1102 ADMINISTRATION AND LEGISLATION [PART V
in Africa. Direct Conventions with regard to postal matters
have several times been concluded with the tacit or express
approval of His Majesty’s Government, but postal matters
have always been treated as being of a commercial character.
Or again, in 1904 Australia informally arranged to facilitate
the travel in the Commonwealth of Japanese merchants,
students, and tourists, but there was no treaty, just as
Queensland had arranged informally with the Japanese
Consul there for the limitation of emigration from Japan to
Queensland in 1900.
There is no real doubt that treaties made by the Crown
are binding on the Colonies whether or not the Colonial
(lovernments consent to such treaties. It has indeed been
suggested that ratification by the Colonial Government is
necessary, and a phrase used by Lord Kimberley in 18722
during the correspondence with the Australian Colonies as
to the creation of a quasi Customs Union in Australia has
been quoted by Todd? in favour of this view. Lord
Kimberley there said that the power of making treaties
rested with the Imperial Government, subject to legislation
being passed by the Imperial and Colonial Parliaments
where necessary to enable the treaty to be-put in force.
But this view is certainly wrong, unless it merely means that
a Colony may or may not exercise its right of adherence to
a treaty by which it is not bound but with regard to which
it is only given an option of adherence, and indeed it
would obviously be impossible for international relations
to be successfully concluded unless there were one power
which could represent effectively in external matters the
Empire as a whole. On the other hand, it is an essential
part of the Constitution of the Empire that so far as is
practical no treaty obligations shall be imposed without
their concurrence on the self-governing Dominions.
* Commonwealth Parl. Pap., 1905. No. 61 ; Queensland Parl. Pap., 1899,
A. 5.
* Parl. Pap., C. 576, pp. 6-10; below, p. 1174.
8 Parliamentary Government in the British Colonies,® p. 275. So also
Quick and Garran, Commonwealth Constitution, p. 770 ; Quick and Groom.
Judicial Power of the Commonwealth, p. 104.
