power to interfere with them or to dictate
what they should do. The only way in which it could have obtained
jurisdiction over the offenders would have been by sending Federal
troops into the State to take them by force, a proceeding which the
State of Louisiana would certainly have resisted by force, and civil war
would have followed. Ultimately, the United States, without
acknowledging any liability in the matter, paid to the Italian
government a certain sum of money as a voluntary _solatium_ to the
widows and families of those who had been killed, and the incident was
closed.

The second case, which has recently strained so seriously the relations
between the United States and Japan, arose with the State of California,
which refused to extend to Japanese subjects the privileges to which
they are unquestionably entitled under the "most favoured nation" clause
of the treaty between the two governments. It is a matter which cannot
be dealt with fully here without too long a digression from the path of
our present argument, and will be referred to later. It is enough for
the present to point out that once again the National Government--or
what we have called the Crown--has been seen to be entirely incapable,
without recourse to civil war, of compelling an individual State--or
County--to respect the national word when pledged to a treaty with a
foreign power.[264:1]

The States then, or Counties, are independent units, in each of which
there exists a complete party organisation of each of the great parties,
which organisations control the destinies of the parties within the
County borders and have no concern whatever with the party fortunes
outside. The great parties in the nation and in Parliament must look to
the organisations within the several Counties for their support and
existence. The loss of a County, say Hampshire, by the local
Conservative organisation will mean to the Conservative party in the
nation not merely that the members to be elected to the lower house of
Parliament by the Hampshire constituencies will be Liberal, but that the
County Legislature will elect two Liberal Peers to the upper house as
well; and it is likely that in one or other of the two houses parties
may be so evenly balanced that the loss of the members from the one
County may overthrow the government's working majority. Moreover, the
loss of the County in the local County election will probably mean the
loss of that County's vote at t