where the central government has functions which elsewhere are carried out by local agencies or by private enterprise, there must be someone to do the business of the constituency with the central government; and the satisfaction of local wants may well mean the difference between prosperity and adversity. After these, there is in a general election, the personal element-the contest in the constituency between two or more known men-and the stimulus of the personal canvass, which counts for so much; more remotely, there is the knowledge that on the result of the election depends the fate of the Ministers. It is "men not measures" that in ordinary times give to politics their interest for the mass of mankind. With the local and the personal element eliminated, it is a tribute to the efforts of the workers on both sides that at the second Referendum 583,865 of the 983,486 electors recorded their votes, and when we observe that 422,788 votes were cast for the Bill and only 161,077 against, we see that it was no mere form which declared that the people of the colonies had agreed to unite. The federation of Australia was a popular act, an expression of the free will of the people of every part of it, and therein, as in some other respects, it differs in a striking manner from the federation of the United States, of Canada, and of Germany.

CHAPTER III.

THE NATURE AND AUTHORITY OF THE

FEDERAL COMMONWEALTH.

ON September 17th, 1900, the Queen by Proclamation declared that the people of the colonies of New South Wales, Tasmania, Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia, and the Province of South Australia should be united in a Federal Commonwealth under the name of "The Commonwealth of Australia"; and on January 1st, 1901, the day appointed by the Proclamation, the Commonwealth became established and the Constitution of the Commonwealth took effect, in accordance with sections iii. and iv. of an Act of the Imperial Parliament known as the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act, 1900 (63 and 64 Vict., c. 12). The preamble of the Act recites the agreement of the people of the colonies "to unite in one indissoluble Federal Commonwealth under the Crown of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and under the Constitution hereby established." The enacting part of the Act consists of nine sections, known as the "covering clauses," and of these section ix. contains the Constitution. Substantially the Act falls into two parts, of which the first eight sections and the introductory words of section ix. have the ordinary character of an Imperial Act and are unalterable save by the Imperial Parliament; while the second part consists of "The Constitution" in 128 clauses, and is made

alterable by the Commonwealth. (Constitution, section 128.)

In addition to conferring the power to establish the Commonwealth, the covering clauses prepare the ground by (section vii.) repealing the Federal Council of Australasia Act, 1885, and (section viii.) providing that the Colonial Boundaries Act, 1895, shall no longer apply to any colony which has become a State of the Commonwealth, but that for the purposes of the Act the Commonwealth shall be taken to be a self-governing colony. Section ii. enacts that provisions in the Act referring to the Queen shall extend to her successors in the sovereignty of the United Kingdom; and section v. deals with the operation and binding force of the Act and defines the operation of laws made by the Parliament of the Commonwealth under the Constitution. Section vi. defines the leading terms of the Act.

It is one of the hindrances of political study that more than in most branches of knowledge we have to work with terms which, forming part of the popular language, are full of the vagueness of popular notions; they are employed with no single meaning, and are not susceptible of exact definition. The terms which describe the various unions of States share to the full this disadvantage, and though their ambiguity may be in some cases no more than an inconvenience, in others they are an impediment to clear thinking, and constitute a real and substantial evil.

COMMONWEALTH AND STATE.-As to "Commonwealth," the Act does no more than explain that "the Commonwealth shall mean the Commonwealth of Australia as established under this Act." But it introduces the term "State" as the designation of "such of the colonies (which includes province') of New South Wales, New Zealand, Queensland, Tasmania, Victoria, Western Australia, and South Australia, including the northern territory of South Australia, as for the time being are parts of the Commonwealth, and such colonies or territories as may be admitted into or established by the Commonwealth as States"; " and each of such parts of the Commonwealth shall be called a

'State.'" The enumeration of the colonies eligible in the first instance to become members of the Commonwealth is a matter of political significance. It includes none but "settlement" colonies, which have a common civilization, and which have all had a sufficient training in selfgovernment. Fiji is a member of the "Australasian group of colonies, as defined by more than one Act of Parliament, and she was a member of the Federal Council of Australasia. But the islands of the Pacific, whatever their importance, could hardly be associated as parts of a democratic government, and their organic relation with the Commonwealth, if it be established, will be that of dependents rather than members.

The term Commonwealth" and the term "State" are both ambiguous in themselves, and are frequently used with implications and inferences that create further confusion. In the Australian Constitution the term "Commonwealth" describes the whole political organism, the term "State" the part; but in Mr. Burgess's Political Science and Constitutional Law-a work that was frequently referred to in the debates on the Constitution, and will be an important aid to its elucidation-the terms are reversed in the case of the United States, as the author found himself bound in defiance of the Constitution to assign the term "state" to its ordinary use amongst publicists, to describe the sovereign organism, and therefore had to find some other term to designate the part. I shall endeavour to mark the distinct uses of this term by writing "state" in the juristic sense with a small s, and "State" as used in the American Constitution and in this Constitution with a capital S.

The name "Commonwealth of Australia" has been vigorously attacked upon several grounds. In the first place, it has been contended that it is a break in uniformity; that Australia should have followed Canada, and become a "Dominion," if it did not assume the title proposed for Canada but rejected in deference to the susceptibilities of the United States-" Kingdom." It is

enough perhaps to say here that the union of the Australian Colonies differs fundamentally from the union of the Provinces of Canada, and that the name Dominion has been associated for too long with features which Australia did not desire to copy. As to the term Kingdom, it must be remembered that the present union took shape in 1891 when patriotism had hardly begun to express itself in the passionate loyalty of to-day. The " Kingdom of Australia" would indeed be acceptable to none; one class would see in it a menace to democratic institutions, another would find in the creation of a "distinct dominion" a suggestion of dismemberment of the Empire. The name "Commonwealth of Australia" does not and did not in 1891 indicate a leaning to separation or republicanism. It was adopted by the Constitutional Committee in 1891 on the suggestion of Sir Henry Parkes, whose fancy led him to pay his tribute of admiration to the statesmen of the "Commonwealth Period." Perhaps if this origin had been better known, the name would have met with more opposition. Commonly the title was associated with Mr. Bryce's American Commonwealth, first published in 1888, the great source of knowledge as to the working of federal government amongst English speaking people. The term passed without much notice into the popular discussion of federation, and having thus taken root was adopted almost as of course.

The name "Commonwealth" is not without ambiguity in the Act itself. The habit of identifying a colony with its government has not unnaturally led to the use of the term "Commonwealth," where the constitution evidently means the central government or some particular organ of the central government. In fact, in the Act and Constitution it has at least three distinct though connected meanings:-First, the political organism established under the Act; secondly, the territorial limits of that political society; and thirdly, the central government or some appropriate organ thereof. Where the constitution prohibits "the Commonwealth" from making laws of certain kinds

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