ossible
under the present arrangement that in '88 the existing customs union
between Austria and Hungary may come to an end.[6] The position further
of the Delegations is in reality that of two separate committees each
representing a separate Parliament. Infinite pains have been taken to
place the Hungarian and the Austrian Delegations on exactly equal
footing. The Delegations meet alternately at Vienna and at Pesth, they
debate in general separately, and come to an agreement through written
negotiations; they may have a common meeting. In this case the number of
deputies present on each side must be equal, and by a vote of the
majority at such common meeting, any question in dispute is finally
determined.

The Austro-Hungarian system is therefore briefly this. Two separate
States, each having a separate administration, a separate Parliament,
and separate bodies of subjects or citizens, are each ruled by one and
the same monarch; the two portions of the monarchy are linked together
mainly as regards their relation to foreign powers by an assembly of
delegates from each Parliament and by a Ministry which is responsible to
the Delegations alone, and which acts in regard to a limited number of
matters which are of absolute necessity the common concern of the
monarchy. This is the Dual system held up for our imitation. Picture it
for a moment as actually existing in what is still the United Kingdom.
We should have an English Ministry and an English Parliament at
Westminster which had not the least authority in Ireland; we should have
an Irish Ministry and an Irish Parliament at Dublin which had not the
least authority in England. Each Parliament would in point say of
foreign policy be hampered by the superior authority of a third
Parliament consisting of sixty English and sixty Irish members who sat
alternately at Westminster and at Dublin to transact or perplex or
obstruct the affairs common to the whole Empire. To imagine such an
arrangement, to sketch out in one's fancy, for example, how the common
budget decreed by the Delegations would be provided for by taxation
imposed by the Irish Parliament, is enough to show that the Dual system
is absolutely inapplicable to our circumstances. It could not last for a
year, and if by any miracle it did last for that time, the whole British
Empire would be reduced to confusion or ruin. The advocates of
innovation exhibit the most singular mixture of despair and hopefulness.
The pre