1084 ADMINISTRATION AND LEGISLATION [part v
caused trouble. Queensland joined the J. apanese commercial
Treaty of 1894 under a special protocol permitting the
Queensland Government to interfere with Japanese immi-
gration of the labouring classes; this arrangement became
binding in 1901 on the Federal Government and Parliament,
but in 1908 the Imperial Government at the request of that
Government gave notice of the denunciation of the agree-
ment under the power to do so reserved therein. With the
Commonwealth Government trouble also arose because of the
passing of the Commonwealth Post and Telegraph Act No. 12
of 1901, which forbade any contract with regard to the
carriage of mails being entered into which applied to ships
not manned by white labour.? This terminated the joint
arrangements between the Imperial Government and the
postal authorities of Australia for the carriage of mails, and
the action of the Commonwealth was criticized as follows by
the Secretary of State in a dispatch of April 17, 1903 :— 3
His Majesty’s Government much regret that the legislation
which has recently been passed in Australia has made it
impossible for them to be associated in future with the
Government of the Commonwealth in any mail contract.
They recognize the importance to the cause of Imperial unity
of joint action in such matters as postal communication
between the Mother Country and the great self-governing
Colonies, and they would not on slight grounds withdraw
from such co-operation; but the legislation in question,
affecting as it does principally Indian subjects of His Majesty,
leaves no other course open to them. By the Mutiny Pro-
clamation of 1858 the Crown declared itself bound to the
natives of its Indian territories by the same obligations of
duty which binds it to all its other subjects, and undertook
faithfully and conscientiously to fulfil those obligations. It
would not be consistent with that undertaking for His
Majesty’s Government to become parties to a contract in
which the employment of His Majesty’s Indian subjects is
* See Queensland Parl, Pap., 1899, A. 5.
® Cf. the Postal Act of the Union of South Africa No. 10 of 1911, which
forbids the grant of such a contract to any steamship belonging to a
2ompany which engages in a ¢ combine’.
* Parl. Pap., Cd. 1639, PP. 4, 8; Commonwealth Parl, Pap., 1903, Nos.
21 and 40. Cf. 1901-2. A. 92.
