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appear to be a matter of no more than metaphysical interest, it may give rise to questions of practical importance.18 In particular, can the principles of sovereign, state and diplomatic immunity be invoked (apart from statute) by one country of which Her Majesty is Queen in the Courts of another?18
In Williams v. Howarth 20 the plaintiff had been engaged as a member of the New South Wales forces for service in South Africa, by the Government of New South Wales, who agreed to pay him at the rate of 10s. a day. The United Kingdom Government paid him 4s. 6d. a day. He claimed that the whole of the 10s. nevertheless remained due. The Judicial Committee held that he was wrong, on grounds stated in the judgment in the following terms:
"The Government in relation to this contract is the King himself. The soldier is his soldier, and the supplies granted to His Majesty for the purpose of paying his soldiers, whether they be granted by the Imperial or the Colonial Legislature, are money granted to the King."
This case has been quoted as authority for the view that there is only one Crown in the Commonwealth, but in fact it gives no support for that view/ So far as dependent territories are concerned, there is no room for the theory of a divisible Crown; there is only one Queen of the United Kingdom and of all the dependent territories for which the United Kingdom is responsible, the Government of each is the Crown in and the passage quoted above would be correct with the words relation to this contract omitted. In 1905, when Williams v. Howarth was before the Judicial Committee, New South Wales was a Colony dependent upon the United Kingdom, notwithstanding that even then those parts of His Majesty's dominions which were self- governing had achieved a considerable degree of independence. The doctrine of the divisibility of the Crown could hardly have come into existence had it not been for the Statute of Westminster, 1931, or at any rate the Imperial Conference of 1926. It was rejected by the High Court of Australia in 1920.21
The answers to some questions are to be found in the distinction between the Crown in its different capacities. This makes it possible for the Courts to entertain proceedings between the Governments of two parts of Her Majesty's dominions. In 1932, the Judicial Com- mittee, while asserting that there was only one Crown (at any rate in
18 See, e.g., Jennings, Constitutional Laws of the Commonwealth, Vol. I, pp. 18-25;
Fawcett, The British Commonwealth in International Law, pp. 79-85.
19 See pp. 586, 588, infra.
20 [1905] A.C. 551.
21 Amalgamated Society of Engineers v. Adelaide Steamship Co. (1920) 28 C.L.R. 129, at 152. See also Theodore v. Duncan [1919] A.C. 696, at 706, “the Crown is one and indivisible."