116 THE EXECUTIVE GOVERNMENT [PART II 
otherwise with the letters patent creating the office of 
Governor in the other Dominions and States ; they purport 
to authorize, empower, and command the said Governor to 
do all things that belong to his office in accordance with the 
letters patent, the royal instructions, and any laws in force 
in the Colony. Tt is, no doubt, not an ideal way of describing 
the duties of an office, but it is not unusual in English state 
documents to find that the substance is left to be expressed 
in some vague and general manner, leaving the content to 
be gathered from official usage, and that official usage shows 
clearly that the Governor possesses the whole executive 
authority of the Colony so far as that authority is needful 
in a Colony. As usual, the constitution laws in the case of 
the Federations and the Union express clearly what is left 
vague in the case of the ordinary Colony, where the preroga- 
tive and local laws are the source of the authority. When 
this is realized, we are able to lay the spectre of the reserve 
power of the Governor, which seems to owe its authority to 
Todd, who wrote in the second edition of his work on Parlia- 
mentary Government in the British Colonies?! :— 
A constitutional Governor is not merely the source 
and warrant of all executive authority within his juris- 
diction ; he is also the pledge and safeguard against all 
abuse of power by whomsoever it may be proposed or 
manifested, and to this end he is entrusted with the main- 
tenance of certain rights, and the performance of certain 
duties which are essential to the welfare of the whole 
community. And while he may not encroach upon the 
rights and privileges of other portions of the body politic, he 
is equally bound to preserve inviolate those which appertain 
to his own office ; for they are a trust which he holds in the 
name and on behalf of the Crown for the benefit of the 
people. 
These are vague words and may well mean little more than 
what we have stated above, but they seem to be the source 
of the statement in Sir H. Jenkyns’s British Rule and Jurisdic- 
ion beyond the Seas? that © there is no doubt that a Governor 
will always be held to have had all the power necessary for 
* p. 36. * 5, 108.