King and Constitution
The King and the Imperial Crown. By A. Borriodalo Keith. (Longmans. 21s.) PROFESSOR KEITH'S latest book will undoubtedly add to his eminent reputation. Some of those who have learnt to rely upon him as a fount of knowledge on the British Common. wealth of Nations may possibly be disappointed to find this a treatise on the relations between the King and his Ministers, citing very few but United Kingdom precedents and giving only one chapter—the last—to the King and the Empire." But the title need not be misleading to anyone who recalls, as Professor Keith reminds us, that a statute of Henry VIII declared " this realm of England is an Empire, and so bath been accepted in this world, governed by one supreme head and king, having the royal estate and dignity of the Imperial Crown of the same." Nor need the contents be in the least disappointing to anyone concerned with the future of the British Commonwealth constitution, whose pivot is the Crown and whose guardian is the King. Apart from a certain tedium in the long recital of Queen Victoria's efforts at Cabinet- making, there is nothing dull and much that is fascinating in the story of the Crown's activities in regard. to the choice and dismissal of Governments, to foreign affairs and defence, to the Church, to honours, to the Empire.
If there is a fault, it is the one recently charged against Professor Keith by Mr. Justice Vere Evatt—an excessive sea- soning of his facts with his opinions. When we read of " the fatal ineptitude of Lord Milner's conduct of African affairs," or that "the king was free of any delusions as to the folly of" women's suffrage, we are a little taken aback at Professor Keith's indignant characterisation of a contemporary's opinion as attributable to '' nothing but political prejudice." Pot and kettle ! Some of his obiter dicta, however, have a peculiar interest, coming from him—for instance, his sug- gestion that the fiasco of the Hoare-Laval plan could not have happened but for " the weakening of the royal intervention in the sphere of foreign affairs." The King, he says, " should be ready to ensure that every proposal of first-rate importance is duly weighed by the Cabinet."
The most critical of the controversial issues in relation to the Crown today fall in the sphere of Commonwealth rela- tions, where Professor Keith speaks with peculiar authority. Is the Crown multiple or divisible ? Have the Dominions the right of secession, or of separate neutrality ? (It was interesting to read the other day in the columns of a Right- wing Conserirativenewsjimier a reference to the " self-govern- ing Dominions, whose presence within the Commonwealth
is purely voluntary.") But here Professor Keith is cautious ahnost to the point of hesitancy, believing as he does that the tiine is far from ripe to -" formulate definitely the relation between the several parts " of the Commonwealth ; his positive conclusion is that " the most important and vital link of Empire is the person of the king and the Crown."
H. V. Honsox.
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