CONSOLIDATION

Evening Post, Volume XCVIII, Issue 18, 22 July 1919, Page 7

CONSOLIDATION

EMPIRE REORGANISATION AN IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT

OUTLINE OF A GREAT IcHEME.

(UNITED FKESS ASSOCIATION.—COPIRIGHT.J

(AUSTRALIAN-NEW ZEALAND CABLK ASSOCIATION.) NEW YOEK, 15th July.

The New York Tribune's London correspondent learns that a Bill is being drafted for submission to the British Parliament in September providing for the reorganisation of the Empire. The plan would convert the sixty component parts of the Empire into one nation, with an Imperial Parliament for the purpose of co-ordinating the military, naval, and' business functions of the different Dominions. Each Dominion would retain its own Parliament. The Imperial Parliament would consist of a single Assembly, with the Ministry responsible to its membership. There would be 140 representatives in all from the United Kingdom, Canada, Newfoundland, Australia, New Zealand, and 'South Africa, in the proportion of one member for each half million of white people.

The chief duties of the Imperial Parliament would be to settle disputes between the Dominions, make all treaties with other Powers, and to declare war. Other duties would be to control the Imperial Army and Navy, and determine, and be solely responsible for the Empire's policies regarding citizenship and naturalisation; to impose taxes on the basic of equal contributions by every citizen, according to his relative wealth, 'thus; eliminating the inequality under which the people of the British Isles now pay many times as much as the Dominions. Tne Imperial Ministry would include Secretaries of State for Foreign Affairs, War, the Navy, Crown Colonies, and the Imperial Treasury, and five secretaries without portfolio on the basis of one for each Dominion. . The plan also provides for an Imperial Supreme Court. The first step towards carrying out this plan would be the calling together of a Constitutional Convention for framing a constitution which would contain a provision that no amendment of the constitution could be made unless approved by a majority of the Dominions, as well as a majority of the Imperial Parliament.