Brunswick the members of the Government were re-elected. In Nova Scotia the electorate took its revenge upon the Government for having neglected in 1866 to submit the question of union to the people. Every member of the Ministry except Dr. Tupper was defeated; and Nova Scotia sent to the first Dominion Parliament a solid body of members pledged to agitate for her immediate severance from the Union. This demand for repeal was continued in the Nova Scotian local Legislature, which in 1868 passed a resolution demanding leave to secede from the Union, and sent Howe the Reform leader to London to press that demand upon the Imperial Government. But whilst he was away-receiving, it may be said, small attention from the British Parliament-the failure of the fisheries brought great distress upon Nova Scotia. Her need called out the help of the other Colonies, and the wealth of their assistance did much to soothe the bitterness that her people had felt at being driven into union. The agitation for repeal melted into a demand for "better terms." 'Finally the Dominion Government agreed to become responsible for a much larger portion of her debt than had been contemplated in the Act of Union, and also to pay her a subsidy of 82,698 dollars a year for ten years, to compensate for certain losses of revenue."* Howe accepted these terms and carried the Province in favour of adhesion to the Dominion. He himself took office in the Dominion Cabinet (1869). Thus the four Colonies-the two Canadas (now known as Quebec Adhesions to and Ontario), Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick-became the the Dominion. Dominion of Canada. In 1870 Manitoba and the North-West Territories were added to the Dominion, and in 1871 the Pacific Province of British Columbia; whilst in 1873 Prince Edward Island repented her first refusal and came into the Union. For the site of the capital the Convention of 1864 had selected Ottawa, which had already been chosen by the Queen-at the request of the Parliament of the two Canadas-as the capital of those two Provinces. The foundation-stone of the Houses of Parliament had been laid in 1860 by the Prince of Wales, and when the Conference met the buildings were nearly finished. Situated on the borderline between Quebec and Ontario, with abundant water from two rivers, and built on a lofty table-land rising in an abrupt cliff from the river bank, its position is one of great natural beauty, fit for the home of the romance of the National Unity of British North America. * Roberts: History of Canada," p. 360. Imperial CHAPTER II. THE GROWTH OF THE AUSTRALIAN COMMONWEALTH. The history of the growth of the Australian Commonwealth extends over a long period; from the year 1847 when Earl Grey, then Secretary of State for the Colonies, in a despatch detailing his proposals for the creation of a new Colony-Victoria-out of the territory of New South Wales, outlined a project for the union of the scattered settlements of Australia under a central authority for the consideration of "questions which, though local as it respects the British possessions in Australia collectively, are not merely local as it respects any one of those possessions"; to the year 1900 when the "Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act" passed through the Imperial Parliament. It took, therefore, 53 years to form the Union of Australia. But of this long period the earlier and longer part can hardly be said to have much bearing on the formation of the union; and the first steps, originating as they did with the Secretary of State for the Colonies, are of very slight importance. They have, however, an interest of curiosity from the standpoint of the Union of South Africa, in the parallel which they offer to the attempt of Lord Carnarvon to force Union upon the South African States in 1876. It is interesting to notice that the chief motives for Earl Grey's proposals were a desire to avoid discrimination in any one Colony, by means of duties and imposts, against "goods, the growth, produce or manufacture of any other Colony, and a sense of the desirability of common regulations for all the Australian Colonies upon such subjects as "the conveyance of letters and the formation of roads, railways or other internal communications traversing any two or more of such Colonies." Although, therefore, the despatch in which the Colonial Secretary outlined his proposals was received in Australia with the most outspoken criticism and dissent, and though the draft of the Australian Colonies' Government Bill, which was passed by the Imperial Parliament in 1850 upon the recommendation of a Committee of the Privy Council appointed to consider the proposals made by Earl Grey and the Australian criticisms upon them, was amended by the omission of all the clauses providing for the Union of the Colonies; yet the main difficulties of union-the tariff question, regulation of inter-Colonial communications by land and water, and the representation of States in a Central Parliament-were defined and considered at the very outset of the movement. It is this