I move:
That Dáil Eireann approves of the Report of the Commonwealth Conference, 1930, and recommends the Executive Council to take such steps as they think fit to give effect thereto.
On account of the matters that have been occupying my attention during the week I propose in moving this motion to refer much move copiously to notes than is my custom.
This House has had before it the Report of the Conference held in 1929. That Conference dealt with the operation of Dominion legislation. Part 6 of the present Report deals under (a) with the report of that Conference. It indicates that the Conference of 1930 approved of and adopted it as part of this Report. I do not propose at this stage to examine again the details of the Report of the 1929 Conference. I would like to call the attention of the House to the fact that those comparatively few—twelve or thirteen—pages of this Report which relate to those relations of Great Britain to the other members of the Commonwealth which were formerly regulated by a central Executive and a central Parliament mark, definitely and clearly, the end of an epoch. They are the last chapter in the history of one of the most highly organised and effective legal systems of which there is any record. I stated to the House two years ago that it was the purpose of the Conference of 1929 that the whole legal machinery of the old Colonial Empire should be taken asunder in so far as the Commonwealth of Nations was concerned.
In the year 1930 I submitted to the judgment of the House that the recommendations of the Conference of 1929 had carried out that purpose. The Conference of 1930 approved the recommendations of that of 1929, and that approval closes the story. The system which it took centuries to build up has been brought to an end by four years of assiduous concentrated collaboration between the lawyers and the statement of the States of the Commonwealth. I say four years, because the beginnings of this task were made at the Conference of 1926 at the instance of the late Vice-President of the Irish Free State and his colleagues at that Conference. Let me, for one moment, advert to what precisely this Part of the Report means.
You cannot approach the consideration of this subject—the subject of the relationship between Great Britain and the other members of the Commonwealth of Nations—as if it had no history, no genesis, no development, no chequered background of alternate controversy, constraint, concession and ultimate progress. When the Irish Free State came into existence in 1921 we happened to strike in at a definite stage in the evolution of the other members of the Commonwealth. But their evolution, though politically rapid, had been slow from the point of view of the legal expression of the political facts. There was a whole hinterland of highly anomalous law to be cleared out of the way, and an elaborate system of administrative practice to be transformed or discontinued.
Deputies will agree with me when I say that there can be no two views on the question that when this country accepted the status of Canada in certain respects in 1921 the status of Canada then accepted was not a stereotyped legal formula. Therein lies the kernal of the whole Treaty position and the key to the progress that has gone on—I will not say at our whole behest, or even always at our instance—since 1926. How well the founders of this State builded the developments which have since taken place go to show. The task begun in 1926—the first Commonwealth Conference since the Treaty, in which we took an active part—is completed in the paragraphs written down in Part VI. of this Report. What will be the result when the enactments referred to there are passed into law?
[Professor Thrift took the Chair.]
Let me take, first of all, the declaration set out on page 18 of the Report: "No Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom passed after the commencement of this Act shall extend, or be deemed to extend, to a Dominion as part of the law of that Dominion, unless it is expressly declared in that Act that that Dominion has requested and consented to the enactment there of." I should point out that there is a slight misprint in the declaration as it appears in the Report: the words "in force in" should be deleted and the word "of" inserted instead. That declaration amounts to an act of renunciation by the British Parliament to legislate for the members of the Commonwealth. If any Deputy has doubts about it let him consult the text of this Report on page 18 itself. So sweeping was the declaration that it was feared that it put the British Parliament in a worse position vis-a-vis the members of the Commonwealth than that in which the Parliament of any State (not a member of the Commonwealth) stands in relation to other States generally.
