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 I. Introductory

Collection:: Economics Books

RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT [PART 1 a representative constitution, that constitution could not be recalled by the power which had granted it, and therefore an Imperial Act was needed to secure the reversal of a policy which might have proved imprudently generous. Thus it has resulted that in many cases the constitutions of the self-governing parts of the Empire rest on Imperial enact- ments and not on the royal prerogative, whether exercised in the shape of the creation in a settled Colony of a miniature of the Imperial constitution, or in the shape of the grant by a legislative Act of a constitution to a Colony acquired by conquest or cession. Thus in the case of Canada the provisions of the Royal Commission of 1763 were allowed to remain a dead letter : an Assembly was indeed convoked pro forma, but was never allowed to assemble: moreover, the requirement that members of the Assembly were to take the oaths of allegiance and supremacy and make the declaration against transub- stantiation was a hopeless drawback to any possibility of summoning a legislature on the lines contemplated by the Royal Commission, which indeed was a document hardly defended by any one, and for which all seemed to desire to avoid accepting responsibility. Accordingly a purely nominee legislature was established for Canada in 1774, by the Act 14 Geo. III. c. 83. The transition to representative government took place in 1791, when the Act 31 Geo. III. c. 31 divided Canada into two provinces and provided each province with the full apparatus of a legislature, consisting of a Governor, a Council, and an Assembly. The same principle prevailed in 1840, when the Union Act of that year, 3 & 4 Vict. c. 35, united the two provinces under a representa- tive legislature, but simultaneously a new start was given in constitutional history by the enunciation and adoption of the principle of responsible government. Of the other provinces of the Dominion, Nova Scotia received a legislature of the usual bicameral type in 1758.2 * Garneau, Histoire de Canada, ii. 92, 108. * Houston, Constitutional Documents of Canada, p. 11; Canada Sess. Pap. 1883, No. 70, pp. 12-6.

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