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Bookplate inserted; signed in pencil on front cover and front endpaper: “Robert G. Menzies”; several pages earmarked, including: pp. 139 [appropriation of Commonwealth funds]; 192 [Per capita payments under the Surplus Revenue Act 1910]; 199 [Expenditure under section 81 of the Constitution]; 223 [“control of Forestry” and “Railways”]; 240 [General Recommendation in Favour of a Federal System]. Some highlights of text made with pencil, including: [p. 241] “We think that the existence of these conditions furnishes a strong reason for the conclusion that the Federal system of government is the system best suited to the needs of the Australian people at the present time. A central authority is necessary for the discharge of those functions on which Australia should speak and act as a whole, e.g., defence and relations with other countries, and is desirable for the exercise of powers of legislation and administration with respect to matters, e.g., weights and measures and coinage, in which uniformity is convenient. But in our opinion the existence of self-governing units within the area of the Commonwealth is also necessary […] the division of powers may be said to lead to subdivision of political interest, but if this is an objection we do not think that it outweighs the advantages of local self-government. On the contrary it seems to us that the concentration of all legislative and executive functions in one authority would be likely to produce that paralysis at the centre and anaemia at the circumference which has been referred by some writers on political science.”; [pp. 248 – 249]: “We think, further, that the general power to legislate with respect to industrial matters should be in the hands of the legislature which has the general power to deal with health, trade and commerce, mines, lands, public works, and the development of a State. We do not think that it would be for the good of Australia that the Commonwealth Parliament should be occupied with industrial questions or that Federal elections should turn on industrial issues […] We are of the opinion that the arbitration power should not be exercisable by two authorities, and that it should be in the hands of the States and not of the Commonwealth”; and [pp. 252] “We recommend that the retiring age for future Justices of the High Court should be at seventy-two years.”