I should explain that in more detail. The House is aware that although the Parliament of the French Republic does not legislate for the German Reich, nevertheless, the laws of the French Republic can have effect in respect of acts done in German territory. The United Kingdom delegates at the Conference of 1930 feared that if the declaration stood in the form first set out on page 18, the effect would be to prevent any statute of the British Parliament from having "the operation which the legislation of one State normally has in relation to the territory of another." In other words, they feared that the effect of a declaration in the form referred to would be to prevent an Act of the British Parliament which declared bigamy unlawful having any effect if the bigamous act took place in, say, Canada or South Africa, whereas the bigamous act would be an offence punishable under its law if it took place in France or Germany. That view was met by the insertion of the words "as part of the law of the Dominion" in the draft declaration in the place where it now occurs in italics.
The result of the amendment is that while the declaration will now have the effect of preventing a British statute from operating in the territory of any of the States of the Commonwealth proprio vigore, i.e., in the manner in which such an Act had effect previously, and still has in the British colonies and dependencies, it will, at the same time, not expire on the frontiers of those States, but will operate to enable the British courts to take cognisance of acts done either in accordance with or contrary to the statute within the territory of those States as they do acts so done within the territory of, say, the United States or Japan. In a word, the principle of international comity is preserved.
But apart from this difficulty of interpretation, what is the essential doctrine fastened into that declaration? That declaration will not remain merely as a record in the report of a conference of delegates from the various parts of the Commonwealth. It will become at the end of this year an enactment in a British statute. And its effect then will be to destroy as a matter of law what has already been destroyed as a matter of practice, the legislative sovereignty of the British Parliament in the Commonwealth in the sense in which it existed and functioned since the foundations of the Colonial Empire were laid. The importance of that achievement is beyond question. I do not want to overstress it, but I do not want to have the effect of it minimised.
If I am asked why this result could not have been achieved in another way, by an agreement, for example—an agreement resembling the Treaty of 1921, I will say that it could have been achieved in that way and that an agreement to effect the same result was in fact discussed. But so long as the result aimed at was secured it did not matter much how exactly it was carried out. But if I am asked why was it proposed that the declaration referred to and the other declarations in this part of the report should go into a British statute at all, my answer is this—a very simple answer—that you would have had a British statute in any event, a statute ratifying the agreement, but that, above all, you had to have an Act of that particular Parliament by which the powers now taken away, the rights now denied, were exercised. One has not heard of a Canadian statute applying to South Africa in the same way— i.e., of its own force and with the authority of a sovereign Parliament exercising jurisdiction in South Africa behind it—as that in which a British statute applied to Australia or Newfoundland. It was the British Parliament only which legislated in that way. Hence this declaratory British statute. Or, to put it in another way, this declaration must be understood in two senses, or rather, it must be viewed from two angles. It must be viewed from the point of view of the history, which it ends as well as from that of the history which it begins. The last words in the long story of British legislative supremacy occur nowhere more fittingly than in a statute passed as its own deliberate act by the assembly most closely associated with that phenomenon. Lastly, there were the courts—you had to put an end to speculative judicial thought, you had to coerce the judicial mind, I do not say here, but in those States of the Commonwealth where the Imperial statute—as it was called—ran for so long, and where the swift sword of the Colonial Laws Validity Act had been wielded so frequently and dealt such quick disaster to the laws of their own Parliaments. And the House will agree that the only way in which to coerce the judgment of lawyers trained in such a tradition was by putting an end once and for all to the principle upon which it rested, putting an end to it in a definite legal way, a way which would leave no margin what ever for those amazing speculations in which judges sometimes indulge—in a word, by an Act of Parliament.
I do not hesitate to say that the constitutional status of Canada would have advanced far beyond the stage which it had reached when the statesmen of that country had to exact the right to sign the Treaty of Versailles, had not the distinguished and learned judges of that Dominion failed to read aright the measure of her independence. But that chapter also ends in the declaration here made.
In the schedule on page 19 of the Report the first clause is that containing the declaration that the Parliaments of the States of the Commonwealth have full power to pass laws having extra territorial operation. I dealt fully with this clause last year and endeavoured to reply to some criticism of it from the benches opposite. The declaration is quite clear and I do not think that Deputies can have any doubt either as to its meaning or its importance.
