5. Australia distinguishes Federal from State jurisdiction, taking power to establish Federal Courts other than her High Court, and to invest State Courts with Federal jurisdiction. Canada has no special Federal Courts other than the Supreme Court of the Dominion.

6. Australia makes her Senate an elective assembly. In Canada the Senate is nominated by the Dominion Government, and is therefore a weak body, quite unfit to try conclusions with the House which has the people behind it.

7. Australia provides a method whereby the Commonwealth may amend its Constitution. Canada has no such method, and thereby leaves amendment to the Imperial Parliament of the United Kingdom.

This comparison shows that the Australian scheme of Federal Government stands intermediate between that of the United States and that of Canada. In the United States, the Federal Government has less power as against the States than in Australia. In Canada, the Federal Government has more power, or at least a wider range of action. In other words, the Australian system approaches nearer, in point of form, to a Unitary Government than does the United States, but not so near as does Canada. I am speaking merely of form, that is, of the institutions as they stand on paper, for it does not necessarily follow that the spirit in which institutions are worked will precisely correspond to their form. The old Romano-Germanic Empire, for instance (1638-1806), was less unitary in practice than would have been collected from its form; the new German Empire (since 1871) is more unitary in spirit and working than its form would necessarily convey.

XX. GENERAL OBSERVATIONS ON THE CONSTI

TUTION.

Technically regarded, the Constitution is an excellent piece of work. Its arrangement is logical. Its language is for the most part clear and precise. The occasional, and perhaps regrettable, vagueness of some expressions appears due, not to any carelessness of the draftsmen, but to the nature of the subject-matter. The cumbrousness of the provisions regarding customs, duties, and the control of railways is the almost inevitable result of an effort to meet the claims and appease the apprehensions of neighbouring communities with interests that have been deemed opposed. Although it is much longer, as well as less terse, than the Constitution of the United States, going into fuller detail, and with more of the flavour of an English statute about it, it nevertheless, like that Constitution, leaves much to be subsequently filled up by the action of the legislature. A very large field of legislation remains common to the States and the Commonwealth Parliament; and though statutes passed by the latter will of course override or supersede those which may have been passed by the former, it may be many years before the higher Parliament finds leisure to cultivate all the ground which lies open before it. A further range of activity for that Parliament may disclose itself if the State legislatures should exert the power they possess of asking the Commonwealth to take over part of their work. And apart from both these lines of legislative action, the Parliament will find a very large number of matters which the Constitution has expressly directed it to

traditions to be formed in which the love of local independence roots itself. Neither were there between the several colonies such differences of origin or of usages and ways of life as separated the New Englanders from the men of Virginia and the Carolinas, for the Australians had emigrated so recently from Britain that no local types had yet been formed. Still less was there that aversion to a Unitary system of government which the strife with England had evoked among the Americans. The only political model which the Australians knew at first hand was the government of Britain by its Parliament, a government which had ceased in 1832 to be oligarchic, and had since 1867 begun to be democratic. Accordingly, among the Australians, State feeling had a thoroughly practical and business character. It took in each man the form of a resolve to secure the agricultural and trading interests of his own part of the country. It was in fact the wish to make a good bargain for his community and himself. Sentiment there was and is. But the sentiment gathered round the Commonwealth of the future rather than the Colony of the past. The same kind of feeling which attached the sons of the Cavaliers to Virginia and the Puritans of Massachusetts to the old 'Bay State' made the Australians desire to found a great nation which should be the mistress of the Southern seas. Hence the absence of any jealousy of the central power beyond that which is suggested by the fear that local industrial or commercial interests might be unfairly dealt with.

This attitude of Australian feeling will therefore (if the view here presented be correct) work towards the

effort as in America to secure that questions of State law shall be determined solely by State Courts, for such cases may be appealed from State Courts to the Federal High Court. Thus the Nation looms large over the whole instrument, overshadowing the States. There are indeed many provisions for safeguarding the interests of the States, yet these are not so much recognitions of States' rights as stipulations made to secure material advantages, industrial or commercial or financial. An explanation of this remarkable feature of the scheme may be found in the phenomena of Australian as compared with those of American history. The thirteen States which united in 1788-9 had each of them a long history. The two oldest dated back to the beginning of the seventeenth century. The youngest had nearly sixty years of political life behind it. All were animated by a strong sentiment of local independence, and by a passion for liberty which had become associated with local independence. Their notions of a Unitary Government were formed from England, whose monarch they had latterly learned to hate as their oppressor. Hence their love for their States was largely sentimental. Their minds were filled, not by the mere sense of what they gained from their States as business men, but by the loyalty they bore to their States as protectors of their civic rights and embodiments of their historical traditions.

Very different were the feelings of the Australians. The oldest colony dated back scarcely more than a hundred years, and had enjoyed responsible government for less than fifty. Proud as each colony was of its progress, there had not been time for those political

traditions to be formed in which the love of local independence roots itself. Neither were there between the several colonies such differences of origin or of usages and ways of life as separated the New Englanders from the men of Virginia and the Carolinas, for the Australians had emigrated so recently from Britain that no local types had yet been formed. Still less was there that aversion to a Unitary system of government which the strife with England had evoked among the Americans. The only political model which the Australians knew at first hand was the government of Britain by its Parliament, a government which had ceased in 1832 to be oligarchic, and had since 1867 begun to be democratic. Accordingly, among the Australians, State feeling had a thoroughly practical and business character. It took in each man the form of a resolve to secure the agricultural and trading interests of his own part of the country. It was in fact the wish to make a good bargain for his community and himself. Sentiment there was and is. But the sentiment gathered round the Commonwealth of the future rather than the Colony of the past. The same kind of feeling which attached the sons of the Cavaliers to Virginia and the Puritans of Massachusetts to the old 'Bay State' made the Australians desire to found a great nation which should be the mistress of the Southern seas. Hence the absence of any jealousy of the central power beyond that which is suggested by the fear that local industrial or commercial interests might be unfairly dealt with.

This attitude of Australian feeling will therefore (if the view here presented be correct) work towards the