1110 ADMINISTRATION AND LEGISLATION [PART Vv
British ships manned by white labour. The Bill was
reserved because of representations of the Imperial Govern-
ment as to its conflicting with treaties (especially the Russian
of 1859 and the Austro-Hungarian of 1868), and it. did not
come into operation. As a result of the incident and of
the Conference, power was obtained in 1907-8, by negotiation
with Paraguay, Egypt, and Liberia, to withdraw in respect
of any self-governing Dominion on a year’s notice.
It must not, however, be thought that by obtaining power
to withdraw or to exempt self-governing Dominions from
the obligations of treaties, those Dominions are by that fact
shut out from the benefits of the treaties in question. The
rights given by the treaties may be divided into two classes.
In the first place there are rights which may be roughly
described as political, such as privileges and exemptions in
favour of consular agencies; the right to carry on internal
commerce ; exemption from compulsory military service ;
from judicial and administrative and municipal functions
(other than those imposed by the laws relating to juries) ;
exemption from contributions imposed as an equivalent for
personal service; exemption from military exactions or
requests, except compulsory billeting and other military
exactions to which subjects of the country may be liable as
owners or occupiers of real property ; the right to acquire
property movable or immovable; the right to dispose of
property by inheritance and similar conditions. On the
other hand, there are matters which are practically purely
commercial, such as scales of import duties, and it is clear
that a distinction must be drawn between the two classes.
An Australian, for example, as a British subject, must be
held to be entitled in Japan to all the privileges given to
British subjects by the Treaty of 1911, although the Common-
wealth is not bound by that treaty. On the other hand, it
is equally clear that goods from Australia are not entitled to
the special tariff granted by the Treaty of 1911 to goods from
the United Kingdom, and as a matter of fact they are not
accorded such treatment, and one of the great obstacles to the
development of commercial intercourse between the Common-
