PREFACE 
I owe much also, which I cannot now acknow- 
ledge, to discussions and conversations with those 
responsible at home and abroad for the actual 
conduct of the relations of the Imperial and the 
Dominion Governments. There are, however, two 
friends whose retirement from active service in the 
Dominions renders appropriate a public admission 
of indebtedness, and it gives me great pleasure 
to thank Sir Thomas Gibson-Carmichael, Bart., 
K.C.M.G., Governor of Victoria from 1908-11, and 
now Governor of Madras, and the Honourable John 
Greeley Jenkins, Premier of South Australia from 
1901-5, and Agent-General in London from 1905-8, 
for all that they have taught me of the real working 
of constitutional government in the states of the 
Commonwealth. 
For advice, criticism, and reading of proofs, I 
am deeply indebted to my cousin, Mr. James Drys- 
dale, and to my brothers, W. J. Keith, I.C.S,, 
Secretary to the Government of Burma, and R. C. 
Steuart Keith, I.C.S., Registrar of the Chief Court 
of that province, while Mr. R. W. Chapman, of the 
Clarendon Press, has again laid me under great 
obligation by his constant interest in the progress 
nf this book. 
It should be added that the book is wholly un- 
official, and that no use has been made of any 
material which is not already public property. 
A. BERRIEDALE KEITH.