It will be remembered that the theory that the old-time colonies of the British Empire as formerly constituted could not pass laws having extra-territorial operation rested upon a judicial decision and not upon any express statutory limitation in the Acts by which those colonies were constituted or governed. The validity of that decision was always a matter of doubt, and the principle of it was broken in upon by some—but not many —subsequent decisions. I do not propose to reopen the discussion (now as a result of the Report of 1929 and this Report of interest only to the constitutional historians of the old British Empire) as to the validity of that decision—McLeod's case—here. I want to say that upon a foundation so uncertain a vast structure of theoretical law and administrative practice was superimposed. Laws so fundamental to a nation's political and economic life as the Nationality Law and the Merchant Shipping Law were affected by it. A Canadian citizen ceased to be a Canadian citizen when he left Canada to spend the week-end in New York; an Australian vessel ceased to be legally Australian when she sailed the waters of the Pacific or the Indian Ocean. All that sort of consequence followed from the decision that McLeod was not a bigamist because his second marriage took place outside the colony of New South Wales in a territory which the statute of the New South Wales legislature under which he was tried was held not to reach.
All that sort of consequence was, of course, in direct conflict with the new status of the members of the Commonwealth. The States of the Association of which we became members in 1921 refused to regard the principle of a thirty years' old legal decision as consistent either with the sovereign rights of their Parliaments or the international position which they had established, and which called for legislative powers commensurate with their individual responsibility in respect of their own nationals abroad and their responsibility to the other States of the world in those matters where by international law or usage responbility "is engaged." To confine the jurisdictional horizons of the legislature of the old British colony to its territorial boundaries was perhaps, although doubtful in law, wise Imperial policy in the days of a unitary Empire with undivided responsibility and undistributed control by a central Executive and a central Parliament. But it was a policy which was at once overwhelmed and overborne by the pressure of political events. And the function of the 1929 Conference was to make the law square with the events which had subverted it.
But let me advert to an aspect of this question which the House should not lose sight of. When I say that the policy of what I must call for purposes of historical accuracy the Imperial Government was to confine the jurisdiction of the colonial assemblies to their own confines, and that that policy was broken by events, and that the purpose of this clause is to make the law square with the new political facts, I do not mean that the object or effect of this statute is, or will be, to write a new legal Constitution for the Commonwealth of Nations. Let there be no mistake about that. This clause illustrates very clearly the declaratory character of the whole statute. The House will observe that the clause is cast in a form which assumes the existence of the extra-territorial power at the present time. This statute will confer no new legal powers so far as the Irish Free State is concerned. It merely declares the pre-existence of the other States of the Commonwealth. It is a direction; a definition, and a demonstration and proof in the most solemn form possible by the British Parliament that an entirely new situation has come into existence and that the former legal unitary State has gone the way of the former political unitary State and of the former diplomatic unitary State so far as States like Canada and ourselves are concerned.
A Deputy last year asked what interest we had in these things. He acknowledged that, so far as, say, Canada and South Africa were concerned, these clauses had a significance having regard to the historical background—the legal background—on which, so far as those countries were concerned, these events were going forward. That is precisely what I meant a moment ago when I said that you cannot approach the consideration of this subject as if it had no history, no genesis, no development and no background of that kind. It had such a background, and if it because it had, that this statutory method, so far as those countries are concerned, was regarded as desirable and necessary. I must tell the House that the question of method was discussed and explored.
How was the whole story to be ended? Should it be ended by Agreement? Or should it be done by Statute? Or should it be done by a record in a report? Those States, like Canada and South Africa, where the territorial limitation was imposed and recognised, where the Colonial Laws Validity Act applied, where the legislation of the British Parliament extending to them was frequent and far-reaching—those countries were not satisfied with a record in a report—a report without legal authority or significance or force. They wanted something more, something to end a legal situation in a legal way. Should it be an Agreement? That method also was discussed and I will tell the House why, so far as we are concerned, it was undesirable. It was undesirable because we were unwilling to suggest in any way that the territorial limitation applied to the Irish Free State, or that the Colonial Laws Validity Act applied to the Irish Free State and so on, and we felt that a certain type of Agreement would imply the previous application to us of those doctrines and those laws; and that it was by virtue of the Agreement that they ceased to apply. But we take the view—an uncontroverted view—that those doctrines and those laws did not survive to us as a result of the Treaty of 1921, and we were, therefore, unwilling to have them dealt with, so far as we were concerned, in that way.
