CHAPTER 1V 
THE GOVERNOR AS HEAD OF THE DOMINION 
GOVERNMENT 
§ 1. TE DissoLuTioN oF THE LOWER HOUSE 
WE have seen that the Governor, as a rule, cannot act 
except with the aid of ministers; as was pointed out by 
Mr. Blake in the discussion of the royal instructions, the 
Governor must have some ministerial officers to assist him 
to act at all, and a Colonial Government can refuse him all 
assistance, even in so slight a matter as the mechanical means 
of carrying out an order. Of course, occasionally cases may 
happen where the Governor has the mechanical means of 
acting within himself ; for example, the grant of a pardon 
needs, strictly speaking, no assistance from ministers ;! the 
pardon would operate when signed by the Governor without 
need of further action, and would cause further imprison- 
ment to be illegal, so that the friends of the imprisoned man 
could secure his release by habeas corpus, and the prisoner on 
securing his release could sue for damages for false imprison- 
ment, if a Ministry were to go the length of trying to refuse to 
obey such a direction. Or again, sometimes the act required 
may be as simple as that of Sir W. Denison? in sealing 
a grant which the minister had refused to seal, for the 
Governor is the legal custodian of the seal as laid down in 
the letters patent. Or again, it may be merely the publica- 
tion of a document such as the Royal Order in Council 
of September 1907 regarding the Newfoundland fisheries, 
which the Governor himself arranged to have published in 
the gazette of the Colony, both cases being cases of obedience 
to Imperial orders. “But normally the Governor’s attitude 
' So in October 1864 Sir G. Grey offered a pardon to the rebels on his own 
responsibility, the Ministry resigning as a result: ef. Parl. Pan.. March 2. 
1865, p. 4. 
* New South Wales Legislative Assembly Votes, 1861, i. 58, 416, 
547-743 ; Rusden, Australia. iii. 498, n. 2. 
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