778 THE FEDERATIONS AND THE UNION [PART IV
entirety, but it shows that there would be much danger in
overstressing the importance of military or naval considera-
tions in the causes which led to the formation of the
Commonwealth.
The main driving power towards federation was trade and
customs! In the early years after the introduction of repre-
sentative government, Sir Charles Fitzroy suggested, in
a dispatch of September 29, 1846, that there should be
a Governor-General to consider the different Acts on these
questions of the several Colonies. Lord Grey and the Privy
Council Committee on Trade and Plantations in 1849
approved the proposal, and in the Act of 1850, as introduced,
it was proposed to set up a Federal Legislature consisting of
delegates elected by the Colonial Legislatures—twenty to
thirty in number—to enact a tariff for all the Colonies (the New
South Wales tariff being taken as the tariff until this wasdone),
and to entrust to it such matters as postal business, road and
railway transit, shipping, harbours and light dues, weights
and measures, and matters referred to it by all the Colonies,
and to enable it to raise a revenue for its needs, and to
establish a Supreme Court. The proposal to which Lord
Grey was devoted was rejected by both English and Colonial
feeling, and in the Lords the clauses were dropped and the
Bill which was needed to create the Colony of Victoria was
allowed to pass. Lord Grey, however, could create a central
executive, and he did so in 1851 by appointing Sir C. Fitzroy
to be Governor-General (including Western Australia in his
commission) and also Governor of each of the provinces
separately by four separate commissions (excluding Western
Australia),so thathe could in any one, if he desired, administer
the government by going there ; he stayed, as a matter of
fact, in New South Wales, but the Lieutenant-Governors
were told to correspond with him. But Lord Grey left
office in 1852, and in 1855 the Lieutenant-Governors became
Governors, the separate commissions were abandoned, and
1 New South Wales in 1842 tried to give free trade to Tasmania and New
Zealand, but the Act was disallowed, and a dispatch of June 28, 1843, laid
down that the Imperial Government disapproved of differential duties.
