The federations of colonies occurred as follows: 1. The five Provinces existing in continental Canada in 1867 were joined in a federal union by the British North America Act of that year. To this federation were added from time to time, out of territory already part of the Dominion, the four remaining North American Provinces in the foregoing list. 2. The six Australian Colonies of 1900 were united in a single federal Commonwealth. 3. The four autonomous South African Colonies of 1909 were placed in a Federal Union by the South Africa Act of that year. Some suggestions regarding the literature of the field may be in place here. The history of the granting of constitutional and responsible governments in the provinces and colonies and of the process of federation may best be traced in the works of Mr. Arthur Berriedale Keith, at present the paramount authority in this field. The review provided in the first pages of Mr. Keith's Responsible Government in the Dominions (1909) is expanded in the first part of the first volume of the work by the same title issued three years later (not a second edition, however), and in the second volume under the sections dealing with the various federal unions. The legal aspects of the question of imperial control are canvassed in the third volume of the latter work and in the first part of Imperial Unity and the Dominions, issued in 1916. The last work also contains a suggestive analysis of the problem in terms of imperial and international politics. References are to be found in these works by Keith to much other useful literature, of which Brand's Union of South Africa, Lucas' edition of the Durham report, and Jenks' little historical work may be mentioned here. The work of Todd on Parliamentary Government in the British Colonies hardly needs to be named; it is, of course, of greatest interest upon one side of the question. There is a great deal of material bearing indirectly upon the question in statutes enacted by colonial legislatures in execution of imperial statutes granting powers to these legislatures to do certain things, and in British imperial statutes dealing with intra-colonial affairs and non-political matters such as land legislation and boundaries; to this material an introduction may be found in Lefroy's Canada's Federal System. The grants of responsible government and the erection of federations were preceded by other steps such as, on the one hand, the grant of representative institutions and of powers over land sales, customs and mining royalties, and, on the other, the passage (perhaps "negotiation" would describe the process better) of the Imperial Defence Act of 1888 and the gathering of the earlier Colonial Conferences or the Imperial Conferences of the present day. Upon the former the special works on Newfoundland and New Zealand may be consulted such as the somewhat unsatisfactory histories by Prowse, Hatton and Harvey, and Rusden; Jenks treats with full appreciation of their significance the Land Sales Act of 1842 and similar measures. Upon the imperial colonial conferences down to 1911 and during the recent war in their relation to the movement for federation in the Empire and to the future of that mighty commonwealth of nations Jebb's The Imperial Conference (1911) and Keith's Imperial Unity and the Dominions, already mentioned, should be examined. For the history of the Conference since 1916 the newspaper reports will yield some results until better material is forthcoming. In view of the recognition accorded to the Dominions at the Conference of Paris regarding international affairs it may well be suggested that the process whereby the unity of empire and the individuality of colony are developed and reconciled is reaching its perfect conclusion at this present time; dependence, independence and interdependence, as between mother country and colony and between both and other nations, are being worked out in all their manifold phases in a most startling manner. JAMES BROWN SCOTT, Director of the Division of International Law. WASHINGTON, D. C., Royal instructions for establishing representative government, July 17 Act to amend the constitution of the Government of Newfoundland, 1842 44 Act to amend the constitution of the Government of Newfoundland, 47 Despatch from the Colonial Office to the Governor of Newfoundland authorizing the establishment of responsible government, Feb- ruary 21, 1854 52 Report of the Governor of Newfoundland on the conditions of 55 Reply of the Governor to the Legislative Assembly, February 15, 1854 63 |