The essential feature of the English constitution is the actual and direct government of the whole United Kingdom by the Parliament at Westminster.

No change could be more fundamental than a change which, in England, Scotland, or Ireland, reduced this actual authority to the ultimate or reserved sovereignty exercised, or rather claimed, by Parliament in Canada or in New Zealand.
The negative characteristic of the English constitution is the absence of federalism or of the federal spirit.
The spirit of institutions is as important as their form, and the spirit of English Parliamentary government has always been a spirit of unity.
The fundamental conditions of federal government are well known.

They are first the existence of States such as the Cantons of Switzerland or the States of Germany, which are capable of bearing in the eyes of their inhabitants an impress of common nationality, and next the existence among the inhabitants of the federalised country of a very peculiar sentiment, which may be described as the desire for political union without the desire for political unity.[8] This condition of opinion leads to a division of powers between the federal or national government and the States.

Whatever concerns the nation as a whole is placed under the control of the federal power.
All matters which are not primarily of common interest remain in the hands of the States.

Now each of these conditions upon which federalism rests has, as a matter of history, been absolutely unknown to the people of England.