The South Australian Confederates of 1891

Deakin makes an interesting comment on the South Australian delegates to the 1891 convention.
From And Be One People ;

The South Australian delegation alone was divided into two parties; the Ministerial headed by Playford and sympathised with by Bray was confused to some extent because the Attorney-General, Kingston, was largely influenced by Cockburn and Gordon who regarded the whole movement as premature, and considered the looser type of Union adopted the better.

They openly expressed their preference for a Confederacy as distinguished from Federal Government and desired to see a new central authority as far as possible dependant upon the States.

When the struggle between the partisans of the House of Representatives seeking the rule of the majority, and the upholders of the Senate demanding the predominance of the States and the Senate or States Chamber came to a division, there were only Playford, Kingston and Bray found upon the side of the popular chamber, although in local politics Cockburn and Gordon were reckoned even more radical and democratic.

The more Conservative but more Federal South Australians, Sir John Downer and Sir Richard Baker, while warm defenders of Senatorial supremacy, were staunch Federalists and without sympathy with the Confederate ideal.

The convention only took place forty years after the American Civil War in which the US rented into two opposing war camps that were initially split over how much control the US Federal government had over the states. The southerners seceded and established the Confederate States of America [CSA] with its capital in Richmond, Virginia.

One of the bizarre aspects of the American Civil War in Australia was that NSW supported the Union, while Victoria supported the Confederacy.

Confederacy

A confederacy is a political grouping or union where the entities comprising that union retain sovereignty. Up until 1848, when it federated, Switzerland was a confederacy, though the best known Confederacy was the break-away states in the US Civil War.

The Confederate States Constitution does not contain a popular lower house as the American and Australian federal systems do. The lower house in the CSA is appointed by the states that comprise the union or league.

In the CSA constitution the President is chosen by electoral college and the Senate is appointed by the States with equal numbers of Senators per state. The judicial arm was to be appointed in the same way as the US Constitution.

All in all the CSA constitution is sensible document that places more power in the states. Other than the clause supporting slavery, it is politically consistent and an interesting derivation of the US Federal Constitution.

Personally I would not support a state appointed Lower House or Senate. I prefer the democratic nature of a federal system. However, the states would serve well as an active component in the checks and balances on federal largesse. There is a role for the states to contribute to the Federal system in a Confederate manner.

cam
Permalink, The South Australian Confederates of 1891, May 2006, cam
cam: Is the EU a confederate model?: Is the UN?

cam
avocadia: Maybe: Wikipedia mentions - as an aside - in the article on Confederation that a particularly loose confederation resembles international organisations. It then uses the example of the Gx conference, but I think the EU and UN fit as well.
adam: Not the EU: Not since the establishment of the European Parliament anyway. It\'s elected using PR from party lists in multi-member geographic electorates (eg London is one electorate as I recall). That\'s if you consider popularly (rather than state-) elected members incompatible with Confederacy.  It certainly strengthens the mandate of the central government.

The UN, having no direct popular mandate for its officers, is closer.
Alan: Confederacies: The CSA house of representatives was popularly elected: \'
The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall be citizens of the Confederate States, and have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature; but no person of foreign birth, and not a citizen of the Confederate States, shall be allowed to vote for any officer, civil or political, State or federal.\' The CSA senate was indirectly elected because the US senate was also indirectly elected at that time.

Weirdly, the Confederacy was not a confederation. Neither is the Swiss Confederation, they just like the name.

The distinction between confederations and federations is very loose, but broadly in a confederation the laws are not binding on individuals without some legislative action by the member states. The presence or absence of an elected assembly is not important to the definition.

The definition fits entities like the EU and increasingly, the AU.
cam: Who is the AU?: Doh I shouldn\'t have missed that the CSA had an elected house as I read through the constitution.

btw blockquote tags can be used to get the grey background with green border effect.

cam
Alan: African Union and Holy Roman Empire: AU = African Union . To the authors of the Federalist Papers the Holy Roman Empire was the classic confederation, although they also spoke about ancient city leagues in Greece.
cam: Thanks: I will have a closer study of their model.

Are you going to a Constitution Fun Challenge entry ? :)

cam
Felix the Cassowary: Popular Parliaments?: Surely how the bodies are elected is not that important to a confederacy; merely the power relationships. If we ignore the issue of sovereignty, who controls the purse controls the government, and if that\'s the states, then you get something more like a confederacy cropping up.

Also I think multi-ethnic states are more likely to create confederacies, like the EU, the former Swiss Confederation, the former Serbia & Montenegro, or strong central goverments, like the UK, China, Russia (in practice, at least). I think Canada\'s also significantly more decentralised, and Quebec has some powers (like immigration) usually reserved for a central government. After all, we\'re all Australian, aren\'t we? why not let one government deal with it all? [Which is not, in fact, my view on the matter; just my interpretation of what\'s happened.]

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