IT was at a critical stage in the evolution of the British Empire that these words were spoken. Mr Chamberlain was introducing the Commonwealth of Australia Bill into the House of Commons. After many years of anxious deliberation and bitter conflict in the States of Australia the essential details had been agreed, and the Bill reached this country with the imprimatur of the Australian people after a reference to the electors.

The British North America Act of 1867, the Commonwealth Act of 1900, and the South Africa Act of 1909, mark a momentous epoch in Imperial development. To the casual observer the main effect of this legislation was to weld together in a confederation Colonies which previously had consisted of separate and disintegrated units. That, of

course, was one result of the greatest practical and political importance; and the process by which confederation was eventually reached affords both a warning and an object-lesson to those in this country who contemplate, apparently with unconcern, the disintegration of the United Kingdom.

But to Imperialists and to the Colonials themselves the inner meaning of this legisla

tion was known to be something far nobler and more profound. To them confederation meant nothing less than national birth. The throes of conflict and compromise through which the new Constitution had passed into being left behind impressions which nothing could efface; with the result that when once agree. ment had been reached, those who before had been neighbours felt themselves to be brothers indeed, possessed of a common heritage and a common nationality. In short, confederation was but the outward and visible sign of the birth of a national spirit.

"The Mother Country will regard this Congress of the Colonies," said Sir Henry Parkes at the Inter-Colonial Conference in 1867, "just in the same light as a father and mother may view the conduct of their children when they first observe those children beginning to look out for homes and connections for themselves."

But now that the dream of confederation had been realised, Colonials were no longer content to remain in a condition of dependence and subordination, or to regard themselves as merely infant children of the mother country. The very change in name is eloquent of the change in spirit. No

longer are they the Colonies of Great Britain. From henceforth they are to be known as the Dominions of His Majesty beyond the Seas. In the future, as in the past, "the crimson thread of kinship runs through us all," but with the birth of a national spirit Colonials once and for all claimed to be placed in relation to Great Britain on a footing of equality and partnership. Such a claim as this once made can never be withdrawn, and just as the father who refuses to recognise that his son has grown to man's estate will inevitably lose the confidence and co-operation of his son, in like manner the claim of the Dominions to be taken into partnership must be recognised, or Great Britain will in due course meet the fate which befell Imperial Rome. Those who are wise will ponder these things.

Never in the course of history has there been greater need of profound and enlightened statesmanship than in the anxious times through which our country is now passing. Great Britain in very truth stands at the parting of the ways. She has reached the stage in Imperial development which proved disastrous to the Imperial system of Rome, and -though in a minor degree to the less stringent union of the Grecian States with their Settlements abroad; for beyond all doubt the refusal of the Imperial authorities to recognise the right of the outlying Provinces of the Roman Empire to participate in the

management of Imperial and Local affairs was the main cause of the downfall of Imperial Rome.

a

The paramount issue and the most anxious problem in modern politics is, beyond all question, whether Great Britain will rise to the height of her destiny and join her children to herself upon basia of equality and partnership, or whether she will be content to remain in fruitless and enervating isolation behind a banged and barred and bolted door. "The next ten

or twenty years," Mr Borden has pointed out, "will be critical in the history of the Empire. They may be even decisive of its future." Therefore it behoves all those who have the ability and the opportunity to see to it that no link is broken which can help to bind together the mother country and her Dominions in an indissoluble Imperial partnership.

Now the realisation of Imperialism, properly understood, would be unattainable if it were not that throughout the length and breadth of King George's Dominions there is felt an intense veneration for the Crown. The sources of Imperial patriotism will be found, upon examination, one and all to have sprung from loyalty to the person of the King. To him all British subjects owe allegiance. He knows no Party and no sect. rules all his subjects without fear and without discrimination. He is the fountain alike of honour and of justice. And

He

so it happened that from the earliest times the King became the Court of last resort for all the subjects of the Crown.

Now in the determination of petitions of appeal from the British Dominions outside the United Kingdom the King acts upon the advice of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. It will thus be seen that this august tribunal, altogether apart from its other functions, in effect exercises jurisdiction over more than a quarter of the World.

The importance and the scope of its authority has never been equalled by any other Court.

"Go into the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council," writes Mr Nesbitt, K.C., a distinguished Canadian, "for a single week, and watch its operations. You will see it decide on one day a question accord ing to French Law as it prevailed before the Revolution, modified by subsequent Canadian Statutes; and on another day according to the Common Law of England as modified by Australian or New Zealand

Law. The truth of these observations may be understood by perusing a list of the different territories from which appeals may be taken to this Court. The number is up wards of 150. If Europe is taken an example, appeals lie from different Principalities, and the laws administered range from the ancient customs of the Isle of

as

six

Man to those in force in the island of Cyprus. Other interesting examples may be given in the Leeward Islands, composed of Montserrat, St Kitts, and Ben Nevis, where it administers the Common Law introduced by Royal Proclamation in 1764, and Newfoundland, which is our oldest Colony. In Asia, besides India, appeals lie from the Courts of twenty-four Principalities, differing from the Bombay High Court to the Consular Court of

China and Korea."

