986 THE FEDERATIONS AND THE UNION varT 1v 
and harbours! All other revenues are to be paid into a 
Consolidated Revenue Fund which is to be appropriated by 
Parliament for the purposes of the Union. The Governor- 
General in Council is to appoint as soon as possible a 
Commission consisting of one representative of each province, 
with an Imperial officer (Sir G. Murray) presiding, to inquire 
into the financial relations which should exist between the 
Union and the provinces. Until that inquiry is completed 
and until Parliament has taken action on it, there shall be 
paid annually from the Consolidated Revenue Fund to the 
Administrator of each province an amount equal to the sum 
provided for education other than higher education, in 
respect of the financial year 1908-9 in the estimates of the 
Colony and voted in 1908 by the Parliament, and such 
further sums as the Governor-General in Council may 
consider necessary for the due performance of the services 
and duties assigned to the provinces. During this period 
the Executive Committees are to submit annual estimates of 
expenditure to the Governor-General in Council, and no 
expenditure shall be incurred by any Executive Committee 
without the approval of the estimates by the Governor- 
(Feneral in Council. 
Under the original draft the annual cost of raising the 
revenue was to form the first charge, and the annual interest 
of the public debts and any sinking funds were to form the 
second charge on the Consolidated Revenue Fund, which after 
defraying these charges could be appropriated by Parlia- 
ment.? The Bloemfontein Conference gives the preference 
to debt charges, and apparently the cost of collection will 
! The Board is partly a continuation and extension of the Railway 
Board of the Central South African Railways, partly an imitation of 
the commissioners who manage railways in the Australian states (The 
Government of South Africa, ii. 131-5). But characteristically full ministerial 
responsibility exists here. Ports were governmentally controlled in the 
Cape and Natal, ibid., i. 198, 199. 
* No special appropriation is required in the case of debt charges, nor, 
it may be noted, for the Governor-General’s salary (s. 10). The rule is 
the same in the Constitutions of the self-governing Colonies generally. 
Thus the salary of the Governor-General cannot be discussed annually in 
Parliament.