THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 11, 1926. A LIVING EMPIRE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19508, 11 December 1926, Page 10

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 11, 1926. A LIVING EMPIRE.

Maxy hard things have been said about the law, but Lord Balfour's description of Lord Parmoor's speech on Imperial relations launched au indictment fit to rank with the hardest of them. Could anything, he asked, be more lawyerlike and less statesmanlike? Between the statesman and the lawyer there is a great gulf fixed, even though they may happen to be habited in one body. One is made for pathfinding leadership, the other for following with rules of the road and toll charges. Both useful in their way; but when it comes to guiding the destinies of peoples there is more to be hoped f-rom a mind devoted to high policy, especially if its genius for practical affairs be touched by a penchant for philosophy, than from one prone to look for precedents and verbal niceties of disputation. That is the difference between Lord Balfour and Lord Parmoor. It is significant that one has had the ear of the nation, while the other has lent his tongue tp a party. There is room for serious doubt whether Lord Parmoor's views, as expressed in criticism of the Imperial Conference, were his own. He was probably talking from the party brief. At all events, convinced that there was no effective reply to Lord Balfour's statement, he threw up his case, withdrawing his motion of criticism, and declaring himself as quite in agreement with Lord Balfour. It was all there was left for him to do, with any regard for his rep utation in p oliti cs. There can be no gainsaying the force of Lord Balfour's argument that the Imperial Conference, in enunciating the general principles on which the Empire is constituted and refraining from analysis of legal technicalities, took the only wise course. The attitude of the conference was perfectly , logical. The Empire is a living growth. It is not an artificial federation of diverse States, but an evolution of a world-wide commonwealth arising from a common source. As the evolutionary process has gone on, adaptive modification has happened suited to the location in which the several British peoples have found themselves. In due time there comes a necessity to formulate convenient legal expression of these developmental changes. The constitutional lawyer gets opportunity for his peculiar task, but it is subsidiary and subsequent. He is all for setting down in black and white the rules that should govern, or at least those that are tacitly held to govern, the relationships of the Empire's members. But this must follow, not precede, development in national affairs as the British peoples know it. The "merits of a written constitution have been greatly exaggerated, even where its writing has followed events and tried to proceed in harmony with them: as a preliminary to events it is more likely to create difficulties than to solve them. If it must perform its tailoring service, it were better that it should have some measurements of the body politic it seeks to clothe, rather than produce a ready-made suit that may or may not fit. An example of this inherent difficulty of the written constitution, fashioned in detail ahead of development, is provided by Australia's experience of the Commonwealth Act. Its supreme judicature, charged with the Act's interpretation, has met in the isc year or two very vexing situations difficult to overcome without elaborate and inconvenient procedure. How impossible it would be, at the present juncture, to give detailed legal expression to the Empire's political constitution, must be obvious to all who have studied the history of Britain's expansion overseas.

As Lord Balfour stated, and Lord Parmoor was constrained afterward to admit, the latter approached the question from the wrong viewpoint. It is the viewpoint of those obsessed with a regard for rules and regulations. Even the enunciation of equal status among the Empire's units has had. to take a very general form.- Full equality of function cannot be rigorously laid down in the formula without endangering the principle's serviceable application. There must be room for practical deviation, by easy consent, as circumstances dictate. In matters of. foreign policy, the right of the Dominions to a voice, a right

that has been long admitted in practice, is now given appropriate acknowledgment. But it will of necessity happen, so long as circumstances remain as at present, with the Homeland's paramount interests and heaviest share of the national burden, that the international attitude of the British Government will be practically de cisive for the whole Empire in major issues. The whole problem resolves itself into one where considerations of expediency supply the vital factors, and these can have full weight only as equality of status is not foolishly held to imply equality of function in any and every event that may arise. Status -is a legal concept: function belongs to the activities of life. By his care for function the statesman is distinguished from the lawyer, apt to attach undue importance to the letter that kills.