Executive or Legislature. In Natal, while still a Crown Colony, the policy of restricting naturalisation to persons 'of European parentage or descent' was adopted by law in 1874. In New Zealand a special fee of 17. was imposed on the naturalisation of a Chinese by an Act of 1892. Later, in 1896, Chinese were explicitly debarred from naturalisation. In Australia naturalisation was one of the matters in regard to which the Federal Council, the precursor of federal union, was empowered to legislate at the request of two or more colonies. The Council in 1897 promulgated a law applying to Victoria and Queensland for facilitating the naturalisation of persons of European descent.' Having regard to such discriminations, it is not surprising to find that these laws of Queensland, Natal, and the Federal Council did not contain the provision that British certificates might be recognised; though at a later date it came to be recognised that the risk was not really sufficiently important to justify withholding the Britannic amenity.

The remedial proposal of the Committee in 1901 was circulated to the Dominions by Mr Chamberlain, and came before the Colonial Conference over which he presided in 1902. Correspondence was continued under the Liberal Government which succeeded to office at the end of 1905. The matter was carried another stage at the Colonial Conference of 1907, by which time the first draft of the proposed Imperial Bill had been prepared, embodying largely the views of the Committee. The discussion revealed not only the instinctive dislike of some of the Dominion statesmen for the proposed procedure by Imperial legislation, but also their feeling that the English law of naturalisation, which was to set the standard for the Empire, was deficient in safeguards against criminals and undesirables. Nor were they wholly convinced on this point by the arguments of the Home Secretary (Mr, afterwards Viscount, Gladstone) that the Aliens Act, 1905, was now restraining the influx of low-class foreigners, and that the actual administration of the naturalisation law was much more stringent than might be supposed from its terms. A resolution was

*

* He explained that every applicant was required to give four references as to character, and one as to residence, and pay a fee of 51.

passed, contemplating the holding of a Subsidiary Conference if the matter could not be settled otherwise. In the following year (1908) another inter-departmental committee was arranged in Downing Street, under the presidency of Sir M. D. Chalmers, with a view to modifying the Bill so as to meet the objections which had been raised. As to procedure, the Committee argued that, since colonial naturalisation laws could have no effect outside the colony, Imperial legislation was indispensable, in order to give them extra-territorial effect, which could be no curtailment of self-governing powers. They further proposed to insert a statutory condition that in the United Kingdom the applicant should adduce evidence of good character and evidence that he has an adequate knowledge of the English language.' The Committee's report was circulated and further correspondence ensued, conducted now through the new 'secretariat' of the Imperial Conference, but without avoiding the roundabout methods of negotiation. In the case of South Africa the business was interrupted, the several Governments feeling that the whole matter should be referred to the Union Government which was about to be established. No Subsidiary Conference was held, the negotiations being continued by correspondence up to the next session (1911) of the Imperial Conference. By that time the South African Government had already passed a Naturalisation Act (No. 4 of 1910), in which the term of residence was fixed at two years, racial differentiation was omitted, and provision was made for recognising British certificates. The latter amenity had now been established in Canada also, by a special Act of 1906. In Australia naturalisation continued to be governed by a federal law, passed in 1903, which adopted the two-year term of residence and excluded aboriginal natives of Asia, Africa, or the Pacific Islands. With the exception of those, it franked aliens who had been naturalised in the United Kingdom.

Within the present limits of space it is possible to indicate only the salient features of the protracted controversy and the final solution. The constitutional question and the difficulty arising from diversity of local naturalisation laws have already been mentioned. Closely connected with the last named was the third great

obstacle, which was sheer misunderstanding. In South Africa, New Zealand and Australia, not only the public, but many of its leaders were haunted with the idea that their countries could not become parties to any joint scheme of complete naturalisation without opening their doors to a possible flood of undesirables and Asiatics, whom they would be obliged not merely to admit but to endow with political rights. Visions of Asiatics swarming over from Hongkong and Singapore, where the conditions of naturalisation are very easy, or even viâ Britain, clouded their horizon.

