The Queen And Her Peoples Overseas

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27055, 2 June 1953, Page 4 (Supplement)

The Queen And Her Peoples Overseas

[BV DERMOT MORRAR, Date Fellow of AU SouU College. Oxford University.) When at Westminster Abbey, London, on June.2, the Archbishop of Canterbury sets the Crown on the head of Queen Elizabeth 11-the Crown of glory and righteousness, as he will describe it-it will be noted that he makes no.reference fo g political authority. Authority has, of course, its symbol in the Coronation service—it is the sceptre with the cross-but popular opinion has long since relegated that to a secondary place. Popular opinion is in this quite right; Queen Ehzabeth II is being crowned as representative of every aspect in the peoples life, and government is only one of those aspects.

She is in fact head of society, and therefore Head of the State, which is society looked at from the legal point of view. The modern Commonwealth consists ol many States; but so long as the same Queen is acknowledged everywhere as its head it is able to live as one society; its peoples can regard themselves as a single great family in a sense outside politics.

One of these States, th<* Republic of India, has accepted this position of the Queen without making her head of the State at all. Her name is not used in the process of its government; the President is not her representative; nevertheless, as Head of the Commonwealth, she is the symbol of India’s free association with the rest of the family.

Elsewhere the Queen, being the head of society, is recognised, by consequence as the head of each separate state of which the Commonwealth consists. An agreement reached between these States in December, 1952, which is now being translated into legal form by their various Parliaments, emphasises the separate political status of each, for each is to know the Queen henceforth by a different title chosen by itself. But it is also agreed that each of these titles shall contain the phrase “Head of the Commonwealth” and a reference to the other Realms and Territories under her rule.

In Canada, for instance, she will be proclaimed as “Elizabeth the' Second, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom, Canada and her other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith.” Thus, although the new titles suggest that there are now a number of distinct Crowns in the Commonwealth, they make it equally clear that the wearer of them is always to be the same person. This unity is formally secured by the Preamble to the Statute of Westminster, 1931, under which the consent of all the Parliaments of the Commonwealth is required for any change in the law of succession to the Throne, or in the Royal Style and Titles.

Delegated Powers

As head of society the Queen cannot delegate her functions; For example, honours and distinctions throughout the Commonwealth are granted by her alone; and wherever she travels in the Com- ■ monwealth she is always at home and

always the first personage present. But as head of the State she delegates her powers, in all the self-governing Realms to a representative called the GovernorGeneral. She appoints him, but does so on the advice of her Ministers in the country concerned, who thenceforth are his Ministers.

The Governor-General exercises every political power which in the United King. dom would be exercised by the Sovereign in person; he summons and dissolves Parliament, he declares peace or war he gives the Royal Assent to legislation.’ He selects a statesman to become Prime Minister. He appoints the Judges, and so is head of the judiciary, as well as the legislature and the executive, like the Queen whom he represents. But in all these things he is strictly guided by the formal advice of his Ministers, just as she is guided in the United Kingdom by that of her Cabinet there; and these Ministers must be acceptable to the Parliament of the country they serve.

“Governor-General in Council”

The Governor-General never acts politically (except in the choice of a Prime Minister) as an individual, but always as the “Governor-General in Council.” In those parts of the Commonwealth which are not yet fully self-governing the Queen is represented by a Governor, who discharges some, but not all, of her constitutional functions. A Governor differs from a Governor-General in that there is always some part of the Royal functions which he can be called upon to exercise, not on the advice of his own Minivers’ but on his own responsibility, subject to the direction of the Queen’s Ministers at Westminster. The ultimate goal of progress is a constitution in which the Queen remain; the head of society, but the whole political function of the monarchy is discharged by a Governor-General on the advice of Ministers responsible to a Parliament elected by the people of the land.