the name of the Governor-General, not directly by the British Government,[75] and, although in constitutional theory the Crown, as in every least fraction of the Empire, is the sole and immediate source of executive authority, and an indispensable agent in all legislation, not only in the Dominion, but in the Provinces,[76] in actual practice the only organic connection left between a Province and Great Britain is the right of appeal directly to the King in Council, that is, to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, without the intervention of the Supreme Court of Canada.

So much for the external relations of the Dominion.  In respect to the domestic relations between the Provinces and the Dominion, the Federal principle used in Canada is fundamentally the same as that which obtains in the United States and in every true Federation in the world, whether Monarchical or Republican, whether self-contained, like the United States, Germany, and Switzerland, or linked, as in the British Empire, to a supreme and sovereign Government centred in London.  Each Province, as in every genuine Federation, is an imperium in imperio, possessing a Constitution of its own, and delegating central powers to a Federal Government.  The nature and extent of the powers thus delegated or reserved, and the character of the Federal Constitution itself, vary widely in different Federations, but we need not consider these differences in any detail.  Let us remark generally, however, that the powers of the Canadian Province are much smaller than those of the American State, and that what lawyers call “the residuary powers”—­that is, all powers not specifically allotted—­belong to the Dominion, whereas in the United States and Switzerland they belong to the State or Canton.

The Australian Commonwealth of 1900 came into being in the same way as the Dominion of Canada, by the voluntary act of the several Colonies concerned—­Victoria, New South Wales, Tasmania, South Australia, Western Australia, Queensland—­under the sanction of the British Crown and Parliament.  New Zealand stood out, and remained, like Newfoundland, a unitary State directly subordinate to Great Britain.  Nor, in the matter of relations with the Mother Country, were the federating Colonies merged so completely in the Commonwealth as the Provinces of Canada in the Dominion.  The Canadians had not only to construct the Dominion Constitution, but new Constitutions for two of the federating Provinces—­Ontario and Quebec—­and it was natural, therefore, that they should identify the Provinces more closely with the Dominion.  The Australians, having to deal with six ready-made State Constitutions, left them as they were, subject only to the limitations imposed by the Commonwealth Constitution.  One of the results is that the State Governors are still appointed directly by the British Government, not by the Commonwealth.  This constitutional arrangement, however, has no very practical significance.  The right of appeal direct from a State Court to the King in Council, without the intervention of the High Court of Australia, remains, as in Canada, the only direct link between the individual States and the British Government.