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Extract from
Commonwealth + Colonial by Sir Kernell Ribert-Wray.
TERMINOLOGY
"
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from the Medical Act, 1886) to describe the list of practitioners to be registered by virtue of diplomas granted in either independent or dependent countries within the Commonwealth. Both in the debate on the first amendment 0 and in the Press," the inclusion of the Common. dependent territories within the connotation of the word wealth was regarded as an innovation. In uninformed usage it may have been so; but there was no warrant whatever for the assumption that departure from established principles was involved as a matter of law or in officially recognised practice. It was sug- gested that “the British Commonwealth of Nations,” as distinct from the Commonwealth," remained to connote the independent nations of the Commonwealth, but such a distinction did not exist then and does not exist now. That is just as well, for it would inevitably cause confusion, if only because “ the Commonwealth" is an obviously convenient abbreviation for the Commonwealth of Nations." Fourteen years earlier the three expressions "the British Common. wealth of Nations," the British Commonwealth" and the Com. monwealth were all used in one Act with the same meaning. The title of the Act was The Visiting Forces (British Commonwealth) the Common- Act, 1933 32; the term used throughout the Act was wealth"; and it was defined in section 8 (1) as meaning “the British Commonwealth of Nations." The visiting forces to which but there was the Act applied were only those from "Dominions nothing in the Act to suggest that they alone constituted the Commonwealth. Danger of confusion could be avoided, or at least substantially reduced, by omitting the word "of" and using the expression "Commonwealth Nations" to describe the independent countries of the Commonwealth. But that would not serve any very useful purpose, for it would have the same meaning as of the Commonwealth' so long as every independent Common- wealth country is admitted to Membership.
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Member
Examples of the narrow interpretation of "the Commonwealth"
Membership and alone constitute th are not independer (2) The second Prime Ministers in declaration, which wealth, uses the monwealth" and Commonwealth declaration other that the countric the independent is not, however, "the other co countries and ( the declaration. as if those wo this declaration
(3) The thi but from the without adequ
(4) Other (British Comi monwealth fo
1955, all ol Commonweal dependent co purposes.
(5) There been made territories, n does not m
more than a
83
It is stated in the third edition of Halsbury's Laws of England' that the terms "(British) Commonwealth" and "(British) Common- wealth of Nations are sometimes used in a narrower sense to denote only the Members of the Commonwealth. Three examples are given.
(1) The first is the preamble to the Statute of Westminster. The word "Commonwealth" occurs there only in close connection with
30 H.C. Deb. Nov. 18, 1947, cols. 750-752.
81 The Times, Nov. 22, 1947; The Spectator, Nov. 28, 1947. 82 23 & 24 G. 5. c. 6.
83 Vol. 5, p. 430.
which ment imply that
(6) In of 1949 rel legal instr
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'the Com
34 See p. 91
35 See com: 80 23 & 24 37 (3 & 4 } Comm:
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