Introduction

Abstract

By the time that the British Parliament granted self-government on the Westminster model to any of Britain’s overseas territories, the rules of the game of constitutional monarchy had become firmly established. The British North America Act, which brought into existence the federal Dominion of Canada, with a Governor-General to perform the Queen’s functions, was passed in 1867 two years after Walter Bagehot had irreverently revealed the limits of monarchical power in The United Kingdom. We now know that Queen Victoria was somewhat more influential than was suggested in Bagehot’s classic description of the limits of her role — ‘the right to be consulted, the right to encourage and the right to warn’. But if the British concept of a figurehead, a neutral symbol of national unity, a detached umpire in times of political crisis, was recognised in the 1860s, it was to become much more entrenched over the next four generations. In the post-1945 period, it was there, ready to be copied, when overseas territories, in the course of achieving full autonomy, devised their new constitutions.