cap. If] THE COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA 803 
Government of South Australia in a memorandum by the 
Acting-Premier of February 13, 1903! maintained their 
position that the only mode of communication in such cases 
must be the State Government. The Secretary of State, 
in a dispatch of April 15, 1903,2 declined to alter the opinion 
which he had already expressed. He pointed out that the 
difference between him and the State Government was in 
the view they took of the Constitution Act. In his opinion 
the Constitution Act created a new political community in 
Australia so far as other communities in the Empire or 
foreion nations were concerned. 
The distribution of powers between the federal and state 
authorities is a matter of purely internal concern of which 
no external country or community can take any cognizance. 
[t is to the Commonwealth and the Commonwealth alone 
that through the Imperial Government they must look for 
remedy or relief for any action affecting them done within 
the bounds of the Commonwealth, whether it is the act of 
a private individual, of a state official, or of a State Govern- 
ment. The Commonwealth is, through His Majesty’s 
Government, just as responsible for any action of South 
Australia affecting an external community as the United 
States of America are for the action of Louisiana or any other 
state of the Union. 
8. The Crown undoubtedly remains part of the constitu- 
tion of the State of South Australia, and in matters affecting 
it in that capacity the proper channel of communication is 
between the Secretary of State and the State Governor. 
But in matters affecting the Crown in its capacity as the 
central authority of the Empire, the Secretary of State can, 
since the people of Australia have become one political com- 
munity, look only to the Governor-General as the represen- 
tative of the Crown in that community. 
9. The view of your ministers would, if adopted, reduce 
the Commonwealth to the position of a federal league, not 
a federation, and appears to me to be entirely opposed not 
only to the spirit but to the letter of the Act. 
10. The question of the channel of communication must 
be determined, not by inquiring whether the particular 
power which may have been exercised is one which the 
Australian Constitution Act declares to be a power left to 
Parl. Pap., Cd. 1587, pp. 23-5. 2 Ibid., p. 25. 
I)