EMPIRE UNITY

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LV, Issue 17126, 5 December 1929, Page 15

EMPIRE UNITY

PRACTICE AND THEORY USE OF AUTONOMY ■ LONDON, Nov. 27. Tho Times, in a leading article, says: “The length of time the committee on Dominion legislation has spent in its deliberations, which are approaching completion, is a guarantee that their report will tako into account practical effects. It is a_guarantec also that they will not, for the sake of logical consistency, recommend changes in the existing practice, which would bring it into harmony with the constitutional status of the Dominions, as defined by the Balfour report, but which might actually prove, in operation, detrimental to the' general welfare of the Empire. “The Empire has not reached its present stage of development in straitjackets or through adherence to theories and dogmas,” says The Times. “Mr. W. M. Hughes, the former Australian Prime Minister, summed up the position admirably soon after the publication of the Balfour report, when lie said that tho true principle was ‘perfect autonomy of the parts and unity of the whole.’ “ ‘But,’ he added, ‘such principles must not- be pushed to extremes. There is always the risk that too youthful assertion of admitted equality may push autonomy so far as to endanger the unity of the whole.’ ”