330 THE EXECUTIVE GOVERNMENT [PART 11 
result of the polls was known. In 1908, also Mr. Philp 
resigned office in Queensland as soon as his defeat at 
the polls was a fait accompli, and similarly at the general 
election of the Commonwealth in April 1910, the polls being 
decidedly for the Labour party, Mr. Deakin resigned office. 
In 1909 in Newfoundland the election having resulted in an 
equality of votes, the Premier resigned office just before 
the Legislature met, in order apparently to secure that the 
Legislature should be unable to proceed to business through 
the impossibility of electing a Speaker, with the result that 
the Government might be deemed to be beaten and required 
to resign, when he could have stepped in and asked suc- 
cessfully for a dissolution of Parliament. But though the 
Government were unable to obtain the election of a Speaker, 
even when they offered to appoint one of their own men, 
they asked for and obtained a dissolution, and were sustained 
by the country at the polls. In the same year Sir T. Bent 
obtained a dissolution at the end of the year, and on being 
defeated at the polls resigned without facing Parliament. 
In October 1910 Mr. Wade, in New South Wales, being 
defeated by a narrow majority of two at the polls at the 
general election, at once placed his resignation in the hands 
of the Governor, and it may be said, in view of that case? and 
of others, that the practice is, on the whole, to resign rather 
than be dismissed by an adverse vote, but the principle is 
by no means without exception : for example, in 1910, despite 
their defeat in the elections, the Government of South 
Australia carried on until defeated by Parliament on the 
meeting of the Houses. 
There is a good deal to be said for resignation on the result 
of the elections as the general rule: it at once puts the 
Government of the country into the hands of those who 
should control it as having been sustained by the popular 
vote, and the retention of authority in the hands of a 
‘ The Government announced their resignation at the opening of the 
House. 
* Cited with approval in South Australia House of Assembly Debates, 
1910, p. 777. Cf. Parl, Pap., Cd. 5582, p. 40.