302 THE EXECUTIVE GOVERNMENT [PART II
Australia, in Western Australia, and in Queensland. Tt also
was the rule in the Transvaal, the Orange River Colony, and
Natal. Inallthese casesthere wereno distinctions between the
Executive Council and the Cabinet. On the other hand, in
the Commonwealth of Australia, in Victoria, and in Tasmania
the practice, as also formerly in the Cape and now in the Union,
is different : the members of the Executive Council do not
resign office as a normal rule, though they can be removed
if thought fit by the Governor, and occasionally this power
has been exercised in regard to the two states, and so the
Council consists of members under summons and members
not under summons.! Here, however, the analogy to the
Privy Council is incomplete, for the members of the Council
under summons alone attend the meetings of the Council,
and there is no parallel to the system in England under which
any three Councillors may be called upon to make up
a quorum for the passing of an Order in Council, and where
orders are now and. then passed when no other members
are in attendance than three officers of the Court, or other
members of the Council who neither are nor have been
ministers. Moreover, sometimes Orders in Council are passed
when ministers of both parties happen to be in attendance.
The Privy Council in Canada which alone? has the old
name—though it is not a tradition but a new name coined
in 1867, for the old Council of the united Province was
always called simply the Executive Council —is a little more
like in composition to the Privy Council, for besides ex-
ministers it contains, or has contained, one or two persons,
Speakers of the House of Commons who have been placed
there for honorary purposes, or like the present High Com-
missioner for Canada, Lord Strathcona, who was never
a minister in the ordinary sense of the word. Moreover, the
Solicitor-General is a member of the Privy Council without
being a member of the Cabinet. But there again the likeness
1s not more than formal, for the members who are not of
* The distinction is formally recognized in the Instructions of October 29,
1900, as regards Victoria, but not in the other cases,
* Tt still survives in Jamaica of Crown Colonies,
