CHAPTER V 
TREATY RELATIONS 
§ 1. IMPERIAL CONTROL IN TREATY MATTERS 
THE Imperial Crown has an absolute power of concluding 
treaties, and in so doing it is advised by the Imperial Ministry. 
There is no case yet known in which any treaty proper has 
been made without the consent of the Imperial Government, 
and the normal mode of making treaties is to conclude them 
through plenipotentiaries granted full powers by the Crown. 
The term treaty which has been applied, for example, to the 
Customs Agreement between the South African Customs 
Union and the Dominion of New Zealand is merely a termino- 
logical inexactitude. In a few cases Governors have been 
empowered to conclude agreements in the nature of treaties. 
For example, in 1901 an agreement was made between 
Lord Milner on behalf of the Transvaal and the Governor- 
General of Mozambique with regard to the recruitment of 
native labour for service in the Transvaal mines and railway 
rates,! and this agreement was superseded by another agree- 
ment concluded by Lord Selborne as Governor of the Trans- 
vaal with the ex-Governor-General of Mozambique on April 1, 
1909.2 The High Commissioner for South Africa has always 
been entrusted by his commission ? with special powers of 
“ommunication with the Governments of foreign possessions 
! Parl. Pap., Cd. 2104, p. 189. 
* Parl, Pap., Cd. 4587. In 1909 also the Government made an informal 
Arrangement with Portugal as to the deportation of Indians via Lourenco 
Marques, 
* e.g. In Lord Selborne’s Commission, 1905, clause iii; Lord Gladstone's, 
1910. There are also many arrangements between South African Gover- 
nors and the Free State and the Transvaal, e. g. a railway convention (Cape 
and Free State), October 16, 1896; telegraph (Cape, Natal, Transvaal, and 
Free State), August 11, 1884. The High Commissioner signed the treaty with 
"he Transvaal as to Swaziland in 1894, See Cape Parl. Pap., 1898, G. 81. 
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