Responsible government in the Dominions: Responsible government in the Dominions

Responsible government in the Dominions (Vol. 1)

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Multivolume work

Identifikator:: 1896933912

Document type:: Multivolume work

Author:: Keith, Arthur Berriedale http://d-nb.info/gnd/119086794

Title:: Responsible government in the Dominions

Place of publication:: Oxford

Publisher:: Clarendon Press

Year of publication:: 1912-

Collection:: Economics Books

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Volume

Identifikator:: 1896934455

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-236504

Document type:: Volume

Author:: Keith, Arthur Berriedale http://d-nb.info/gnd/119086794

Title:: Responsible government in the Dominions

Volume count:: Vol. 1

Place of publication:: Oxford

Publisher:: Clarendon Pr.

Year of publication:: 1912

Scope:: LI, 568 Seiten

Digitisation:: 2022

Collection:: Economics Books

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Chapter

Document type:: Multivolume work

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Part II. The executive Government

Collection:: Economics Books

CHAP. IV] THE GOVERNOR AS HEAD 228 funds to bribe the constituencies by means of promising various privileges to capitalists in connexion with the building of the Pacific Railway. Naturally feeling ran high in Canada, and the Governor-General was asked by the Liberal press to put in force the reserve powers of the Crown and to dismiss the ministers. He declined to do so, and left matters to develop. A Royal Commission of three judges was at last appointed to investigate, and the evidence taken by them was laid before the Parliament when it reassembled in October, together with his own dispatches to the Secretary of State. The result was a strong outburst of feeling in Parliament, which led to the resignation of the Ministry to avoid a vote of censure, and to the formation of a new Government by Mr, Mackenzie, which held office until 1878. The Governor- General was shown by the result to have acted wisely : he recognized, as he wrote to the Secretary of State, that he could have dismissed his Ministry, and have taken the chance of Parliament approving his action, but he did not feel justified in doing so on the evidence before him. It was therefore with justice that he congratulated himself, in reporting on the termination of the incident to the Secretary of State, that the result had been brought about not by an ill-considered and hasty exercise of Imperial authority, nor by.the application of premature pressure from without, but by the free and spontaneous action of the representatives of the Canadian people. He recognized that he could have used the power of dismissal, and that he would have done so if essential, but he naturally was glad to have avoided the use of an instrument which would probably have told against the party which sought to find out the real facts of the case by enabling the Government to divert attention to what would have been called an invasion of the powers of Canada.l * Canada House of Commons Journals, October Session, 1873; Parl, Pap., C, 911. The matter is told at length in Pope’s Sir John Macdonald, especially ii. 174-89. The proposal to investigate Mr, Huntingdon’s charges came first in the form of a Parliamentary Committee, and a Bill was passed to give it power to administer oaths, but was disallowed as ultra, vires (under s, 18 of 30 Vict. c. 3). Then Parliament tried to discuss 1279 n

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