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18 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
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Thirteenth Day. 8 May 1907,
TREATY QUESTION. (Mr. Deakin.)
48
it without undue haste, I will submit these opinions for the consideration of your Law Officers and shall be very glad to hear from them, as they have much greater experience in questions of this kind than we have. I am quite satisfied to have preferred the request which you have kindly intimated that you favour and to submit copies of these legal opinions of ours to show the line of argument leading us to think that there is considerable doubt as to whether they apply.
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: The only Opinion I have here is the Opinion given by Sir Robert Finlay in 1891 in reference to the Anglo-Greek Treaty to which all the states of the Commonwealth, except New South Wales, had given adhesion. His Opinion was that it was binding on the Commonwealth.
Mr. DEAKIN : Did he cite authorities at all or give that as the result?
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: I do not know. Opinion:
Mr. DEAKIN: The summary?
I have only got here the
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: Yes. (Reading a short extract from Sir Robert Finlay's Opinion down to the words) “by the legislation of the Commonwealth until the treaty has been renounced or modified by agreement.'
Mr. DEAKIN: I do not know that all our arguments are put there; Sir Robert Finlay may not have directed his mind to the fact that we are constituted under an Act of the Imperial Parliament and except so far as international obligations may require to be acknowledged in some extra-legal way so far as we are concerned that Act stands higher with us than any treaty. That is the first point. The next point is that one of the provisions of that Act is that there shall be absolute freedom of trade and intercourse between the several States and that absolute equality in this respect shall exist between them. That is impossible if this treaty persists. You have either to choose between retaining your treaty in force or retaining the Act of the Imperial Parliament constituting the Commonwealth. That is one of the dilemmas by which you are confronted. There are other particulars in which the acceptance of one means a breach of the other. If you take our position as in a sense a subordinate legislature, the issue becomes even more complicated.
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: I suppose you have the confidential memorandum prepared by the Board of Trade and circulated with regard to the best means of consulting the Colonies in commercial negotiations?
Mr. DEAKIN: I have been looking at it this morning for a little while.
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: If there are any suggestions which any Colonial Minister would care to make about this either now or later on, I will be obliged.
Mr. DEAKIN: 1 am not in a position to make any practical suggestion. We have really no time either to read or consider these papers.
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Sir WILFRID LAURIER: I have looked at it, and it seems to me very satisfactory that no Treaty should apply to any of the Dependencies unless they adhere to it, and then provision is made in the Treaty that they can put an end to it. That is pretty satisfactory.
Mr. DEAKIN: I would suggest that there had better be some reference to this discussion in the Précis, without indicating really what the nature of our discussion had been. The question of the Bill which we have recently submitted was referred for the consideration of the Law Officers that might be published, or something of that kind.
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: Yes.
Sir WILFRID LAURIER: It is a purely legal question.
Mr. DEAKIN : That will be a truthful statement, and still would not give any index as to what was meant.
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: Will you furnish us with your opinion, Sir William ?
Sir WILLIAM ROBSON: I would rather not myself pronounce any opinion until I had made myself acquainted with the facts in question, because I am not at this moment thoroughly informed as to the case, so to speak, upon which the opinion would be sought. It is our duty as Law Officers to advise on the question of Commercial Treaties, as Mr. Deakin has said;
but I think both my colleague and myself prefer, as far as we can, to make our opinions joint before we say anything at all about them.
Mr. DEAKIN: Quite 30.
Sir JOSEPH WARD: Lord Elgin, I would like the resolution I have given notice of motion of to be formally placed before the Conferenco and assented to unless there is any material objection to it.
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: I do not see that there can be any objection to your resolution, Sir Joseph.
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Sir JOSEPH WARD: I want to read it because I want to give my reason for it--"That all doubts should be removed as to the right of the self- governing Dependencies to make reciprocal and preferential fiscal agree- ments with each other and with the United Kingdom, and further, that "such right should not be fettered by Imperial Treaties or Conventions "without their concurrence.' I gave notice of that motion from New Zealand for this reason. I think it was in the year 1895 on behalf of New Zealand, I, with Mr. Kingston, the then Premier of South Australia, entered into an agreement between that country and New Zealand for a reciprocal Customs Tariff, mutually conceding and agreeing to various articles.
"1
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: What is the date of that?
Sir JOSEPII WARD: 1895. I was in London during that year, and not long after my arrival here, the then Secretary of State for the Colonies, owing to opposition to the treaty of another Australian State, Victoria, made
i 49270.
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Thirteenth Day. 8 May 1907.
TREATY QUESTION.