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JAMES BROWN SCOTT

Director of the Division of International Law of the Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace

NEW YORK

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

AMERICAN BRANCH: 35 WEST 32ND STREET

LONDON, TORONTO, MELBOURNE, AND BOMBAY

1919

PREFACE

WHILE the political experiences of other peoples might yield material of value for the student of the problem of autonomy within empire, it is safe to say that in no empire or kingdom has the evolution of the relation under examination been as consistent in time, uniform in its various local manifestations, deliberate in purpose and as it now appears, in looking back over the process-as archetypical as it has been in the British imperial commonwealth. Hence it has seemed wise to confine the exhibits of evidence on this question to "the Dominions," as recognized by that title and listed by name in 1914 in the British Nationality and Status of Aliens Act.

There is a wealth of material upon the political development of the Dominions to which a useful guide, to be described later, has been compiled but which in spite of all is rather cumbersome and uneven in its utility. A selection has therefore been made bearing upon the following points: the grant of local constitutions to single colonies by imperial statute, the erection of a system of ministerial responsibility upon the basis of the existing constitution in a single colony, the federation of groups of single colonies into unions under constitutions enacted by imperial statute (as well as the amendment of such constitutions by imperial legislation), constitutions which in all cases carried in their provisions that system of ministerial responsibility already obtaining in the colonies assembled in the larger union, and, finally, direct legislation by the imperial legislature for the Dominions-with certain degrees of option and freedom

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reserved for them in the matters dealt with-and the amendment by local action in the Dominion of an imperial constitution. The texts of statutes are completely adequate for the purpose of the student in all of these cases except the most critical, namely, the granting of local ministerial responsibility. For the study of this phase of the process recourse must be had to colonial instructions and reports, and correspondence, often more or less personal and intimate, between the colonial governor and local politicians. It may be that the real nature of the transition-such as took place in Newfoundland and in New Zealand in 1855eludes the form of written documents altogether.

The following table may serve to summarize the process by which the Dominions have come to enjoy self-government within the Mother Empire:

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