tuar. v] THE PRIVILEGES AND PROCEDURE 459 
This Act shall not come into operation unless and until 
the officer administering the Government notifies by pro- 
clamation that it is Her Majesty’s pleasure not to disallow 
the same and thereafter it shall come into operation on such 
day as the officer administering the Government shall notify 
by the same or any other proclamation. 
The assent to the Acts passed by the Parliament is given 
in various forms in various Colonies : in some cases it is usually 
given by commission, in others the Governor personally 
attends the Parliament and gives assent, or he may assent 
to it at the Government offices! The words of assent are 
borrowed from the English form, and the words of assent to 
an Appropriation Bill are still the same as in England, but 
they are pronounced in English, not in Norman French. In 
Canada and Quebec the words are said both in English and also 
in French, as the legislatures are bilingual in these matters 
under the British North America Act, and the same remark 
as to English and Dutch applies to the Union Parliament. 
The use of language in parliamentary proceedings is of 
some interest and importance. In the Union Act of 1840 it 
was expressly provided that all instruments for summoning 
the Parliament, for dissolving it and proroguing it, and all 
returns to instruments, all journals, entries, and written 
proceedings of the two Houses, and all written or printed 
proceedings of reports of committees of the two Houses, 
should be in English only, and copies in French, though not 
prohibited, were not to be allowed to be recorded among the 
archives. No attempt was, very wisely, made to enforce the 
use of English in the Houses, and the French language was 
used from the first in debates, the first Speaker of the Assem- 
bly, Mr. Cuvillier, being a French member of Parliament. 
Various rules were made to secure the translation of all 
matter into French, and in 1841 an Act was passed to secure 
the translation into French of all statutes and similar 
the bill be reserved is absurd, but harmless ; see New Zealand Parl. Pap., 
1902, A. 1, pp. 9, 12, 13; A. 2, p. 20. 
' Where a Bill is reserved, the due publication of assent is essential, or 
the Bill is not validly an Act; see Western Australia Act No. 14 of 1905, 
%. 65. In 1911 there was an amusing dispute in Canada with regard to the 
assent being given by a Deputy instead of the Governor-General.