ABSTRACT
In the pantheon of major contributors to our understanding of the federal idea, James Bryce occupies a place that is respectfully recognised but little explored. He is best known for his great work titled The American Commonwealth that first appeared in three volumes in 1888 and ranked alongside Alexis De Tocqueville’s classic Democracy in America (Vol. 1), published 50 years earlier in 1835, for its enduring historical significance. This territory has been well traversed in the mainstream literature on American federalism. But it is Bryce’s general standing in a much wider conceptual and methodological survey of federalism as a subject of scholarly analysis that is much less appreciated and will provide the main focus of this chapter. It is contended here that his intellectual legacy in the field of comparative federal studies merits much closer examination than has hitherto been the case and is deserving of much greater recognition than has so far been attributed. In this chapter I want to assess the contribution of James Bryce to the mainstream literature on the evolution of federal theory and practice in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In particular I want to examine his views and perspectives on federalism and democracy in order to identify the essential unity in his thinking about them and to underline a fundamental predisposition or political persuasion in favour of the federal idea both as an instrumental ‘political contrivance’ and at its core a moral form of political association. My approach to this task is to focus principally upon four of his major works that together encompass what I take to be ‘variations on a theme’, the basic theme being the evolving relationship between federalism and democracy in theory and practice during the years between 1864 and 1921. Bryce’s characterisation of the federal idea as a form of political association in Europe, the United States of America (USA) and the British Empire written over six decades includes the following publications: The Holy Roman Empire, first published in 1864; the three volumes of The American Commonwealth that first appeared in 1888; his less well known two-volume Studies in History and Jurisprudence that surfaced in 1901; and finally his two-volume Modern Demo-
cracies that was published toward the end of his life in 1921.1 Traversing these four scholarly projects that link federalism and democracy enables us to engage four different dimensions to Bryce’s contribution to the theory and practice of federalism. Chronologically these are the following: facets of the Continental European tradition of federalism (and especially the Germanic dimension); the American federal experience in all of its multidimensional complexities; the British tradition of federalism in the era of empire and imperialism; and, not least, his intellectual gravitation toward empirical social science and comparative politics. A detailed textual exegesis of each of these works enables us to use them as vehicles or lenses through which we can not only identify a fundamental continuity of thought about the nature and meaning of different forms of political association – mainly linked to the federal form – but also his evolving appreciation of the adaptability and significance of federalism in a wide variety of historical settings and political contexts. This kind of engagement with Bryce’s scholarly works should not be construed as something devoted entirely to his academic pursuits as if they were detached from what Hugh Tulloch calls his ‘multifarious life of politician, jurist and traveller’.2 Rather I prefer to stress the complex interaction of these roles and activities for we cannot make any sense of Bryce’s scholarly views about federalism and democracy without relating them directly to his role as a Gladstonian Liberal Member of Parliament (MP), a member of successive Liberal governments, a Professor of Civil Law at Oxford, British Ambassador to the United States and latterly a peer in the House of Lords. Consequently his early predisposition in The American Commonwealth to convey what he called ‘a full and clear view of the facts of today’ when seeking to ‘present . . . a general view of the United States both as a Government and as a Nation’ could not be completely divorced from his established party political leaning in favour of Irish home rule. Tulloch claimed that it was impossible for Bryce to keep the constitutional commentator and liberal parliamentarian apart:
It was impossible for anyone, author or reader, to look at the United States and not think of Ireland. . . . In this sense The American Commonwealth is a ringing vindication of achieved federalisation and a sustained three-volume refutation of Diceyan unionism.3
