Page 220 - Afrika Must Unite

CHAPTER TWENTY

E X A M P L E S O F M A J O R U N I O N S

O F S T A T E S

T h e r e are in the world several unions of states which can offer
examples or case studies for the political unification of A frica:
the United States of America, the Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics, Australia, Canada, Switzerland and Venezuela.
Each of them came into being at different historical periods, but
all aimed at giving greater protection to the uniting states
against internal and external disintegrating pressures; and at
providing within the union the conditions of viability and
security which would lead to faster economic evolution.
The first of them was the United States of America, whose
constitution has, with modifications and adaptations, provided
a pattern for most of those which followed. Jam es Bryce, a
famous English jurist who died in 1922, in his Studies in History
and Jurisprudence, defined the most perfect form of a federation
of states as that which delegates to a supreme federal govern­
ment certain powers or functions inherent in themselves or in
their sovereign or separate capacity. In its turn, the federal or
union government, in the exercise of those specific powers, acts
directly on the individual citizen no less than upon the com­
munities making up the federation. The separate states retain
unimpaired their individual sovereignty in respect of the residual
powers unallotted to the central or federal authority. The
citizens of the federated states owe a double allegiance, one to
the individual state, the other to the federal government.
By the constitution adopted in 1787 and put into effect in
1789, the original thirteen members of the United States of
America, each wholly independent of the other, formed a
federal republic by a voluntary combination. This formation
strengthened and centralized the confederation and perpetual