A glance at the list of cases set down for any one sittings will also illustrate how varied is the business which comes before it. In the summer sittings of this year, for instance, fifteen appeals were set down from India, fifteen from Canada, three from Australia; one each from Jamaica, British Guiana, the Straits Settlements, and Newfoundland, and two from New Zealand — the cases including a murder trial from Madras, a reference as to the legislative powers of the Dominion and the Provinces of Canada with regard to fisheries, an issue to determine whether the Province of Quebec was entitled to levy Succession Duty on property situated outside the Province, a dispute between Indian Rajahs as to the right to succeed by custom to certain estates in India, and an appeal from Australia which involved the construction of an Act by which the Commonwealth sought to control the rise and powers of trade combinations.

Moreover, the jurisdiction of the Judicial Committee is from time to time still further extended to meet the exigencies of political development. For instance, it is called upon under a Canadian Act of 1906 to entertain appeals from the Supreme Court of Canada on Constitutional matters referred to the Supreme Court by the Governor-General in Council, and the Home Rule Bill now before Parliament contains provisions whereby the Judicial Committee is in the future to be the final Court of Appeal

from the Irish Courts, and the persona designata to determine whether any Irish Act is ultra vires the Irish Parliament or not.

Who can doubt that by a development of this tribunal, with a jurisdiction so ample and an experience so worldwide, can be forged a strong link in the chain of the new Imperial partnership? Yet its work is done so unostentatiously that it holds but a small place in the public eye, and there are not many people who understand either its importance or its history. In point of fact its story forms perhaps the most fascinating chapter in English history; for in the evolution of its authority can be traced the strands of the network which binds the Empire together.

A cursory glance at the Privy Council in the different stages of its history will suffice to show how closely the Privy Council in its judicial capacity has been identified with the course of Imperial development.

The origin of the Privy Council is lost in antiquity. Until the end of the reign of Edward III. the functions of the King's Council and of Parliament are not clearly, if at all, distinguishable. It is enough for the purpose in hand that the King in the dispensation of justice was wont from the earliest times to consult those great persons who were about his Court. "Habet rex curiam suam in concilio suo in parliamentis suis ubi

terminatæ sunt dubitationes judiciorum."

By the reign of Richard II., however, the King's Council and Parliament had grown into distinct bodies, with different, and to some extent conflicting, functions. Appeals within the realm from this time onward were heard in Parliament, that is, by the Nobles, assisted by the Judges-and not by the King in Council. It is, no doubt, true that the King's Council did in fact exercise various judicial functions within the realm for nearly three centuries afterwards, as can be seen, e.g., in the operations of the Privy Council in the Star Chamber set up by Henry VII. But its jurisdiction occasioned great dissatisfaction, and in 1641 the Long Parliament not only abolished the Star Chamber, but once and for all put an end to the system by enacting that neither the King nor the Privy Council should have jurisdiction over any man's estate, and that the same ought to be tried and determined in the ordinary Court of Justice.

The Act of 1641, however, in no way affected the right of the King to hear petitions from the Dependencies of the Crown beyond the Seas, and down to 1833 appeals continued to be heard as before by an open committee of the Privy Council, who advised the Crown in each case as to the order which ought to be made. The form and jurisdiction of the present tribunal was ultimately settled by two Acts passed in 1833 and 1844, under which

the Judicial Committee was created with jurisdiction to hear appeals from any Court of Justice within any British colony or possession abroad, whether the Court from which the appeal was brought was a Court of Appeal or not.

The value of the decisions of the Judicial Committee in its appellate jurisdiction and in interpreting the Constitutions of the Dominions cannot be overrated. To the colonist as well as to the native the knowledge that the persons and property of all British subjects will be protected by an impartial and broad-minded administration of justice according to the law which obtains in any particular district, is a source of very real comfort and satisfaction.

"As showing the faith in this body," Mr Haldane (now Lord Chancellor) pointed out in 1900, "which has been inspired into our distant peoples, it is told by a traveller who had penetrated into a remote part of India, that he found the natives offering up a sacrifice to a far-off but all-powerful God, who had just restored to the tribe the land which the Government of the day had taken from it. He asked the name of the

God. The reply was, 'We know nothing of him, but that he is a good God, and that his name is the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.'"

Again, the first question which a prospective investor in a new country is bound to ask is, "will my money be protected in this country?" And that a favourable answer has been possible is to a large extent due to the belief which has always existed in the efficiency and impartiality of the

Judicial Committee as a final Court of Appeal from colonial Courts.

Far and away the most important of all the functions of the Judicial Committee, however, is the interpretation of the Constitutions with which the Dominions have been endowed, in accordance with the intention of the Legislature, and the respective rights and interests of the Dominions and the Provinces. It can easily be understood that a task such as this calls for the exercise of the highest intellectual and judicial qualities. The greatest figures in the legal world have from time to time appeared in the list of those who have presided over the deliberations of this historical tribunal. Mansfield, Grant, Kingsdown, Cairns, Halsbury,

Selborne,

Watson, Macnaghten, are all names to conjure with. But it may fairly be affirmed that the genius of Lord Watson and Lord Macnaghten in interpreting the Dominion Acts in accordance with the spirit of the Constitution, has been mainly instrumental in making the smooth working of the new Constitutions possible.

No sooner had the British North America Act become law in 1867 than friction arose, and it was recognised that great delicacy of touch and common-sense would be required if the disputes between the Dominion Parliament and the Provincial Legislatures as to their respective spheres of jurisdiction were to be satisfactorily adjusted. The Supreme Court of Canada, which