We came to the third method—the Statute. I think Deputies will agree that that was the correct method for those members of the Commonwealth to which I have been referring. Will the House not recollect that when the Statute of 1779 was passed enacting that the British Parliament had no right to govern the North American colonies, it was passed in the form "be it declared and enacted" used in this text? And will any Deputy say that that Statute has not marked the termination of British rule in that part of the world? And has that Statue ever been quoted as part of the Constitution of the State which succeeded those colonies on that continent?
That, then, is the position. I do not propose to delay longer on that aspect of the matter. I think that it will be agreed that the statutory method was the best in the circumstances in which other members of the Commonwealth found themselves, and which go to the root of this whole question.
Deputy O'Connell last year raised the definition of the word "Dominion." He asked why it was expressed to include the Irish Free State; why, if all those rights and powers referred to in these clauses were already inherent in our status under the Treaty, it was necessary to include us in the definition of the word "Dominion" at all. I hope the Deputy did not mean that by the inclusion of the Irish Free State in that definition the rights and powers referred to were for that reason and by virtue of that definition being conferred upon the Irish Free State by this Statute. That, as the Deputy must know, is not the case. He must not deduce a conclusion so fundamental—and so fundamentally wrong— from the insertion in these clauses of what is no more than a rule of interpretation.
We in our own statutes have frequently to refer to the United Kingdom. We have to define the expression "United Kingdom." We will frequently in future have to refer to the States of the Commonwealth generally, including the United Kingdom, and we will have to define the expression "States of the Commonwealth" also. The British Parliament in their Act, and this statute will be theirs purely and simply, need to define the word in which they propose to refer in future statutes to the States of the Commonwealth. No constitutional doctrine whatever follows from, or is created, or assumed by that definition. It is an interpretation clause merely. If I have made that point clear I wish, before passing to the clause on the Colonial Laws Validity Act, to make one other observation, and it is this. The power of this Parliament to pass laws having extra-territorial operation has nowhere been denied, because it is undeniable. The matter has not come on a direct issue before our own courts, but in the only case in which it has fallen to be judicially considered the following language was used by Judge Fitzgibbon: "I am not prepared to hold that legislation in this country making it a crime for persons to conspire against the peace, order, and good government of this country, or to defraud our customs, or to violate our laws necessarily invalid because of the secondary opinion in McLeod's case, nor that our courts would not have full jurisdiction to deal with such offenders if they should happen to come within the limits of the Saorstát." (Alexander v. Circuit Court Judge of Cork, 1925, 2 I.R., p. 170). I refer to this dictum-a dictum which is significant although "obiter"—for one purpose only, namely, to show that the form of this clause was advisedly declaratory, advisedly drawn in words which assume the existence at the present time of the powers to which it relates so far as the Irish Free State is concerned.
On the matter of the Colonial Laws Validity Act, Deputies will observe that the repeal of this statute is absolute and unconditional in respect of those members of the Commonwealth to which it was held to apply. It may be asked why the Act was not repealed in words such as these: "The Colonial Laws Validity Act, 1865, shall be and is hereby repealed"; but it will be borne in mind that the Act is to remain so far as the colonies and dependencies are concerned, and the proper form to adopt was the form found in this clause. There is a clean-cut repeal so far as the members of the Commonwealth to which I have referred were affected by the Act at any time.
