their faith on the recognition of their neutrality which they hoped, from the humanity shown by the great powers in the adoption of rules forbidding privateering and protecting private property at sea, would readily be accorded by these powers. The naïve faith shown thus in treaties is only equalled in absurdity by the further proposal that the adoption of this attitude would not in any way prevent the Colonies from coming to the aid of the mother country if she were attacked, such aid possessing all the greater value because of their being independent States. It is hardly surprising that nothing further came of this remarkable exposition of international law.

The situation is now changed when Australia, New Zealand, and Canada have forces which cannot be regarded on any theory as negligible and when Australia possesses the nucleus of an effective Navy in place of the old gunboats which constituted the naval defence possessed by the Australian Colonies in 1870. Countries which have the power to supply themselves with effective protection or even with substantial protection may justly claim that they have outgrown a Colonial status, may resent the phrase ' our Colonies' used fondly of the Dominions by the average inhabitant of the United Kingdom, may insist that the title Dominion or Commonwealth should be replaced by Kingdom, and may even seek to compel the abandonment of the term Colonial as applied to self-governing possessions or, more properly, countries. The eradication of the adjective Colonial from the English speech is doubtless impossible, but it is common ground with all responsible statesmen that all possible steps must be taken to further the national life within the Empire of the self-governing Dominions. Nor is it doubtful that this end is to be obtained in one way only, the encouragement of the greatest autonomy in self-government coupled with the creation of closer bonds of union between the several parts of the Empire as a whole. The first part of this proposition is self-evident any check to the growth in self-reliance of the peoples of the Dominions would be a calamity; but the

second part is not less indisputable. No Dominion could possibly by whatever extension of its national life be as great as the British Empire; even if Canada possesses the most highly educated, the most hardworking and the most intelligent of the people of the world, nevertheless in organic connexion with forty-five millions in the United Kingdom and five millions in Australia they may hope to reach yet a higher destiny than can await them as Canadians only. Canada herself and the Commonwealth represent aggregates of independent units, nor can any one doubt that the life of Canada and the Commonwealth is fuller and better than that of the units from which they have emerged could have been even five years have done not a little to broaden the outlook of South Africa, and the difficulties of the task should not make us despair of any solution for the problem of the self-governing portions of the British Empire other than the loose alliance which some believe is all that is possible. But the attainment of true organic unity for so great an Empire and so diverse elements scattered widely in space is a task far exceeding that of any [ federation yet accomplished, and it may well be that the form which ultimately will be evolved will be one which has no existing parallel.

In the meantime it is certain that the efforts of statesmen must be bent on removing as far as is practicable all grounds of friction between the several parts of the Empire, and on promoting unity of sentiment and action upon common problems. These questions must present themselves for partial solution as far as may be practicable under existing circumstances at the next Imperial Conference, and it is therefore of interest to consider in the first place what are the existing limitations of the independence of the selfgoverning Dominions and in what degree they can be relaxed without injury to the framework of Empire, and in the second place what means there exist of effecting a closer union between the several parts of the Empire.

PART I. THE LIMITATIONS OF THE AUTONOMY OF THE DOMINIONS

A. THE GOVERNOR

CHAPTER I

THE APPOINTMENT OF THE GOVERNOR

IN all Colonies of the Empire the rule is observed that the appointment of the head of the executive government is vested in the Crown. It is recognized that while the executive government must be vested in the Crown, nevertheless it cannot normally be exercised by the Sovereign in person, and must be carried on by a representative, styled Governor-General in the case of federations and Governor in the case of unitary Dominions and of the Australian States, which preserve within the federation of the Commonwealth a certain independence. This fact entitles them to a position superior to that of the provinces of Canada or the Union of South Africa, which is indeed in essence a unitary Government, though some appearance of federal institutions has been preserved. In the case of the federations and the Union, which owe their existence to the action of Parliament alone, the power of the Crown to appoint a Governor-General rests upon the express provisions of the constitution Acts: in the case of the unitary Dominions and the States of Australia the office of Governor is indeed recognized by Dominion statutes, but it is created by Letters Patent under the Great Seal of the United Kingdom, and the actions of the Governor are regulated by these Letters Patent and by the Instructions under the Signet and Sign Manual which are issued along with the Letters Patent. Even in the case of the federations and the Union,

similar instruments have been issued in supplement of the bare authority of appointment contained in the Acts creating the constitutions. The actual individual officer

is appointed to the post of Governor-General or Governor by a Commission under the Sign Manual and Signet, which serves as the authority for the swearing in of the new officer in supersession of the old commission.

In making the appointment of a Governor-by which term a Governor-General may conveniently 1 be included— the Crown must naturally act on the advice of the Imperial Ministry of the day. There is, of course, no legal necessity that this should be the case, but it is a maxim of the British constitution that any act of Government in the British Islands carried out by the Crown must be authorized by the responsibility of a minister, and thus in all cases of appointment responsibility is assumed in the first instance by the Secretary of State for the Colonies, and in the second place by the Cabinet and Prime Minister for the time being. Formally this responsibility is indicated by the countersignature of the Governor's commission by the Secretary of State, and in practice a Secretary of State may be called upon to defend the selection of a Governor which on his advice the Crown has seen fit to make; as for instance in 1913 when the appointment of Sir W. Ellison Macartney was challenged on his selection for the Governorship of Tasmania on the ground that he had been at one time an Orangeman and would therefore not prove acceptable to the Roman Catholic elements in the State. Practically, of course, the appointment is not made on the sole authority of the Secretary of State: appointments to important Governments are matters in which the Prime Minister must be expected to take a certain direct interest, and it is an acknowledged part of the royal prerogative that no person should be submitted for appointment as a representative of the Crown whose appointment would be distasteful to the Sovereign. Nor is it doubtful that the Ministry of the day would give all possible consideration to any suggestion 1 So in Canadian Statutes the Governor in Council is used.

for the filling of an important post which might be made by the Crown, the selection of men for the highest posts in the Dominions being obviously a matter in which the judgement of the King would have peculiar value.

The question naturally presented itself at a comparatively early date whether the power of choice could not be shared in some degree by the Colonial Government. The matter was definitely raised in a somewhat acute form by the decision of the Imperial Government in 1888 to appoint as Governor of Queensland a distinguished officer, Sir Henry Blake, who had just served a period as Governor of Newfoundland.1 The feeling in Queensland ran at that moment somewhat high; the late Governor, Sir Anthony Musgrave, whose distinction had been won in Crown Colonies and who was not familiar with the niceties of responsible government, had thought it his duty to exercise a personal discretion in a case of the proposed exercise of the prerogative of mercy. The exercise of this discretion was formally permitted by the royal instructions then in force, nor in all probability was the discretion of the Governor at fault; there is nothing more difficult than the due exercise of the prerogative of mercy in a small community, when everything tends to bring pressure on ministers to remit penalties which, however just, are offensive to the majority or even a considerable minority of the people in the locality in which the offence was committed or the criminal lives. The Ministry of the day resigned, and as there was no Imperial interest involved, it was impossible to maintain the action of the Governor, whose death followed shortly after. It was not unnatural in all the circumstances that the Queensland Government should have been anxious to secure a man of long experience in self-governing Colonies, and at the same time South Australia approached the Secretary of State for the Colonies with the request that the Government might be informed in confidence of the name of the officer proposed as the next Governor so that if necessary any objection might be taken to the proposed appointment before it was formally made.

1 See Parl. Pap., C. 5828.