Note 8 — APPENDIX. IMPERIAL FEDERATION.

The use of the word Congress for the Federal Assembly of the United States is a curious instance of the survival of a word when the thing expressed by it has wholly changed its nature. Up to 1789 the United States had a body which had naturally borrowed the name of Congress from the diplomatic gatherings with which it had much in common. In 1789 this mere Congress gave way to a real Federal Parliament. But the Federal Parliament kept the name of the imperfect institution which it supplanted.