THE DOMINIONS AND THE CRISIS

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 63, 8 December 1936, Page 10

THE DOMINIONS AND THE CRISIS

According to Lord Marley, a Labour peer, the Dominions “have no right to play any part in Mrs. Simpson’s case. This view will find scant support in the Dominions themselves, which are buttressed __ in their privilege of criticism by the Statute of Westminster. The second paragraph of the preamble runs:

And whereas it is meet and proper to set out by way of preamble to this Act that, inasmuch as the Crown is the symbol of the free association of the members of the British Commonwealth, and as they are united by a common allegiance to the Crown, it would be in accord with the established constitutional position of all the members of the Commonwealth in relation to one another that any alteration in the law touching the .Succession to the Throne or the Royal Style or Titles shall hereafter require the assent as well of the Parliaments of all the Dominions as of the Parliament of the United Kingdom.

It is argued in another message to-day that a preamble to an Act of Parliament is not part of the statute, being merely a statement of agreement concerning its general purpose ; that, in effect, it is not law. A similar point was raised when the proposal of Western Australia to secede from the Commonwealth of Australia was an issue. Nowhere in the Constitution was there any provision for secession. Provision was made for the creation of new States by subdivision, but only in the preamble was there anything that could be construed as relevant to the question, and the reference in that case simply contemplated, in effect, that the Australian federation was a union in perpetuity.

Whatever may be the legal strength of a statement in the preamble of a statute, it would avail little in the present instance, because the factor to be reckoned with is the public opinion of the Dominions. The paragraph above-quoted constitutes at the least a moral commitment which it would be both ungenerous and impolitic for the United Kingdom Government to repudiate. Its meaning and intention are perfectly clear. The preservation of the Throne as an institution within the framework of the British Commonwealth is the joint and general responsibility of its members, in the discharge of which the question of the King’s marriage, touching as it does the matter of the succession, plainly comes within their province.