entertained, since many people in the United Kingdom suffered from the same delusion, that there was a chance of an early peace. It is still premature to discuss the actual mode of arranging peace when no peace is in sight. It is, however, quite a different thing to discuss the steps which should be taken in settling the outlines of the conditions of peace to be sought, and that could be done by a conference if the time and circumstances of the Dominions permitted a full attendance of ministers. It may, however, be observed, that the appointment of the ex-Labour Prime Minister to be High Commissioner of the Commonwealth in London affords a simple and effective means, if desired, for keeping the Labour Government in touch with the Imperial Government and with foreign affairs. It is true that the High Commissioner remains a civil servant of a special kind, but that does not alter the fact that he must be in complete sympathy with the Labour Government of which he has so long been the leader in Parliament, and that owing to the caucus system he is not in the same position towards his ministerial superiors as the ordinary High Commissioner to the Government by which he is appointed. The Labour system of rule gives to the private individual a considerable amount of importance as compared with ministers, for it reduces their rank by subordinating their position to the control of the Labour Party in Parliament, and behind that the Labour Party in the country, and thus while the position is experimental it is not impossible that in this way the needs of consultation might be met effectively and conveniently. That if possible a full Conference should be held is obvious, but must depend on the wishes and needs of the Dominions as a whole : Australia and New Zealand have far more need for conferences than the nearer Dominions.

The position of the Dominions in any actual Peace Conference which might be held to settle terms of peace is a more difficult question. If a formal meeting similar to those which marked the end of the great wars of the beginning of the nineteenth century were held, it might be possible

to have the Dominions represented by advisers of the British plenipotentiaries, or as members of the British delegation acting on the rule that the final decision would rest with the Imperial Government. It might also be possible that they should act as plenipotentiaries to represent the King on behalf of the Dominions, as has been done in the case of two commercial conferences, and has been suggested above 1 as a suitable procedure for Hague Conferences. But it may be doubted if, in case of the peace necessary to effect a settlement after a war in which there are the wishes of so many allies to consider and so many conflicting aims to be reconciled, it would not be better to allow the Dominions merely to be represented in an advisory capacity.

It must of course be remembered that the common idea that in this war the Dominions are coming to aid the Empire merely out of chivalry and loyalty is not an accurate representation of facts. It is most true that this is the feeling animating many of those who have offered themselves for service, but it would be idle to deny that the war is essentially one as much for the freedom and the power of self-government of the Dominions as it is for the freedom of the United Kingdom. We may indeed go further and assert that the Dominions are in rather more danger, with the exception of Canada, which would be protected by the United States in accordance with the Canning doctrine 2 as enunciated by Monroe in her own vital interests,3 than the United Kingdom herself, which is too strong to be finally ruled even by a victorious Germany. But Australia and New Zealand, and still more South Africa, would have no chance of resisting appropriation by a victorious Germany, and it is idle to deny that the obtaining of such possessions would exactly meet the German view of their future in the world. There has been evidence already in the Common

1 Part I, chap. xiv.

2 See J. S. Ewart, Kingdom Papers, ii. 169-92, who usefully reminds his fellow Canadians of the true source of the policy.

3 This would be humiliating to Canada, as pointed out by Sir W. Laurier; Round Table, 1915, p. 431, and by Sir R. Borden, ibid. p. 432.

wealth of the insidious control which has been effected of the whole metal industry, a control which the Commonwealth Government has set itself successfully to defeat for good,2 and the university circles of New Zealand have given a signal example of their lack of common-sense by their determined resistance to the wise decision of the Government and the Parliament that an unnaturalized German professor should not be allowed to continue the instruction of youth.

1 Note should be made of the clear recognition of the Bulletin (e.g. Aug. 12, 1915) of the real stake of Australia in the war.

2 See Round Table, 1915-16, pp. 175-80. The necessary co-operation of the Imperial Government is to be obtained by Mr. Hughes during his visit of March 1916 to London.

C. THE JUDICIAL POWER

CHAPTER XVI

APPEALS TO THE PRIVY COUNCIL

THERE still exists at the present day a very wide right of appeal to the Crown-in-Council from the courts of the oversea Dominions possessing responsible government, and it is perhaps not always realized that the right to appeal is not one which can be taken away at pleasure by the Legislatures of the Dominions. Apart altogether from the question of the exercise of the right of the Crown to withhold assent from a Bill fettering the right of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council to grant leave to appeal from the decision of a Dominion court, in almost every case such an attempt at legislation would be ultra vires, and would therefore not in law hamper the exercise of the discretion of the Judicial Committee in performing their function of considering such appeals. Moreover it must always be borne in mind that the Judicial Committee is a judicial body, and that, though it is not impervious to considerations of a quasi-political nature as to the mode in which it should exercise its right to grant special leave to appeal, nevertheless it is bound to deal with any such application in a judicial spirit and to decide it in a judicial manner. It would not be possible to lay down for that body any rule that the dislike of a Dominion to the hearing of appeals should be a ground for not hearing those appeals which were actually brought to its notice.

The right of the Crown to grant special leave to appeal rests on the royal prerogative in the first instance, but the prerogative can be barred by local legislation in most cases, and it may be held that it could effectively be barred in the case of this prerogative also. There is, however, a certain

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difficulty in the matter which cannot be wholly ignored from The prerogative is exercised in the United Kingdom, and in i not in the Dominion, and it may be argued that the effect C of a local Act being limited in territorial effect would not on bar the possibility of the grant by the Crown of special o leave, and that, if on the hearing of the appeal the judgement the were reversed, the effects of such a reversal would follow automatically in law, if not in practice. On the other hand the the question is really academic, for, if the actual effects o were not permitted to follow in the Dominion, if the courts there were instructed by local law that their decisions were to be treated by them as final, the reversal of a decision on appeal would matter nothing, and, what is more important, the Judicial Committee would not deal with judgements which would not be affected by their decisions.

In any case, L

however, the power to prevent the operation of the prerogative is taken away from nearly all Dominion Legislatures by the provisions of an Act, 7 and 8 Vict. c. 69, which was passed, not for this purpose but merely because it had been found doubtful whether the Crown had power to hear cases brought on appeal, not from the last appellate jurisdiction in a colony, but from an inferior court. It may at first sight seem strange that there should have been any desire to hear appeals direct from the inferior courts, but the explanation is that in several colonies the final court of appeal in the colony itself was the Governor-in-Council, not a judicial body in any very satisfactory sense, and not one which was likely by its deliberations to add much of value to what was said in the highest inferior court. Indeed this anomalous system remained alive in theory in Western Australia until 1911,1 when the last remnant of it was abolished as the result of the discovery that apparently the Governor-in-Council was a court of appeal in divorce cases, a duty which that body had not the slightest desire to perform. The Act, however, while permitting appeals to be brought direct from any inferior court, incidentally abolished all restrictions on the right to bring appeals

1 Act No. 4 of 1911; Parl. Pap., Cd. 6091, p. 53.

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