Council are of frequent occurrence, and of the utmost convenience. Three new judges, from Canada, the Cape, and Australia respectively, have been added to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council within the last three years, and sit regularly for the hearing of colonial cases. And the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council is empowered (again to quote Tod) to consider "any matters whatsoever the Crown shall think fit to refer to it."
As to opinion at the Antipodes, there is good reason to suppose that the majority of Australians themselves are opposed to the serious encroachment on the royal prerogative threatened by the Bill. Not only has it been a commonplace of the large, and in some colonies influential, anti-Federal party to denounce the whole institution of the new High Court as a source of oppression and expense—an argument which is still freely employed in Western Australia—but the more intelligent property-holding classes are perhaps generally opposed to it, or at all events to its substitution for the Privy Council as a final Court of Appeal. The Legislative Council of New South Wales, as we have seen, has already expressed itself strongly on this point; and has been followed in its course of protest by various other representative bodies. The insertion, by Parliament, of some such clause in the Bill as that which preserved the constitutional position in the case of Canada is, therefore, it would seem, likely to be at least not unpopular in Australia; while, having regard to Imperial interests, it is vitally essential.
