The Royal Assent was given yesterday to the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Bill. The QUEEN’S sanction to this statute, which may be described without extravagance of language as the largest step taken during recent history of the Empire towards its consolidation, was properly conveyed not only by the LORD CHANCELLOR, but by LORD HOPETOUN and LORD KINTORE, who have both acted as representatives of the CROWN in the Australian colonies.
It is something to be proud of, both for the mother country and her daughter nations, that, at the close of the century which has witnessed the birth and the development of the British population of Australia, we should see the formal recognition, under the legislative power of the Imperial Parliament, of the national growth of our colonial fellow-subjects in lands that, a hundred years ago, were blank upon the map of the world.
The Australian colonies have consented, as the words of the act declare, “to unite in one indissoluble federal commonwealth under the CROWN of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.”
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This memorable compact has now been sealed, in the most solemn manner, by its incorporation in the public law of the Empire as an enactment of the Imperial Parliament. Its scope may be afterwards enlarged and its conditions may possibly be altered, but hencefoward the Commonwealth of Australia becomes a political fact, which, we are all convinced, will bring a great accession of strength to the Empire. The change, though it will not affect local liberties, will raise the Australian colonies to the scale of constitutional dignity.