Suchergebnisse

Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa have two attributes which, taken together, distinguish them from all other countries: they are new countries and they are British Dominions. Economically, their outstanding feature is the relative abundance of their resources in relation to their population and supplies of capital. Politically, it is the fairly recent emergence of self-government under institutions modelled upon those of Great Britain and erected within the loose and conveniently ambiguous constitution of the British Empire. Culturally, too, they are predominantly British; although special reservations must be made in the cases of Canada and South Africa. As a result of their similarities it is possible to draw a number of general conclusions regarding the nature and direction of their growth.The nature of development in new countries should be a matter of interest to all students of economics and political science because (as Professor Mackintosh has recently pointed out in this Journal) it is in such countries that the impact of development may be most clearly seen and the problems of open, internationally exposed economies most effectively studied. Moreover, the subject is one of great practical importance. It should be familiar to "the Legislators of the Empire, and all who are set in authority over us; that all things may be … ordered and settled by their endeavours upon the best and surest foundations". Indeed, this paper has been prepared as the background for a larger work on the administrative problems of central banking in the Dominions. This may account for special emphasis on some points, and relatively little on others (such as immigration) which might have been treated rather differently had a more general object been in view.

A sorry state of affairs was discovered by the Newfoundland Royal Commission of 1933. This article is a review of its Report. No attempt is made to describe subsequent events or to consider the actual results of the publication of that remarkable document. These matters are treated elsewhere. Here we are only concerned to disclose its substance and to criticize its arguments and recommendations.The immediate cause of the appointment of the Commission was financial. The government of Newfoundland was unable to meet its obligations. At the end of 1932 the governments of Canada and the United Kingdom had arranged an advance to save Newfoundland from default and a further advance had been made by the United Kingdom on the following first of July (p. 55). This explains why the Commission was appointed by His Majesty on the advice of his ministers in Canada and Great Britain, as well as in Newfoundland. The commissioners were Lord Amulree, a British lawyer with wide experience of official investigations and industrial conciliation, raised to the peerage under the Labour government of 1929-31; Mr. C. A. Magrath, whose most outstanding work had been as chairman of the Canadian section of the International Joint Commission; and Sir William Stavert, who had "had the privilege of establishing the first Canadian Bank, the Bank of Nova Scotia, in the island" (p. 29), whose later banking connections had been with the Bank of Montreal, "bankers of the Government" (p. 45), and who had become in 1932, on the recommendation of the latter bank, the government's "financial advisor" (p. 55). The secretary was Mr. P. A. Clutterbuck of the Dominions Office; and two other British civil servants were also assigned to assist in the Commission's work (p. 233). The whole of the terms of reference consists in the few words: "To examine into the future of Newfoundland and, in particular, to report on the financial situation and prospects therein" (p. 1).

'Prepared as a Data Paper for the Sixth I. P. R. Conference at Yosemite'.

The evidence presented to the Royal Commission on Banking and Currency in Canada, 1933, is preserved in some three thousand five hundred multigraphed foolscap pages. There are fifty or sixty copies in existence. A number of these are in the possession of those who were attached to the Commission and of the Canadian banks: others are to be found in certain Canadian libraries: and that is about all. There is only one other avenue of access to the material. During the course of the proceedings the Financial Post of Toronto published a weekly summary of the more important submissions; and the daily papers throughout the country printed extracts irregularly. It is, therefore, clear that few people have had, or will ever have, the opportunity to become familiar with the evidence. And even those who have access to the copies available in libraries will be confronted by a vast, undigested, poorly indexed mass of material.Hence this article. It has two objects. It attempts, in the first place, simply to describe the evidence to those readers who either have not the inclination or the ability to consult it. In the second place, it attempts to guide those who may in the future wish to consult it away from the more arid patches and towards the oases. In what follows, I find myself between two fires. Since I was fortunate enough to be attached to the Commission in a minor capacity, and the only economist so attached, I am tempted to give a critical review from the standpoint of an economist. On the other hand, my connection with it imposes some restraint upon my remarks both regarding the Commission itself and those appearing before it. Indeed, as I write, I feel acutely conscious that I am compassed about by a great cloud of witnesses. To those who, reading this article, feel that I have done them any injustice, I apologize, asking them to bear with me, remembering the magnitude of the task of condensation which I am undertaking.