There follows the declaration contained in sub-clause (2). The House will at once observe the effect and the object of that sub-clause. The first sub-clause would have been sufficient. But the whole policy of this method of ending the former legal position called for something more; it called for a declaration in the contrary sense of the principle to be abolished. That principle was taken and the direct negative—in the very words of the Colonial Laws Validity Act itself— was set up as the principle of the new position. The Conference was dealing with something more than an Act of Parliament. It was dealing as the terms of reference show with something more than the principle embodied in that Act; it was dealing with the principle underlying it as well. In one enactment it destroyed the Act itself and the legal principle it embodied; in the other it asserted a contrary principle which bore down upon the principle that lay at the very foundation of the statute repealed, namely, the principle of the super-sovereignty of British legislation generally. The whole notion of "legislation repugnant to British legislation" disappears from Canadian or South African jurisprudence. In ten years' time Canadian or South African law yers whose eyes have been trained to look for some lurking and obscure inconsistency between Canadian or South African statutes and British. Acts of Parliament extending to Canada or South Africa will not know or care—except in the sense in which they know and care what laws are made in the United States or the Netherlands or in the States of the Commonwealth or of the world generally—what law runs in the United Kingdom.
I have already dealt with the clause set out in paragraph 3 of page 20. It is reprinted there from page 18. The clause set out in paragraph 4 does not relate in any way to the Irish Free State. The definition clause contained in paragraph 5 I have explained to the House. And that contained in paragraph 6 is a special subject matter to which I will refer in a moment. The clause set out in paragraph 7 is special to New Zealand.
We come then to the recitals to be inserted in the proposed legislation. The first recital relates to the non-application of future statutes of the British Parliament to the States of the Commonwealth. I want the House to look again in this connection at paragraph 55 of the Report of 1929. "Practical considerations," it says, "affecting both the drafting of Bills and the interpretation of statutes make it desirable that this principle should also be expressed in the enacting part of the Act." That is another way of putting the point which I have been endeavouring to emphasise all through. A recital would have been sufficient in so far as we were concerned. But you had the other States of the Commonwealth with a long tradition of British legislation operating in their territory. Those States wanted a legal termination of that situation. They wanted something more than a recital in the statute—which had to be passed anyway to repeal the Colonial Laws Validity Act, e.g., they wanted an actual enactment. I think that Deputies will agree that having regard to the legal background of the whole matter in Canada or Australia this was the proper course for those States to adopt.
The second recital is that relating to the Crown. I stated to the House last year the reason for this particular recital. But I should like to restate it in a very few words. The legal ties that bound, say, Canada and Australia to the United Kingdom will disappear when this Act becomes law. The legal restrictions upon the powers of the Parliament of Canada and the Parliament of Australia will be removed. There will be no limitation, no restriction whatever.
The House will notice that that fact is repeated in various ways through the Report of 1929. The frequency of the phrase "the new position" is not accidental; it is deliberate. There is the ending of a chapter, an epoch— a history in which the legal and legislative predominance of the United Kingdom Parliament is plain to be seen. But "by the removal of all restrictions upon the legislative powers of the Parliaments of the Dominions," says paragraph 58 of the Report of 1929—"and the consequent effective recognition of the equality of those Parliaments with the Parliament of the United Kingdom, the law will be brought into harmony with the root principle of equality governing the free associations of the members of the British Commonwealth of Nations." The House will notice the emphasis throughout upon what is being done. The law, the legal position, is being made to square with the central and predominant political fact of absolute freedom and unequivocal co-equality. And in the light of that conception of the matter the recital relating to the Crown is inserted. The States of the Commonwealth control the Crown and the prerogatives of the Crown absolutely. But the Crown function is accepted in the arrangement to which we have become parties. You could not, therefore, have a series of Acts of Parliament throughout the Commonwealth dealing with, say, the succession in different ways. That would be undesirable. The function of the Crown may be exercised in a different way here from that in which it is exercised in Canada; that is a matter of the substance and form of the advice given here and that given in Canada. You could legislate for the Crown, here in a way different from that in which it is legislated for in the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom might, e.g., restrict a certain royal prerogative by statute. The Oireachtas might abolish the same prerogative so far as the Irish Free State is concerned. There is no doubt whatever about that. But there had, in the nature of things, to be some arrangement to prevent the whole association from being confused within itself by conflicting legislation as to such a matter as the succession. The association is a free association. Freely, therefore, the members of it undertook this arrangement relating to the Crown which is the symbol of the free association of them all.
