The Constitution and Laws.* 



By Pitt Con»ETT, Challis Professor of Uw. in ,he Univcr^iij- of Sjdnuj-. 



Earlier Farms of Government. 

 The first settlement of New South Wales dutea back to the year 

 1788. The history of the govc-rnmont of the Colony since that time 

 may be ronghly distributed into four periods :— f I ) A period of miHtarv 

 .,.1 d.-|>.t.' ,'..v..rnn.ent, extv,.l,„t: fr-.m i7.S8 to 182.1,- nd.pfed 



itili conducted by officials who were ftppointed by 

 ro the Home Government ;' and (4) A period of 



The Present ConstUuKm — (i) The Impmal BlemmL 

 Tho Colony, although it possesses a domestic constitution of its own, is 

 strictly a dependency of the British Empire. This involves the exist- 

 ence of two sets of legislative, executive, and judicial authorities — the 

 one imperial »nd the other local — the line between whose jurisdictions 

 IS not always clear and is often drawn in one way by law and in 

 another by coiivtution. Of the Imperial element it will be suBioient 

 '" '■''■ '■ '' ■ '' I'l' -> iitcd by two fundamentalprinciplesorfactora — 





