1456 IMPERIAL UNITY [PART VIII 
between the Commonwealth Government and the Japanese 
Consul-General in Australia, but, where the matter becomes 
in any sense of the word a question of international right, 
the foreign Power has recourse to the Imperial Government. 
Thus, for instance, when the Vancouver riots in September 
1907 resulted in damage to Japanese and Chinese property, 
the formal request for redress was made not direct to the 
Dominion, but to the Imperial Government. So in 1905 
and the following years, when the Government of Newfound- 
land interfered with rights claimed by the United States, 
the Government of that country addressed its representations 
to the Imperial Government ;* and the cases could be cited 
indefinitely. Nor is there any chance of this practice being 
modified as long as the Empire holds together ; the essence 
of an international sovereign state is that there should be 
a unity which is sovereign, and if the Dominions do not 
intend to become independent powers they must accept 
this unity as essential. Of course it would be absurd to 
imagine that the unity will always maintain the present 
shape ; if the Dominions commence to do more than bear 
the burden of their own defence, if they begin to bear part 
of the burden of the Empire as a whole, then they will desire 
to receive and will have accorded to them a share in the 
direction of the common international policy. In that way 
lies the future of the Empire as an empire ; any other way 
means the development of separate states, allied no doubt, 
but yet not united and not one. 
Moreover, there are every now and then cases which 
remind us that the artificial distinctions of the Crown in its 
several rights, which are familiar in the federal constitutions, 
are artificial and are due to the breaking up of the royal 
sovereignty which is an essential part of any federal Act. 
In the case of Williams v. Howarth ? the unity of the Crown 
t Parl. Pap., Cd. 3262. Cf. Mackenzie in Canada Sess. Pap., 1878, No. 70. 
® [1905] A. C. 551, overruling 2 8S. R. (N. S, W.) 4562. So in Sir B. 
O’Loghlen’s case (member for Clare in 1877-9) his seat was declared 
vacant in the latter year by a select committee of the House of Commons, 
owing to his acceptance of the Attorney-Generalship of Victoria, a post 
held to be under the Crown, though in the gift of the Governor: Law Times.