if respect, just as all the Churches have ; but there is a wide every subordinate State perish one by one, the nation step from that to the existence of a secret International itself, the unified body, shall be preserved. This Federal Society with a powerful organisation and a definite aim. principle facilitates disintegration, and it is towards dis- If so, what is the aim, and why does the society act so integration that they perpetually tend, as Ireland will spasmodically and with such apparently confused motives ? under like circumstances. The object of the Nihilists is definite enough,—it is the Is there any remedy ? It is quite possible that there is none, and that periodic outbursts of anarchy will con- tinue in Spanish and Portuguese America for fifty more known, the have never swerved. They have not blown years, till the Anglo-Saxons of the North, finding them- selves pressed for room, decide to take South America the other hand, seem to have no object. They strike now into their own hands, and terminate anarchy and free- at a capitalist, now at a prominent person, now at the dom both together. It would not cost them a greater police; ; but they do not attack a class, or an institution, or a system. It is almost inconceivable, if a true effort than that which terminated the Civil War. All North Americans look upon that as the inevitable out- come of the secular confusion ; and they know Spanish and could obtain agents prepared to risk their lives, or America far better than Europeans can pretend. to do. But give their lives, that it would not direct them more wisely it is possible also that the Spanish and Portuguese States to its end, which is presumably to create the largest a may struggle through their difficulties towards the system amount of social confusion and dismay obtainable for the to which those difficulties incline them, and which is neither means employed. Most of the people threatened or more nor less than elective Monarchy under other names. attacked are, after all, nobodies, and. even when eminent persons are struck at, they are persons who can be replaced. They are like the Celtic Irish who, when their dissensions became too inconvenient, got rid of them by appointing an What is the use, for instance, to any Secret Society of "uncrowned King," who was not of their blood or creed, and killing General Martinez Campos, who has twenty rivals, whom they did not quite like, but who gave them the one or scattering death wholesale among his Staff, who can be thing they wanted,—the power of cohesion. It is towards dictatorships that all the present movements tend, and of such an effort must be to make though no one should ever feel hope about a Spanish- bitterly hostile to Anarchists, and ready to support even American Republic, it is not certain that dictators will the most extreme laws against them. A Spaniard might never appear who can do the work required, can compel the conceivably hate General Martinez Campos, or even the in the Argentine subordinate States to keep step with the general Govern- merit—General Roca has done this once Republic—can govern well, though rigorously and with bloodshed ; and can abstain from plundering the State for body of Anarchists not only exists, which we greatly doubt, the benefit of their connections. Should such men appear, but contains a majority of lunatics. however, their rise will be the direct condemnation of the The point is an important one, because on it depends, in Federal system, the very idea of which is that national Part, the plan which society should adopt for the protection and a weak national Government are perfectly prosperity. of its most valuable members. If an International Society compatible things. They are not, so far as appears from of Murder exists and finds agents ready to do its bidding, it is clear that an International Law of Public Safety the present aspect of things in Austria, in Ireland, and in the enormous and beautiful section of the world which we d ascribe as Spanish America, not like ordinary criminals, but as the Indian Government
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