instinctive insight into_the crucial elements of the problem of unity which justifies a short summary of the provisions of the Act of 1850. In its original form the Bill, after providing for the separation of Victoria from New South Wales, embodied the Committee's recommendation for a "General Assembly" consisting of the Governor-General and a single House, to be called the House of Delegates, and to consist of not more than thirty and not less than twenty members. These members were to be elected by the Legislatures of the different Colonies-the number of delegates sent by each Colony being proportionate to its population. The range of the legislative authority of the House of Delegates was strictly limited to ten subjects, defined as follows: (1) Imposition of duties upon imports and exports. (2) Conveyance of letters. (3) Formation of roads, canals or railways traversing any two or more Colonies. (4) Erection and maintenance of beacons and lighthouses. (5) Imposition of dues or other charges on shipping in every port or harbour. (6) Establishment of a general Supreme Court, to be a Court of original jurisdiction or a Court of Appeal from any of the inferior Courts of the separate Colonies. (7) The determining of the extent of the jurisdiction and the forms and manner of proceeding of the Supreme Court. (8) Regulation of weights and measures. (9) Enactment of laws affecting all the Colonies represented in the General Assembly, on any subject not specifically mentioned in the preceding list, but on which the House of Delegates might be desired to legislate by addresses presented from the Legislatures of all such Colonies. (10) The appropriation to any of the preceding objects of such sums as may be necessary, by an equal percentage from the revenue received in all the Australian Colonies, in virtue of any enactments of the General Assembly of Australia. The Bill, as first introduced, also provided for a uniform tariff applicable to all the Australian Colonies, the details of which were set out in a schedule. The abandonment of the provisions for a General Assembly and a uniform tariff was referred to by Earl Grey in his despatch covering the Bill as finally passed in the following words : "The Clauses giving power for the establishment, under certain circumstances, of a General Assembly for two or more of the Colonies were omitted from the Bill in its progress through the House of Lords. This omission was not assented to by Her Majesty's Government in consequence of any change of opinion as to the importance of the suggestions on this point which are contained in the report of the Committee of the Privy Council. But it was found on examination that the Clauses in question were liable to practical objections, to obviate which it would have been necessary to introduce amendments entering into details of legislation which there were no means of satisfactorily arranging without further communication with the Colonies. "Her Majesty's Government have been less reluctant to abandon, for the present, this portion of the measure which they proposed, inasmuch as even in New South Wales it appeared, as far as they could collect the opinion which prevails on the subject, not to be regarded as of immediate importance, whilst in the other Colonies objections had been expressed to the creation of any such authority. Beginnings of the Australian Movement. "I am not, however, the less persuaded that the want of some such central authority to regulate matters of common importance to the Australian Colonies will be felt, and probably at a very early period; but when this want is so felt, it will of itself suggest the means by which it may be met. The several Legislatures will, it is true, be unable at once to give the necessary authority to a General Assembly, because the legislative power of each is confined of necessity within its territorial limits; but if two or more of the Legislatures should find that there are objects of common interest for which it is expedient to create such an authority, they will have it in their power, if they can settle the terms of an arrangement for the purpose, to pass Acts for giving effect to it, with Clauses suspending their operation till Parliament shall have supplied the authority that is wanting. By such Acts the extent and objects of the powers which they are prepared to delegate to such a body might be defined and limited with precision, and there can be little doubt that Parliament, when applied to to give effect to an arrangement so agreed upon, would readily consent to do so.' Although, therefore, the attempt of Earl Grey to provide for the Australian Colonies a scheme of union ready-made ended in failure, it was not without good results. The terms of the despatch announcing his failure show that he himself had recognised in 1850 that the details of such a scheme would have to be elaborated by the Colonies themselves, and that the province of the Imperial Government and Parliament would be limited to the scrutiny of details, and the setting of the seal of authority upon the scheme as a