its normal strength, but the Governor appointed twelve new members, and the Bill was then assented to on the 22nd April, 1899, with the provision that eight weeks should elapse before the referendum. Meanwhile South Australia had already passed her Enabling Act; Victoria and Tasmania did so soon after New South Wales; and Queensland, after a long delay, followed the example of the other four Colonies on the 19th June. This was immediately before the referendum in New South Wales, which took place on the 27th June, 1899 and resulted, in spite of a desperate last effort made by the opponents of the Constitution, in an affirmative majority of 24,679. In Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania the Constitution was affirmed by enormous majorities; and in Queensland, where the voting did not take place till the 2nd of September, the Constitution was adopted by a majority of 7,492. The total figures in the five Colonies were :

Difficulties the way of Enactment.

"These figures"-(say Messrs. Quick and Garran*)-" are a striking proof of the strength and sincerity of the national sentiment throughout the whole of Eastern Australasia; and they are also a unique testimony to the high political capacity of the Australian people. Never before have a group of self-governing, practically independent communities, without external pressure or foreign complications of any kind, deliberately chosen of their own free will to put aside their provincial jealousies and come together as one people, from a single intellectual and sentimental conviction of the folly of disunion and the advantages of nationhood. The States of America, of Switzerland, of Germany, were drawn together under the shadow of war. Even the Canadian Provinces were forced to unite by the neighbourhood of a great foreign power. But the Australian Commonwealth-the fifth great Federation of the world-came into voluntary being through a deep conviction of national unity. We may well be proud of the statesmen who constructed a Constitution which-whatever may be its faults and its shortcomings-has proved acceptable to a large majority of the people of five great communities scattered over a continent; and proud of a people who, without the compulsion of war or the fear of conquest, have succeeded in agreeing upon the terms of a binding and indissoluble social compact."

During August, 1899, the Parliaments of four of the Colonies whose people had ratified the Constitution passed addresses to the Queen praying that it should be passed into law by the Imperial Parliament. In Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania the address met with no opposition. In New South Wales the address was passed after several nights' debate. Queensland passed a similar address shortly after her delayed referendum. It is perhaps unnecessary to enter into the details of the negotiations with the Colonial Office which preceded and accompanied the passage of the Constitution through the Imperial Parliament. They were conducted, on the side of the Colonies, by a delegation consisting

* "Annotated Constitution of Australian Commonwealth," p. 225.

of one representative from each of the Federating Colonies, and centred mainly round three questions: Firstly, the admission of Western Australia and New Zealand into the Federation; secondly, the question whether the Australian Constitution would come under the provisions of the Colonial Laws Validity Act; and thirdly, the provisions of the Constitution as to appeals to the Privy Council. The form of the final settlement of the last of these three questions will be discussed in the chapter on appeals to the Privy Council. The second was settled by the omission of a definition of the word "Colony" in the proposed clause 6 of the Covering Clauses to the Constitution, upon which definition the difficulty raised by the Law Officers of the Crown was based.

As far as the admission of Western Australia and New Zealand Western

was concerned, it was made clear at an early stage of the negotia- Australia. tions that the Imperial Government would not consent to include in the Bill to be submitted to the Imperial Parliament, any amendment to the draft Constitution upon the question of admission of any Colony. This meant that Western Australia and New Zealand must either accept the Constitution and join the Federation as original States, or must stay outside. New Zealand adopted the latter; Western Australia the former, alternative. The attitude of Western Australia had undergone a change immediately after the Constitution left the Convention in its final form. The Premier, Sir John Forrest, who had at first appeared to be prepared to recommend the acceptance of the Constitution, did not bring it before Parliament till July, 1899, after the second referendum in New South Wales had taken place. It was then referred to a Select Committee of the Assembly, whose report advocated certain amendments giving Western Australia a larger discretion in the matter of railway control and customs duties than was given her under the draft Constitution. These amendments were accepted by the Government, which proposed to submit the Constitution with the amendments to a referendum. The proposal of the Government was carried in the Lower, but defeated in the Upper, House. A deadlock thus came about, and the submission of the Constitution to the people of Western Australia was deferred until Mr. Chamberlain, who was then Colonial Secretary, clearly intimated that the Imperial Government would not amend the draft Constitution in favour of Western Australia and that she would lose the advantages of an Original State if she did not join the Federation before the Constitution Act was proclaimed by the Queen. Even then it would have been too late for Western Australia to enter the Federation as an Original State had not a clause been specially inserted in the Imperial Bill then before Parliament "providing that, if the people intimated, before the issue of the Queen's Proclamation, a desire to be included, Western Australia might join as an Original State." Thereupon the Parliament of Western Australia was summoned in haste and an Enabling Act rushed through. The referendum took place on the 31st July, 1900. The Government consented to have it taken in accordance with

F

Proclamation of the

Commonwealth.

the newly-extended franchise of the Colony, so that all adultsmen and women-who had been twelve months in the Colony should be entitled to vote. It resulted in a majority for Federation of 25,109; and the address to the Queen was passed by both Houses of Parliament on the 21st August, 1900.

