40 ROYAI, SOCIETY OF CANADA 
as for the discretion of Canadian statesmen. The Canadian constitution, 
in this particular, clearly recognizes the right of the supreme parliament, 
of the empire to act as the arbiter on occasions when independent, impartial 
action is necessary, and to discharge that duty in a legislative capacity, 
which the judicial committee of the privy council now performs as the 
supreme court of all the dependencies of the crown. The Australians 
propose to make themselves entirely independent of the action of a great 
parliament, which might be useful in some crisis affecting deeply the 
integrity and unity of Australia, and to give full scope only to the will of 
democracy expressed in popular conventions. It is quite possible that the 
system will work smoothly, and even advantageously, though we should 
have preferred, on the whole, to see less readiness on the part of English 
colonies to reproduce purely republican ideas and methods of government 
and to lessen the weight and influence of the parliament and supreme 
court of the whole empire in the government of the proposed Australian 
federation. 
STU: 
It is not the intention of the writer to review the financial features of 
the proposed federation of Australia, as that would be presumptuous on the 
part of a Canadian who cannot have that local knowledge which would 
enable him to write intelligently or confidently on the subject. All that 
he has ventured to do is to give his opinion on certain constitutional and 
political differences between the Canadian system and that suggested for 
Australia. But before passing away from the Australian bill, there is one 
matter to which allusion may be appropriately made. The Australian 
scheme proposes to reproduce that feature of the Canadian constitution 
which prohibits “dual representation,” that is to say, the return of the 
same man to both the dominion parliament and a provincial legislature. 
It is questionable, however, if this law has operated as satisfactorily as was 
anticipated when it was passed at the inception of confederation. The 
great number of representatives required for the several legislative bodies 
of Canada, over 7001 in all, has made a steady drain on the intellectual 
and business elements of a Dominion of only five millions of people. Many 
thinking men now believe, after the experience of the last quarter of a 
century, that the presence of able and experienced men both in the central 
and local legislatures might do much to prevent many sectional jealousies 
and rivalries and tend to a larger appreciation of the diverse wants and 
necessities of the provinces, and to a wider national sentiment, than seems 
possible under a system of practically restrictive representation or legisla- 
tive isolation. 
1 See Bourinot’s ‘ How Canada is Governed’ (Toronto, 1895), p. 159. 
