matters of general Australasian interest on which the Legislatures can legislate within their own limits, but as to which it is deemed desirable that there should be a law of general application. Such legislation, however, was to take effect only in the Provinces that requested the Council to act, and in any others that might subsequently adopt it. It will thus be seen that the measure is of a purely permissive character, as each Province decides for itself whether it will be represented on the Council. New South Wales, mainly under the influence of the late Sir Henry Parkes, and New Zealand have never taken part in the deliberations, and South Australia has only been represented on a single occasion. The abstention of New Zealand is of smaller importance, from her geographical position and her intention not to identify herself at present with any scheme of Australian federation; but the hostility of New South Wales and the apathy of South Australia have placed great obstacles in the way of Queensland, {217} Victoria, Western Australia, and Tasmania, which, and especially Victoria, have attempted to turn the Council to the best account. Other causes have combined to minimise its utility; it has neither an Executive to carry out, nor a judiciary to enforce its decisions; it has no control over public funds; and, as has recently been pointed out, "it transacts its business without a Ministry or a department, without a leader or an Opposition, without a party or a programme; there is no necessary continuity of representation, or similarity in the mode of appointment of representatives, or fixed area within which its legislation has force; it is vagrant in domicile and without a roof to shelter it, without a foot of territory to rest upon, without a ship or a soldier to protect it, without a single man in its service, or a shilling of its own to pay one."[1] But, in spite of these drawbacks, the Council has done practical work: it has paved the way for a system of national defence by the establishment of federal garrisons at King George's Sound and Thursday Island; it has regulated the pearl-shell and beche-de-mer fisheries on the coasts of Queensland and Western Australia, and it has interested itself actively in the promotion of the proposed Pacific cable. More would have been done, particularly in the consideration of the matters referred to it by Provincial Legislatures, had {218} it not been hoped that by the postponement of action the Council would be enabled, through the adhesion of South Australia and New South Wales, to legislate for the whole of Australia. Several of the Provinces, notably Western Australia and Queensland, which have shown little eagerness for the immediate realisation of a closer union, believed that the Council would, by a gradual process of development, be transformed into a Federal Parliament, and were prepared to allow events to take their natural course; but in other