Meanwhile the Commonwealth Act had passed the House of Lords on the 5th July, and had received the Royal Assent on the 9th July, 1900. "On the 17th September, 1900, the Queen signed the Proclamation declaring that on and after the Ist day of January, 1901, the people of New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and Western Australia should be united in a Federal Commonwealth under the name of the Commonwealth of Australia."

CHAPTER III.

THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE GERMAN EMPIRE.

[This chapter is an extract from a series of articles published in the "Morning Post" during the month of June, 1908. It is reproduced here, by the kind permission of the Editor, as giving a short and vivid account of the actual working of Union in Germany.]

I.

The German Empire is a sovereign State, containing twenty-six Federal constituent parts, all of which, with the solitary exception of Council. Alsace-Lorraine, are themselves sovereign States. This is apparently a contradiction in terms and a stumbling block to the Constitutional lawyer. It is the key to the peculiarities of the Imperial Constitution. That Constitution distributes power among three elements-the Federal Council (Bundesrat), the Imperial Chamber (Reichstag), and the Emperor; it is to the two first that all legislative functions are confined.

The Empire itself did not suddenly spring into existence out of nothing at all; it is a development of the previously existing North German Confederation, and it has never lost the traces of its federal origin. The Confederation, formed by Treaty after the Austrian War of 1866, was extended in 1870 by further Treaties so as to include the States south of the Main; at the same time, and also by an international agreement, the union changed its name from Confederation to Empire, the change of name not being accompanied by any Constitutional alteration of character. The South German States which formally entered the Union in 1870 had been previously connected with it; but that connection had been purely fiscal. The Southern States had agreed to participate in the tariff arrangements of the Confederation, and fiscal matters were accordingly handed over to a Council appointed ad hoc, in which all the States in the Tariff Union were represented. In 1870, When the Fiscal Union became the political union with which we are familiar, the authority of this Council was naturally extended; it became the Federal Council of the Empire. It consists of fiftyeight members, all of whom are delegates appointed by the various Governments, to whom they report, and from whom they receive instructions. The delegates have no independent authority whatever; they vote as their Governments instruct them.

The number of Prussian delegates is seventeen; Bavaria, the second State of the Empire, appoints no more than six; and most of the other States only one. Inasmuch as Prussia controls the votes of many of the smaller States, and is, in fact, sure of at least thirty votes, a Prussian proposal can never be rejected, though if the opposition be very strong it may be withdrawn. On the other hand, as Prussia possesses the right of absolute veto, granted in view of her preponderant stake in the Empire, a project to which Prussia objects cannot be carried through, even if all the thirty-one non-Prussian delegates have been instructed to support it. It is this predominance of Prussia in the Council that is responsible for the dread of the Prussianisation of the Empire, of which one hears so much in the Southern States. For the Council is a sovereign body. From the federal nature of the Empire it follows that sovereignty is wielded by the Governments of the twenty-five States acting in concert. The vehicle of concerted action is necessarily the Federal Council, on which all the State Governments as such are directly represented. Accordingly it is urged, not altogether without plausibility, that the independence of the various States is an independence in word only; that the so-called Federal Empire is a farce; and that in reality there is not the slightest check on Prussian autocracy. The objection is met by pointing out that it cannot be to the interest of Prussia to abuse her authority; that Prussia by herself is a first-class Power; and that she has invited the other German States to enter into partnership with her, though it was open to her to assert an absolute hegemony over all the States north of the Main at least. The strength of the Empire lies in the fact that it is German, not Prussian, and any attempt at Prussian domination could only weaken it, and might possibly lead to a war of secession and the inevitable reappearance of Austria in German affairs. In fact Prussian tyranny was the very thing against which Bismarck-himself a good Prussian and no democrat-was at the utmost pains to guard, and no one would surely seek to undo Bismarck's work.

There is only one way of testing the truth either of the antiPrussian agitation or of the Prussian reply thereto, and that is by an investigation of what actually occurs in the Federal Council. That test is rendered impossible to the student of German politics by the fact that the Council meets in secret. Consequently very little is known about its operations, and that little tells both ways -in domestic affairs in favour of Prussia and in foreign affairs against her. Inasmuch as no measure can become law without receiving the assent of the Council, which is thus sovereign in legislative matters, it is the custom for all important legislation to be initiated in the Council, though, according to the Constitution, it might equally well be initiated in the Chamber. There has never been any attempt to put pressure on the opposition in the Council by getting a Bill endorsed by the representatives of the people in the Chamber. Particular care has been shown for the susceptibilities of the States in the matter of taxation. Direct Imperial taxation would clearly be an infringement of State sovereignty.