166 THE EXECUTIVE GOVERNMENT [pART II 
necessary for carrying that system into effect and operation 
are transferred from the Sovereign, and are vested in the 
representative of the Sovereign. I am aware that it has 
been urged by those who have desired to uphold the Govern- 
ment by the Colonial Office of these Colonies, and who have 
therefore supported the Governor’s instructions in their 
present form, that, although responsible government has 
oeen created in the Australian Colonies by the Imperial 
statutes, prerogatives and powers are from time to time 
conferred on the Governor by the Crown, according to its 
pleasure, by a separate instrument, and not by force of the 
Act of Parliament. If the policy which the Colonial Office 
has steadily pursued for the last thirty years has sprung from 
a real but mistaken belief in this doctrine, and not, as has 
been more probably conjectured, from the natural but very 
censurable desire of irresponsible subordinate officers to 
retain for their department by stratagem a power which they 
know has been taken away from it by law, it is to be deeply 
deplored that the Colonial Office has not during that long 
period sought competent legal advice upon a subject which 
concerns so nearly its own duties as well as the highest 
rights and interests of these Australian communities. As 
a legal proposition, I venture to affirm that the doctrine is 
wholly untenable and false. If it were true, all the Colonial 
Constitution Statutes would be a dead letter, and all public 
rights of these communities would depend not upon the 
orant of Parliament, but upon the will or caprice, exerted 
from day to day, of the Imperial Minister. Responsible 
government cannot exist unless some powers and prerogatives 
are vested in the representative of the Crown, for the exercise 
of which Ministers of the Crown, appointed by the Crown, 
are responsible to Parliament. 
The representative of the Crown had vested in him by 
force of the Constitution Statute and by virtue of his appoint- 
ment as Governor such powers and prerogatives of the 
Crown, and only such as were necessary in the conduct of 
the ordinary duties and functions of government, and the 
administration of the existing laws within the Colony. The 
Governor in his character of the Queen’s representative, 
and exercising the powers and prerogatives of the Crown 
vested in him by statute, was legally independent of all ex- 
ternal influence and authority, and could be lawfully guided