I do not fear that the House will deduce from this arrangement any doubts as to the several capacities of the King, or draw any erroneous conclusion to the effect that the States of the Commonwealth are a political or diplomatic unit. When a Heads of States Treaty is ratified by the King on the advice of the Government of the Irish Free State the whole transaction is the transaction of the Irish Free State. The King acting on the advice of the British Government can no more contract for the Irish Free State than can the King of Italy or the Mikado of Japan. The conclusion of the Treaty in the Heads of States form is merely an old-established international usage. In its binding force it differs in no way whatever as a matter of international law from an inter-governmental agreement. But what I want to emphasise is the fact that no argument whatever is open on the agreement as to the King to the effect that for diplomatic purposes, or political purposes or purposes of international life and action the Commonwealth of Nations is a single entity. When we agreed to this recital in the form in which it appears, the form which says that "the Crown is the symbol of the free association of the members of the British Commonwealth of Nations" and went on to say that "any alteration in the law touching" the matters referred to in this context would require the assent of all the Parliaments of the Commonwealth, we were simply stating that in the exercise of our sovereign legislative powers which exist apart from and over and above all other considerations, which are supreme, paramount and uncontrolled we would have regard to the desirability for uniformity of reference to the symbol of the Association and the desirability for avoidance of legal confusion in regard to the succession. That is the extent of the meaning of this recital. It assumes the absolute inherent right of each of the Parliaments to legislate for the Crown without regard to these considerations.
In the matter of Merchant Shipping you had a legal situation to deal with, so far as the States of the Commonwealth were concerned, in which the restrictive provisions of the Merchant Shipping Acts and the Colonial Courts of Admiralty Act, 1890, were in force. You had to get rid of those provisions in a recognised legal way, by enacting that they ceased to apply. I examined the effect of the clause relating to merchant shipping legislation last year. I then stated my views on the Report of the 1929 Conference in this particular. I do not propose to reiterate those views now, except to say that shipping regulations are obviously matters upon which general uniformity is desirable, consistent with national interests and requirements. The House is aware that shipping regulations tend more and more to be governed by international conventions. You have the eight international labour Conventions, dealing with a number of matters which it is not necessary to go into in any detail now. You have the Convention on regulations relating to safety of life at sea signed in 1929; you have again the Convention respecting Load Lines signed at London on the 5th July, 1930. More and more there is an approach to international standardisation in regard to the regulation of matters relating to the protection of life and property borne in ships upon the oceans of the world. Where that is so, where there is such an approach and progress is made at international discussions on matters of that kind we will come into the international arrangements made. Meantime, certain standards have been laid down under the law heretofore passed for the whole Commonwealth and these will be preserved. They will be preserved not by virtue of the Consolidation Act of 1894 and the Acts amending it, but by our own laws, the provisions of which will conform in so far as conformity is agreed to be desirable to the provisions of the "Agreement as to British Commonwealth Merchant Shipping." That Agreement will not itself be ratified by statute here or in Great Britain or elsewhere. It will remain as a standard to which the various statutes on this subject will conform in so far as it states the matters on which uniformity is desirable.