whole. This in itself marked a great advance upon the rather dictatorial attitude which Earl Grey had adopted when first advancing his proposals in 1847. But this was not all. Australian criticism upon Earl Grey's suggestions had made it clear that, however advantageous in the abstract a uniform tariff for all the Australian Colonies might be, and however apparent might be the theoretical advantages of a General Assembly for the whole of the Colonies, yet there were local difficulties in the adjustment of tariff rates and in the proportionate representation of each Colony, which made the establishment of a uniform tariff and of a General Assembly very difficult to achieve in the concrete. As far as the immediate future was concerned, the proposal for a General Assembly was hardly regarded by the Australians themselves in 1850 as within the scope of practical politics. This is made clear by the proposals of the Select Committees appointed by the Parliaments of the separate Colonies between 1850 and 1860. The fact that such Committees should have been appointed at all shows that Earl Grey's proposals for a scheme of Australian unity-though they had been received with uncompromising opposition-had awakened in the minds of Australians themselves some consciousness of the advantages of union in the abstract. But at that date the Australian movement towards union amounted to little more than that. The " Constitutional Committee," for instance, appointed by the Legislature of New South Wales in 1853 to prepare a draft for a new Constitution of that Colony, added to its report a paragraph pointing to the advisability of the establishment of a General Assembly for the Australian Colonies and defining the subjects with which such an Assembly should be empowered to deal; but did not attempt to suggest any method of calling the General Assembly together, or to elaborate the details of its composition. Similarly, the Committee appointed by the Victorian Legislature in the same year and for the same object, contented itself with inserting in its report a paragraph expressing its feeling that there were questions of such vital inter-Colonial interest that provision should be made for occasionally convoking a General Assembly for legislating on such questions as may be submitted to it by the Act of any Legislature of one of the Australian Colonies." And even when a definite scheme was outlined by a Committee appointed by the Legislature of New South Wales and was brought up for consideration in Parliament with a recommendation that a conference should be held to consider the matter of union, it was found that the representatives were so engrossed in purely Colonial affairs that the detailed proposals of the Committee were finally shelved. The movement, in fact, had scarcely progressed beyond a vague and by no means unanimous belief in the advantages of union. That this should be so was, indeed, only to be expected. The separate Colonies had barely received their Constitutions as selfgoverning States under the British Crown. The period between 1850 and 1860 is the period during which responsible government was conferred on these Colonies. Thus the New South Wales Constitution Act passed the Imperial Parliament in 1855; Victoria received its Constitution in the same year; Tasmania in 1856; South Australia also in 1856. Queensland was separated from the terriotry of New South Wales as a Colony with responsible government in 1859. And though Western Australia was not made a self-governing Colony till 1890, a Bill to establish a Legislative Council for that Colony-two-thirds of whose members were to be elected, whilst one-third was to be nominated by the Crown -passed through the Imperial Parliament as early as 1850. Under these circumstances it was not to be expected that any of the Colonies would be in a position to contemplate a definite scheme of union. But the ideal of union at least had begun to formulate itself; and in South Australia, as in New South Wales and Victoria, Parliament appointed Committees of each House in 1857 to consider the question of Federal union. Their reports were identical in terms: they considered that the formation of a Federal Legislature would be premature at that moment, but that there were so many topics in which the Colonies had a common interest, and in which uniform legislation would be desirable, that it was expedient to adopt some measures to secure these objects. Accordingly they expressed their concurrence with the suggestion of the Victorian Committee for the holding of a Conference of the Colonies, not to bind the several Legislatures, but only to discuss and report. These recommendations were adopted by the Parliament of South Australia, and delegates were appointed to represent the Colony at any Conference which might be held. But the history of the growth of the Australian Commonwealth The Tariff is not that of a people which from the first clearly realised the Question. advantages of union; which was always prepared to make the sacrifices necessary for the attainment of union; and which Ꭰ |