departments of government, and makes law as far as possible the arbiter
of their constitutional conflicts. All political systems are very
imperfect at the best; legislatures are constantly subject to currents
of popular prejudice and passion; statesmanship is too often weak and
fluctuating, incapable of appreciating the true tendency of events, and
too ready to yield to the force of present circumstances or dictates of
expediency; but law, as worked out on English principles in all the
dependencies of the empire and countries of English origin, as
understood by Blackstone, Dicey, Story, Kent, and other great masters of
constitutional and legal learning, gives the best possible guarantee for
the security of institutions in a country of popular government.

In an Appendix to this history I have given comparisons in parallel
columns between the principal provisions of the federal constitutions of
the Canadian Dominion, and the Australian Commonwealth. In studying
carefully these two systems we must be impressed by the fact that the
constitution of Canada appears more influenced by the spirit of English
ideas than the constitution of Australia, which has copied some features
of the fundamental law of the United States. In the preamble of the
Canadian British North America act we find expressly stated "the desire
of the Canadian provinces to be federally united into one Dominion under
the crown of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, with a
constitution similar in principle to that of the United Kingdom," while
the preamble of the Australian constitution contains only a bald
statement of an agreement "to unite in one indissoluble federal
Commonwealth under the crown," When we consider the use of
"Commonwealth"--a word of republican significance to British ears--as
well as the selection of "state" instead of "province," of "house of
representatives" instead of "house of commons," of "executive council"
instead of "privy council," we may well wonder why the Australians, all