On the matter of Nationality the Report affirms paragraphs 73 to 78 inclusive, of the Report of 1929. It says that "it is for each member of the Commonwealth to define for itself its own nationals." The law of each Nation of the Commonwealth will henceforth confer a status on its nationals which will be recognised throughout the Commonwealth and outside the Commonwealth. Paragraph (4) on page 20 says that "the possession of the common status in virtue of the law for the time being in force in any part of the Commonwealth should carry with it the recognition of that status by the law of every other part of the Commonwealth." In other words our law will confer the status and the law of Canada and South Africa, etc., will recognise the status thus conferred. Similarly our law will recognise the status conferred by the Canadian or the South African statute. This arrangement is based upon two things: the separate and distinct nationhood of this country from Great Britain, of Canada from New Zealand, etc., and the desirability for mutual recognition of the status of the nationals of the various countries of the Commonwealth. The essential point is that you have not a single Commonwealth nationality based upon a single law. It is not a single Commonwealth nationality at all, or even a dual nationality. The Irish Free State national will be that and nothing else so far as his nationality is concerned. His own nationality law will rule him and his own State, through its representatives abroad, will protect him. The treaty benefits of our treaties with other countries will accrue to him by virtue of his Irish nationality. And the recognition of his Irish nationality will be Commonwealth-wide and world-wide.
The short paragraph on the subject of nationality of married women needs no elaboration.
The trend and direction of the general argument contained in the Report of 1929 and this Part of this Report has already arrested the attention of those international publicists and lawyers who have made the evolution of the new world system of State relationships their special study. The significance of this Report will not, therefore, I am sure, elude the notice of this House. When we came into existence as a separate State in 1921 the new system of State relationships under the aegis of the League was hardly two years old. We came into it during its formative period. The Nations of the Commonwealth who sat at the Peace Table in 1919 were beginning their international life. The founders of the Irish Free State were quick to see the course of world events and the inevitableness of the developments which were to make Canada and South Africa and the others co-sharers in the international destiny of the post-war States of the world. The very method chosen for the creation of this State was the international method of a bilateral treaty. If we came into existence untrammelled and unimpeded by so many of those legal forms and anachronistic practices which remained to Canada and South Africa and so on, nevertheless, these things had by reason of their different origins and history survived to those States with whom we had entered into relationships and we accordingly played our part in removing them. The Principles laid down in 1926—or rather formulated in that year—were applied with ruthless logic to the whole field of inter-State relationships within the Commonwealth. And this Part V1 of this Report shows where the cables strained and where, by force of the political facts and the pull of international events, they smashed right through.
I want to add a personal word as to the pride I have in being associated with the later stages of this Report, because I regard this Report as being the end now achieved to the work which the then Vice-President of this State (the late Mr. Kevin O'Higgins) started in 1926. And I want to confess to a great happiness at having been allowed to be associated with the end of the work which he started so well in that period.
There was one big task before the delegates who went to the conference in 1926. They laid down certain lines. The principles were accepted. They were even accepted as having for some time previously ruled the existence of the States of the Commonwealth, but it was declared that certain laws were still not in harmony with the particular facts, and certain laws were passed over to what was described as a committee of experts in 1920 to decide upon, and their report showed that the law should be brought into harmony with the facts. We who were not experts, but who, as representatives of the Governments of the different parts of the Commonwealth, met together and agreed that the principles of 1926 should be applied right down even to the very small pieces of legislation that were caught up by the conference of 1929, and this Report, when it is carried further by statute for these countries that want it carried further, will have at last, as I said in the beginning, brought to an end the whole chapter of the single legislative sovereignty and the central Government of the old Empire.
We had one purpose in 1926, and that was that there must be uprooted from the whole system of this State the British Government; and in substitution for that there was accepted the British Monarch. He is a King who functions entirely, so far as Irish affairs are concerned, at the will of the Irish Government, and that was the summing up of the whole aim and the whole result of the conferences of 1926, 1929 and 1930: that one had to get completely rid of any power, either actual or feared, that the British Government had in relation to this country. In substitution for that under the Treaty there was accepted the monarchy, as I say, a monarchy in every respect in relation to Irish affairs, subject to the control of an Irish Government. That is the result of the 1926, 1929 and 1930 conferences. For these reasons, and because that is the result aimed at, and the result achieved, I ask the House to pass the resolution that is before it.
