86
THE COMMONWEALTH
Canada), found no difficulty in distinguishing between the respective revenues and property of Canada and the Province of Quebec.22 And the Crown in its government of one Commonwealth country cannot be sued in respect of a liability of another such country.28
The adoption of different Royal Styles and Titles in 1953 seems to leave little room for the doctrine of indivisibility so far as the person of the Sovereign is concerned, and it is almost inevitable that a Court called upon to consider the question would say that there is more than one Queen. Yet there must be unity of some sort in the Crown where the preamble to the Statute of Westminster remains valid,24 so that the Crown is a symbol of the free association of Members of the Commonwealth and the focus of their common allegiance. Such a symbol and focal point must be one and the same. And surely there could be only one Head of the Commonwealth in relation to all the Members? It would also appear to be far-fetched to maintain that there are several thrones in the metonymical sense any more than in the concrete sense.
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It may be that a compromise can be found. There is nothing unusual in the vesting of several offices in one person, and there is no obvious absence of logic in the notion that Her Majesty, as Queen of the United Kingdom, Queen of Canada, Queen of Australia, etc., holds separate supreme offices of state. On the other hand, she had only one coronation and she is one indivisible Head of the Commonwealth in respect of all its Members. It need not worry us that, according to Coke,25 allegiance was due to the natural person of the King and not "to the political capacity only."
Members oF THE COMMONWEALTH
The sovereign, independent states who are Members of the Common- wealth must be divided, for the purposes of constitutional law, into two groups: those within and those outside Her Majesty's dominions.
Countries which are part of Her Majesty's Dominions (a) The original Dominions still remaining in the Commonwealth:
The United Kingdom
Canada
The Commonwealth of Australia
New Zealand
22 Re Silver Bros. [1932] A.C. 514, at 524.
23 Att.-Gen, v. Gt, Southern & Western Ry. Co. of Ireland [1925] A.C. 754.
24 The declaration of 1949 (p. 91, infra) regarding India's membership, expressly
preserved the basis of membership of other countries.
25 (1574) 7 Co.Rep. 10a.
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