JHAP. 1V] THE GOVERNOR AS HEAD 181 
reluctantly, to be a partisan in a political struggle. In the 
case of a Governor this does not matter very seriously : he is 
only a temporary tenant of office, and his personality and 
popularity are not things of the highest moment ; he may 
discredit the post of Governor and weaken the Imperial 
connexion, but these things can be put right by a tactful 
successor, and, truth to tell, both Governors and ministers, 
as self-government develops, seem to grow more used to 
work together ; the Governor exercises more influence if less 
power than his predecessors in the sixties and seventies, and 
there are fewer of those claims, preposterous on both sides 
to an unimpassioned view, than then were rife. But the 
popularity of the Crown is only borne out by absolute 
ministerial responsibility; the loyalty of the country to the 
Crown must depend in political matters on the feeling that 
whatever is done is done not as a royal whim but at the will 
of a Ministry commanding influence in the country. Any 
other theory, however specious, is sure in the long run to lead 
bo the degradation of the Crown, which owes its absolute 
security, as Lord John Russell pointed out in 1839, to its 
standing apart from all political strife. 
The question of dissolution always, from the nature of 
the case, presents the Governor with a possibility of differing 
from his ministers with success; it necessarily implies the 
existence in the Colony of two parties, of which one is in 
possession of the Government, but the other has been 
successful in driving them to appeal to the people. The 
Governor has therefore a difficult task, not merely in deciding 
to refuse to accept ministerial advice but in deciding to 
accept it; for the fact that the prerogative is not expected 
as a matter of course to be used as the Ministry advises, 
prevents him from sheltering behind the advice of his 
ministers. If he acts on their advice he may easily find 
himself quite as unpopular as if he had refused to do so, and 
indeed the Governor is expected to do what is best for the 
rountry, a course by no means normally at all simple or easy. 
There are two important facts which the Governor must 
consider in granting or refusing a dissolution. In the first