A Leap in the Dark | Page 7

necessary to speak. Any law affecting the United Kingdom not only lawfully may, but can in fact, be changed by the Imperial Parliament. Of the unlimited legislative authority ascribed to, and exercised by, Parliament in the United Kingdom the Home Rule Bill itself is sufficient evidence; and the Gladstonian Ministry, at any rate, see no reason why Parliament should not within the course of a few weeks remodel the fundamental laws of the realm. The right to impose taxes is historically the source of Parliamentary power, and in all matters of taxation Parliament has absolute freedom of action from one end of the United Kingdom to the other; whether the income tax is to be lowered, raised, or abolished, whether some new duty, such as the cart and wheel tax, shall be imposed, whether the United Kingdom shall maintain free trade, or return to protection, how taxes shall be raised and how they shall be spent--all matters in short connected with revenue are throughout the United Kingdom determined and determinable in the last resort by Parliament alone.
Hence, as things now stand, no kind of governmental action in any part of Great Britain and Ireland escapes Parliamentary supervision. The condition of the army, the management of the police, the misconduct of a judge, the release of a criminal, the omission to arrest a defaulting bankrupt, the pardon of a convicted dynamiter, the execution of a murderer, the interference of the police with a public meeting, or the neglect of the police to check a riot in London, in Skye, or in Tipperary, any matter, great or small, with which the executive is directly or indirectly concerned, is, if it takes place in any part of the United Kingdom, subject to stringent and incessant Parliamentary supervision, and may, at any moment, give rise to debates on which depend the fate of ministries and parties. If there be such a thing as supreme actual and effective authority, such authority is throughout the whole of the United Kingdom exercised by the Imperial Parliament, not occasionally and in theory, but every day and in the ordinary course of affairs.
This exertion of actual and effective power by the Imperial Parliament throughout the United Kingdom is a totally different thing from the supremacy or sovereignty exercised by Parliament throughout the whole British Empire. As a matter of legal theory Parliament has the right to legislate for any part of the Crown's dominions. Parliament may lawfully impose an income tax upon the inhabitants of New South Wales; it may lawfully abolish the constitution of the Canadian Dominion, just as some years ago it did actually abolish the ancient constitution of Jamaica. But though Parliament does in fact exert a certain, or rather a very uncertain, amount of power throughout the whole Empire, we all know that the Imperial Parliament neither exercises, nor claims to exercise, in a self-governing colony such as New Zealand,[7] that kind of effective authority which Parliament exercises in the United Kingdom. The Cabinet of New Zealand is not appointed at Westminster; the action of a New Zealand Ministry as regards the affairs of New Zealand is not controlled by the English Government. Not a pennyworth of taxation is imposed on the inhabitants of New Zealand, or of any colony whatever, by the Imperial Parliament. Even the imposition of customs, though it has an important bearing on the interest of the Empire, is in a self-governing colony determined by the colonial, and not by the British, Parliament. It is the Parliament of New Zealand, and not the Parliament of England, which governs New Zealand. The Imperial Parliament, though for Imperial purposes it may retain an indefinite supremacy throughout the British Empire, has, as regards self-governing colonies, renounced, for all other than Imperial purposes, executive and legislative functions. To labour this point may savour of pedantry. But the distinction insisted upon, whilst often overlooked, is of extreme importance. We risk being deceived by words. The Imperial Parliament is supreme in the United Kingdom, it is also supreme in New Zealand. But the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament is a misleading expression; it means one thing in the United Kingdom, and another thing in New Zealand or in Canada. In the United Kingdom it means the exercise of real, actual, effective and absolute authority. In New Zealand it means little more than the claim to regulate matters of a distinctly and exclusively Imperial character. The distinction is vital. The essential feature of the English constitution is the actual and direct government of the whole United Kingdom by the Parliament at Westminster. No change could be more fundamental than a change which, in England, Scotland, or Ireland, reduced this actual authority to the ultimate or reserved sovereignty exercised, or rather claimed, by Parliament in Canada or in New