6

This apprehension arose from the popular confusion, which had so long prevailed, between the ideas of citizen and subject. The notion persisted that somehow subjecthood per se conveyed political rights, including a right of entry to any part of the King's dominions, and a right to vote in the case of a country possessing elective institutions. As we have already seen, subjecthood does not in itself carry any such rights, and so the apprehension was entirely groundless. The strength of the fallacy had, however, been sufficiently apparent as an obstacle to progress for the Committee of 1908 to take pains to demolish it once for all. They insisted that the Naturalisation Bill had very little bearing on the coloured race question'; in fact, that question was a matter entirely untouched by the present Bill.' Naturalised aliens, they pointed out, were to have only the same rights as naturalborn British subjects, who already numbered some 260,000,000 of Asiatic and African origin. If those rights were really any danger to the self-governing Dominions, that danger could hardly be affected by the addition of a few more persons to so vast a total. 'Any colonial law' (e.g. an immigration or a franchise law) 'affecting the coloured race, which applies to natural-born British subjects, must apply equally and continue to apply to naturalised persons.' When next the Imperial Conference met, in 1911, the true appreciation of the matter had taken root, and the old apprehension had almost died. It was a point which had never troubled Mr Deakin, who represented the Commonwealth at the previous session in 1907. But his Labour successor, Mr Fisher, ably assisted at the Conference of 1911 by the late Mr Batchelor, had shared with Sir Joseph Ward and the Vol. 220.-No. 438.

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South Africans the fear that somehow the proposed Imperial Bill might 'override' the racial policy of those Dominions. In 1911 it was nearly superfluous for Sir John Simon to repeat that there was nothing in the rights of a natural-born British subject-which are the utmost that naturalisation can ever confer-that could 'the least affect the legislative power of each and every Dominion either to exclude' a coloured British subject 'or, if he comes inside the area of a Dominion, to deny him privileges which white people or persons speaking a European language enjoy.'

Having thus touched upon the three most contentious points of this ten-year negotiation, let us now consider the ultimate agreement which was reached at the Imperial Conference of 1911. The general aim may be summed up in two postulates, (1) that a British subject anywhere should be a British subject everywhere, and (2) that the process of naturalisation should be uniform. As an obvious corollary to the first, and as part of the arrangement of the second, it had always been felt that, if anywhere the conditions of naturalisation include a certain period of prior residence, residence in any part of the Empire should count for that purpose, superseding the existing rule that the whole of the prior residence, or of the intended future residence, must be in that part of the Empire where the certificate is asked for. But as to uniformity' of process, there was room for differences of opinion, arising from differences in the conception of what is meant by Imperial unity. All would agree that the process of complete naturalisation should be uniform throughout the Empire, at least in the sense that it should be effected in the name of the common Sovereign and under constitutional laws. But to go beyond that, and demand that in each part of the Empire the statutory conditions for being received into the King's ligeance should be identical, or even 'substantially the same,' is to raise an issue between two different conceptions of Britannic unity, of which the one idealises uniformity, while the other discerns a truer harmony in diversity. Representing the latter school, Sir Wilfrid Laurier advocated as a guiding maxim in this matter, 'uniformity of effect, diversity of method.' Apparently he wished to solve the problem quite simply by means

of an Imperial Act, if necessary, giving extra-territorial effect to the naturalisation laws of the Dominions, quite regardless of any local variations in the period of residence or any other conditions. By this simple expedient any confusion which would arise in any country from the co-existence of two kinds of naturalisation, the local and the world-wide, would be avoided altogether.

In principle Sir Wilfrid Laurier's plan could hardly be resisted at the stage which the discussion had now reached. The autonomists, if they ever had any real ground for alarm, had already won the day. The object of the Bill in its application to the Dominions,' said the Committee of 1908, is to give extra-territorial effect to the laws passed by the local legislatures.' If so, it could hardly be demanded as a matter of principle that the conditions prescribed by those laws should be everywhere identical. The actual objections made to Sir Wilfrid Laurier's plan were based, however, not on Imperial principle, but on local and administrative convenience. The Australian ministers feared that under such a system foreign immigrants would evade the intention of the Australian naturalisation law, which prescribes two years' residence, by first getting naturalised in neighbouring New Zealand, where there is no requirement of prior residence. To meet this difficulty Sir Joseph Ward began to speak of amending the New Zealand law in that regard. But the British Government cut the Canadian proposal short with a decisive objection of their own. They could not possibly consent, the Home Secretary (Mr Churchill) declared, to accept in the United Kingdom the certificates of any persons who had not spent at least five years within the Empire. Their objection was grounded on the modern tendency of social legislation in Britain, illustrated by the old age pensions law and the insurance law, to which Mr Churchill specifically referred. The pecuniary benefits conferred by this class of legislation are confined to British subjects, though aliens have the privilege of contributing to the cost. Apparently the Government feared that if naturalisation were made any easier there might be a larger influx of pauper aliens, intent on insurance or pensions benefits.

One would have thought that the risk apprehended by