such as the cart
and wheel tax, shall be imposed, whether the United Kingdom shall
maintain free trade, or return to protection, how taxes shall be raised
and how they shall be spent--all matters in short connected with revenue
are throughout the United Kingdom determined and determinable in the
last resort by Parliament alone.

Hence, as things now stand, no kind of governmental action in any part
of Great Britain and Ireland escapes Parliamentary supervision. The
condition of the army, the management of the police, the misconduct of
a judge, the release of a criminal, the omission to arrest a defaulting
bankrupt, the pardon of a convicted dynamiter, the execution of a
murderer, the interference of the police with a public meeting, or the
neglect of the police to check a riot in London, in Skye, or in
Tipperary, any matter, great or small, with which the executive is
directly or indirectly concerned, is, if it takes place in any part of
the United Kingdom, subject to stringent and incessant Parliamentary
supervision, and may, at any moment, give rise to debates on which
depend the fate of ministries and parties. If there be such a thing as
supreme actual and effective authority, such authority is throughout the
whole of the United Kingdom exercised by the Imperial Parliament, not
occasionally and in theory, but every day and in the ordinary course of
affairs.

This exertion of actual and effective power by the Imperial Parliament
throughout the United Kingdom is a totally different thing from the
supremacy or sovereignty exercised by Parliament throughout the whole
British Empire. As a matter of legal theory Parliament has the right to
legislate for any part of the Crown's dominions. Parliament may lawfully
impose an income tax upon the inhabitants of New South Wales; it may
lawfully abolish the constitution of the Canadian Dominion, just as some
years ago it did actually abolish the ancient constitution of Jamaica.
But though Parliament does in fact exert a certain, or rather a very
uncertain, amount of power throughout the whole Empire, we all know that
the Imperial Parliament neither exercises, nor claims to exercise, in a
self-governing colony such as New Zealand,[7] that kind of effective
authority which Parliament exercises in the United Kingdom. The Cabinet
of New Zealand is not appointed at Westminster; the action of a New
Zealand Ministry as regards the affairs of New Zealand is not controlled
by the English