"Whereas by an Act of Parliament passed in the sixty-third and sixty-fourth years of Our reign, intituled 'An Act to constitute the Commonwealth of Australia,' it is enacted that it shall be lawful for the Queen, with the advice of the Privy Council, to declare by Proclamation that, on and after a day therein appointed, not being later than one year after the passing of this Act, the people of New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Queensland, and Tasmania, and also, if Her Majesty is satisfied that the people of Western Australia have agreed thereto, of Western Australia, shall be united in a Federal Commonwealth, under the name of the Commonwealth of Australia. And whereas We are satisfied that the people of Western Australia have agreed thereto accordingly. We therefore, by and with the advice of Our Privy Council, have thought fit to issue this Our Royal Proclamation, and We do hereby declare that on and after the first day of January, one thousand nine hundred and one, the people of New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Queensland, Tasmania, and Western Australia shall be united in a Federal Commonwealth under the name of the Commonwealth of Australia. Given at Our Court at Balmoral, this seventeenth day of September, in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred, and in the sixty-fourth year of Our reign. God save the Queen." At the same time, the following announcement, which caused extreme delight in Australia, was published officially from the Colonial Office: "Her Majesty the Queen has been graciously pleased to assent, on the recommendation of the Marquis of Salisbury, to the visit of their Royal Highnesses the Duke and Duchess of York to the colonies of Australasia in the spring of next year. His Royal Highness the Duke of York will be commissioned by her Majesty to open the first Session of the Parliament of the Australian Commonwealth in her name. Although the Queen naturally shrinks from parting with her grandson for so long a period, her Majesty fully recognizes the greatness of the occasion which will bring her colonies of Australia into federal union, and desires to give this special proof of her interest in all that concerns the welfare of her Australian subjects. Her Majesty at the same time wishes to signify her sense of the loyalty and devotion which have prompted the spontaneous aid so liberally offered by all the colonies in the South African war, and of the splendid gallantry of her colonial troops. Her Majesty's assent to this visit is, of course, given on the assumption that at the time fixed for the Duke of York's departure the circumstances are as generally favourable as at present and that no national interests call for his Royal Highness's presence in this country."