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from six to eight. With these additions the resolutions passed the House of Assembly. The Legislative Council also passed them, though with substantial modifications.

The position at the end of 1898 was therefore this :-That Vic- Conference of toria, South Australia and Tasmania had approved of the Constitu- Premiers, 1899. tion drawn up by the Convention of 1897 to 1898; that Queensland, Western Australia and New Zealand stood aloof; and that New South Wales, having refused to approve the Bill, had defined the conditions on which her approval might yet be granted. Under these circumstances, a conference of the Premiers of the six Colonies (for Queensland also sent her Prime Minister) met at Melbourne on the 29th January, 1899, to consider the suggested amendments of New South Wales. The recommendations of this Conference were of great importance, inasmuch as they marked the completion of the work of drafting the Constitution Bill. On the questions of rivers, money bills, judicial appeals and number of senators, the members of the Conference refused to make any alteration in the Constitution. They agreed, however, that the Federal capital should be in the territory of New South Wales, provided that the site was not to be within 100 miles of Sydney and that the Federal Parliament should sit at Melbourne until it met at the site decided on for the capital. They provided that no alteration in the boundaries of any State could be made without the consent of a majority of the votes cast upon the question of the alteration in the State affected. They added to the provisions of the Bill as to alteration of the Constitution a clause enabling a proposed law making such an alteration, if it twice passed either House of the Federal Legislature, but was refused by the other House, to be submitted to a national referendum. They failed to find any satisfactory substitute for the Braddon Clause, but they limited its operation to "a period of ten years after the establishment of the Commonwealth, and thereafter until the Parliament otherwise provides," and added a new clause empowering the Parliament, during the same period, to grant financial assistance to any State. They acquiesced in the demand of New South Wales for the abolition of the three-fifths majority at the joint sitting and replaced it by "an absolute majority of the total number of the members of both Houses." Lastly, they introduced a new clause for the benefit of Queensland, which provided that if she joined the Commonwealth as an original State, her Parliament might, pending Federal legislation, divide the State into electorates for the purposes of Senate elections.

It was now necessary to pass an "Enabling Act" in each Colony The Second providing for a further reference of the amended Constitution to Referendum, the people. In New South Wales this Act provided for a Refer- 1899. endum, to be decided by a simple majority, and allowed a vote upon the referendum to a person qualified for registration, even if he was not actually registered. It was at first materially altered by the Legislative Council, which was at that time much below

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 :

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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.

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