$34 THE FEDERATIONS AND THE UNION [PART IV 
render the analogy of the United States Constitution a very 
slender one.! 
Moreover, the natural interpretation of the Commonwealth 
of Australia Constitution Act is the one placed upon it by the 
Privy Council, and the interpretation of the United States 
Constitution is admittedly not a natural one, but one which 
has been rendered necessary in order to preserve the federa- 
tion at all in view of the rigidity of the Constitution. The 
doctrine of necessary implication must therefore be regarded 
as still open to grave doubt as a permanent rendering of the 
Constitution of the Commonwealth, for it has been held by 
Isaacs J.2 that the view laid down by the Privy Council, that 
the doctrine is not a part of the Commonwealth Constitution, 
is not merely sound in law, but is binding as a pronouncement 
on principle of a superior Court on the High Court of the 
Commonwealth, and Higgins J. holds the same view but in 
a stronger form, for he thinks that in all cases the High 
Court should follow the judgements of the Privy Council, 
whereas Isaacs J. holds that in cases coming within s. 74 of 
the Constitution the High Court is entitled to come to what 
decision it thinks fit without regard to a decision on the same 
matter of the Privy Council. Isaacs d. maintains, therefore, 
the doctrine that the states cannot interfere with a Common- 
wealth instrumentality, but in the form in which he upholds 
this view little exception need be taken to it, for he has 
declined to see in any ordinary legislation an interference 
with a Commonwealth instrumentality, and it may well be 
that even the Privy Council would decline to uphold the 
authority of legislation which aimed directly at interference 
with the Commonwealth. That is a very different principle 
trom adopting an interpretation of the Constitution such as 
! The constant doctrine of the sovereignty of the states is really an echo 
of the Amorican doctrine; but there is the serious difference that the 
Colonies were never sovereign at all in any strict sense, while the states 
of the Union were once sovereign and the powers retained are remnants 
of that sovereignty. To use sovereignty to cover internal autonomy is 
hardly a convenient use of the phrase. 
s fluddart Parker & Co. Provrietary Ltd. v. Moorehead, 8 Cc. LR 
330, at pp. 387. 390.