now stands limited and settled according to the existing laws, and to the terms of the union between England and Scotland.

(iii.) That the said United Kingdom be represented in one and the same Parliament, to be styled "the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland."

3. THE SOVEREIGNTY OF PARLIAMENT.

The sovereignty of the Imperial Parliament is the first principle of constitutional law; it is the ultimate fact of the Constitution; it is recognised as the fundamental principle by every court of justice throughout the length and breadth of the Empire. The import of the term "sovereignty" might give rise even now to and has in the past been the source of— much philosophic and historical discussion. Its practical import in the daily business of political life and the courts of law can be fixed with sufficient precision. Let us turn, for instance, to an acknowledged authority-"Wheaton's International Law." The writer of that work defines "sovereignty" as "the supreme power by which any state is governed," and he defines "a sovereign state as being that of a people or nation, whatever may be the form of its internal constitution, which governs itself independently of foreign

* Lawrence's Wheaton, p. 35.

powers."*

This supreme power, he says, may be exercised either externally or internally. internally. "Internal sovereignty is that which is inherent in the people of any state, or vested in its ruler by its municipal constitution or fundamental laws." + "External sovereignty consists in the independence of one political society in respect of all other political societies."

The question then is: Does this proposed Bill deprive the Imperial Parliament of the internal or external sovereignty of the Empire? Does it limit the power of the Imperial Parliament in regard to the government of Ireland? Does it diminish the independence of the Empire in regard to foreign states, or create in Ireland a new state, sovereign in regard to foreign powers? To answer these questions it is necessary to bear in mind the law in regard to the English Constitution. It has been said above that the Imperial Parliament is the supreme political authority of the Empire; and in order to understand the question which is raised it is necessary to remember all that this principle implies. The voice of Parliament, duly summoned and held, is the arbiter of what is or shall be law. But for this purpose the will of

*Lawrence's Wheaton, p. 58.

† "When a body of persons, yielding obedience to no superior, issue their commands to certain other persons to do or forbear from doing certain acts, and threaten to punish the disobedience of their commands by the infliction of pain, they are said to establish or exercise political or civil government. The persons who issue and enforce these commands are said to possess the governing power, and their acts are called the acts of government."-Lewis, "Use and Abuse of Political Terms," 17.

Ibid. pp. 36 and 37.

Parliament must be expressed in a particular way, viz. by an Act of Parliament-by a Bill passed by the House of Commons and the House of Lords, to which the assent of the Queen has been given in the prescribed manner. Neither the will of the Queen, nor the will of the Lords, nor the will of the Commons is law. The Queen in Parliament, or the High Court of Parliament expressing its will in an Act of Parliament, is discharging the highest function of sovereignty. Its command so expressed is law. All who are subject to it are legally bound by its command, and its command is the test of legal right and legal wrong; and every judge and every court in every part of the Empire is bound to administer justice in accordance with that test.

The action of Parliament is legislative; and though by legislation it can control the executive and judicial authorities, according to constitutional law it is the Queen in Council that exercises the executive powers of sovereignty. It is, for instance, the Queen, through the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, who signs treaties, declares war, or blockades a foreign port; it is the Queen who accredits an ambassador or minister to a foreign state; it is in the Queen's name, through her Ministers, that the taxes, as imposed by Parliament, are raised and applied to the purposes to which Parliament has appropriated them. And similar remarks are true of other branches of the Administration. It is unnecessary for my present purpose to

go into the question of how, in fact, Parliament, or rather the House of Commons, really controls the Queen in Council; it is sufficient to state generally that it does so-by the recognition by the courts of justice that its Acts are law; and by the principle that though "the Queen can herself do no wrong," and is not amenable to the jurisdiction of any court, some person is legally responsible for every act done by the Crown, and that no one can plead as the justification for an illegal act that he did what is complained of by the authority of her Majesty.*

Lastly, besides the executive, there is the judicial authority. The judges hold their authority from the Crown, quam diu bene se gesserint, and are removable only upon the address of both the House of Lords and the House of Commons. Their duty is to try the cases which come before them according to law, and therefore to obey the Acts from time to time passed by the Imperial Parliament.

Such being the general theory of the Constitution, what would have been the effect of Mr. Gladstone's Bill, if it had become law, upon what Wheaton calls "the external sovereignty of the Empire"? Now if we turn to it we shall find that by section 3 the Legislature of Ireland were not to make laws relating to the making of peace or war, to treaties and other relations with foreign states, or to relations between the various parts of her Majesty's dominions, or to prizes * V. e.g. Feather v. The Queen, 35 L. J. Q. B. 200 per Cockburn, C. J. 209.

or booty of war, or to offences against the law of nations, or to offences committed in violation of any treaty made or hereafter to be made between her Majesty and any foreign state; or offences committed on the high seas; or to treason, alienage, or naturalisation; or trade, or navigation, or quarantine. Legislation upon all these matters was reserved to the Imperial Parliament; and if the Bill had passed the relations of the United Kingdom to foreign states would have remained the same as before. The Bill would not have made Ireland a sovereign state according to international law, and it would, so far as foreign countries were concerned, have continued to be treated as a part of the British Empire.

Let us turn now to the effect of the Bill on the internal sovereignty of the Imperial Parliament. The question whether this sovereignty would have been maintained if the Bill had become law depends on whether the supreme legislative control of the Imperial Parliament was limited; or, to put the matter in another way, whether its effect would have been to create a Legislature co-ordinate in regard to some of the subject matters of possible legislation with the Imperial Parliament. To raise the question in a concrete form, let us see exactly what the Bill proposed to do. By section 1 it established in Ireland a Legislature consisting of her Majesty the Queen and an Irish legislative body; and by section 2 it proposed to enact that, "with the exceptions and subject to the restric