cHAP. v] THE GOVERNOR AND THE LAW 267 
statement as to the position of a Governor.! He pointed out 
that no illegality had been committed by the Administrator 
in signing the warrant. He thus disregarded the view of the 
Chief Justice that the payment to members in excess of 
the amount authorized in the Act No. 12 of 1907 was a con- 
travention of the statute, and he evidently held that the 
other point made by the Chief Justice, that the expenditure 
could not legally be authorized by a warrant under s. 20 
of the Audit Act because the necessity for such expenditure 
had arisen, if at all, while Parliament was still in session, 
was only an obiter dictum of the Chief Justice, and was not 
a decision binding on the Administrator. He admitted, 
however, that a Governor must not normally, whether 
advised by ministers or not, participate in an illegal action. 
Such participation could only be approved in case of most 
supreme public necessity, and normally in such cases the 
action would not be such as would be pronounced illegal 
until after it had been taken. Moreover, the Governor had his 
Attorney-General and his legal advisers, and he presumably, 
not as a rule being a legal expert himself, was entitled to take 
the view of the state of the law from them. That being so, he 
did not think that it was reasonable or necessary to lay down 
instructions for a Governor as to what he was to do if action 
were proposed to him which he considered illegal, but he recog- 
nized the principle that a Governor of a Colony, even when 
aeting as Governor in Council, was not to regard the advice of 
his ministers as having an authority superior to that of the 
law, and that except in the case of the most urgent public 
necessity it was his duty to refuse to approve an illegal action. 
A much more serious feature of this case is the fact that 
the money was paid without any Governor’s warrant at all. 
Under the letters patent granting responsible government, 
and under the Audit Acts, the procedure with regard to 
expenditure in the Transvaal was as follows :— 
All moneys received were paid into an Exchequer Account, 
and expenditure was met from the Paymaster-General’s 
Account, which was kept in funds by transfers from time to 
time from the Exchequer Account. The transfers were only 
1 House of Lords Debates, vi. 407 seq. Cf. Parl. Payp., C. 6487, p. 72.