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The Limitations of Federal Government

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 October 2013

Stephen Leacock
Stephen Leacock*
Affiliation:
McGill University
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Extract

It requires no little hardihood to appear at this time and place as a critic of the system of federal government. Such an attitude may well seem to indicate ignorance in a professor, incivility in a foreigner and ingratitude in a guest. But I am willing in the interests of scientific investigation to immolate myself upon the altar of my own temerity; I will merely remind you by way of personal apology that my own country like yours is organized upon a federal basis, and that if I have chosen to select the United States as the most conspicuous illustration of the case I wish to establish, it is merely because the advanced stage of federal development attained by this republic renders it the most proper field of investigation for the theorist. In this essay I deal with the operation of federal government in the economic and industrial sphere. It is my purpose to show that this system of government is developing, under modern economic conditions, disadvantages of increasing magnitude and is out of harmony with the general environment of modern industrialism.

Type
Papers
Information
Proceedings of the American Political Science Association , Volume 5: Fifth Annual Meeting , December 1909 , pp. 37 - 52
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1909

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References

1 It goes without saying that in the title of this essay the term federal government is not used in contrast to state government, but as indicating the general system of divided jurisdiction existing in such countries as the United States or Canada, in contradistinction to the unitary governments of the United Kingdom and France.

2 Fiske, John, American Political Ideas, 1885, p. 92 Google Scholar.

3 Sidgwick, H., The Development of European Polity, 1903, p. 439 Google Scholar.

4 Federalist, No. 17.

5 Federalist, No. 41.

6 Statistics based on the Reports of the Interstate Commerce Commission and quoted by Mr. H. T. Newcombe. American Review of Reviews Art. Recent Great Railway Combinations. 1902.

7 Mr. John Moody. Encyclopedia Americana. Art.Trusts.

8 The Law of the Federal and State Constitutions of the United States (1908), Chap. x, p. 69 Google Scholar.

9 Op. cit., p. 71.

10 The Law of Interstate Commerce, 1908.

11 F. E. Horack. The Organization and Control of Industrial Corporations, 1903.

12 Trade Unionism and Labor Problems (1903). Introduction, p. xiii.

13 Excluding Oklahoma. The statistics are taken from the publication of the Interstate Commerce Commission, Railways in the United States in 1902, Part iv.

14 Seager, H. R.. Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 19, p. 589 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.