its favour was that if once established it would supply
overwhelming force for the suppression of any attempt to break it up.
They did not aim at setting up a government which neither foreign malice
nor domestic treason, would ever assail, for they knew that this was
something beyond the reach of human endeavour. They tried to set up one
which, if attacked either from within or from without, would make a
successful resistance, and we now know that they accomplished their
object. Somewhat the same answer may be made to the objection, which is
supposed to have fatal applicability to the case of Ireland, that among
the "special faults of federalism" is that it does not provide
"sufficient protection of the legal rights of unpopular minorities," and
that "the moral of it all is that the [American] Federal Government is
not able to protect the rights of individuals against strong local
sentiment" (p. 194 of Mr. Dicey's book). He says, moreover, if I
understand the argument rightly, that it was bound to protect free
speech in the States because "there is not and never was a word in the
Articles of the Constitution forbidding American citizens to criticize
the institutions of the State." It would seem from this as if Mr. Dicey
were under the impression that in America the citizen of a State has a
right to do in his State whatever he is not forbidden to do by the
Federal Constitution, and in doing it has a right to federal protection.
But the Federal Government can only do what the Constitution expressly
authorizes it to do, and the Constitution does not authorize it to
protect a citizen in criticizing the institutions of his own State. This
arrangement, too, is just as good federalism as the committal of free
speech to federal guardianship would have been. The goodness or badness
of the federal system is in no way involved in the matter.

The question to what extent a minority shall rely on the federation for
protection, and to what extent on its own State, is a matter settled by
the contract which has created the federation. The settlement of this
is, in fact, the great object of a Constitution. Until it is settled
somehow, either by writing or by understanding, there is, and can be, no
federation. If I, as a citizen of the State of New York, could call on
the United States Government to protect me under all circumstances and
against all wrongs, it would show that I was not living under a
federation at all, but under a central