it may be to
part of the Crown's dominions; and the Parliament of the United Kingdom
can, just because it is a sovereign body, do what is at bottom the same
thing as abdicate, namely, merge its own powers in those of another
sovereign body, or, in other words, form, or aid in forming, a new
sovereign for the British Empire.

This proposition has during the Home Rule controversy been occasionally,
in words at least, disputed or questioned by the supporters of Mr.
Gladstone's policy, and language has been used which seems to imply that
a sovereign power such as the Parliament of the United Kingdom can never
by its own act divest itself of sovereignty. I can hardly think that the
able controversialists who seem to maintain this doctrine really meant
to contend for more than the admitted principle that a sovereign cannot
while remaining a sovereign limit his sovereign powers. If, however, it
be seriously suggested that the Parliament of the United Kingdom cannot
divest itself of sovereignty, the suggestion is as a matter of argument
untenable, and this for more than one reason.

An autocrat, such as the Russian Czar, can undoubtedly abdicate; but
sovereignty, whether it be the sovereignty of the Czar or of Parliament,
is always one and the same quality. If the Czar can abdicate, so can
Parliament. The Czar again could, instead of abdicating in the ordinary
sense of the term, constitute a new sovereign body for the government of
Russia, of which he might himself be a part. Thus he may undoubtedly
give Russia a constitution like that of England, under which the Czar
and two Houses of Parliament might together become the sovereign of the
Russian State, and no constitutionalist would dream of maintaining that
the new power thus constituted was the less supreme owing to the fact
that one of its members, namely the Czar, had at one time been himself
the real sovereign of Russia. Here again what is true of the Czar is
true of Parliament. The Parliament of the United Kingdom certainly might
become a part of another sovereign body, or might join in constituting a
sovereign power supreme throughout the British Empire of which
Parliament itself did not form a part. There is nothing in the theory of
sovereignty to prevent the Parliament of the United Kingdom from forming
a constitution for the whole British Empire under which the Parliament
of the United Kingdom, the Victorian Parliament, the Parliament of the
Canadian Dominion and so