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12th Day.] Concluding Speeches. [20 June, 1911. The PRESIDENT— cont. elements of experience and knowledge which, I think, will make us all go back to our various tasks better equipped for their performance than we could possibly have been if we had not met here. Gentlemen, I again advert to a matter which has been referred to by Mr. Fisher and Sir Joseph Ward, that this is the first time—and this Conference will be significant in memory in that respect—when, in Mr. Fisher's happy phrase, the representatives of the Dominions have been admitted, as it were, into the interior, into the innermost parts of the Imperial household : what in the old classical phrase were called the arcana Imperil have been laid bare to you without any kind of reservation or qualification. You will all, I am sure, remember our meeting in the Committee of Defence, when Sir Edward Grey presented his survey of the foreign policy of the Empire. That is a thing which will be stamped upon all our recollections, and I do not suppose there is one of us—l speak for myself, as lam sure you will speak for yourselves —-who did not feel when that exposition of our foreign relations had been concluded that we realised in a much more intimate and comprehensive sense than we had ever done before the international position and its bearings upon the problems of Government in the different parts of the Empire itself. So, again, our discussions conducted also and necessarily under the same veil of confidence in regard to cooperation for naval and military purposes have resulted, I think, in a most satisfactory agreement which, while it recognises our common obligations, at the same time acknowledges with equal clearness that those obligations must be performed in the different parts of the Empire in accordance with the requirements of local opinion and local need and local circumstances. Those, gentlemen, are matters as to which we cannot take the world into our confidence ; we cannot even take our own fellow subjects and our own fellow citizens into our confidence in the full sense of the term, but we, who have gone into it with the frankness which such confidential discussions admit of, will agree that, even if the Conference had done no more than that, it would have been a land mark in the development of what I may call our Imperial constitutional history. With regard to actual and positive results that are capable of being published in their fulness to the world, Sir Joseph Ward in the speech he made a few moments ago has given, I think, an almost exhaustive summary. I may just, perhaps, recapitulate very briefly what they cover. First of all, as regards what I may call the relations of the Empire, not to its own members, but to foreign countries, we have had the important resolution unanimously affirmed that the Dominions should be afforded an opportunity of consulation, so far as possible, when instructions are being prepared for the negotiation of International agreements which affect them. We have had the affirmation of the Declaration of London, and we had the important resolution passed only the other day on the motion of Sir Wilfrid Laurier that in regard to existing commercial treaties which apply to the oversea Dominions efforts should be made, as they are being made, to secure liberty of withdrawal if and when any particular Dominion so desires. Those are all very important matters in what I may call the international sphere. Then, when you come to the internal relations of the Empire itself, without attempting to give an exact order of precedence to particular resolutions as compared one with another, I confess that, speaking for myself, I attach as much importance to that which was said and which is now agreed to with regard to the Court of Appeal, as, perhaps, to any other. I think in regard to the constitution and practice of our Imperial Court of Appeal the Dominions had well-founded criticisms to make, which were put forward here with moderation but with great point and force, and I believe that the suggestions which His Majesty's Government were able to indicate, and which have now received your approval, will, when they are carried into effect, displace those criticisms for the future and provide the Empire as a whole with a tribunal which, both by its composition, by the numbers in which it sits, and the procedure which it adopts, will secure unanimous confidence. Then, again, gentlemen, still keeping within the sphere of Imperial law, I think your assent to the important propositions which were laid before you with regard to