Responsible government in the Dominions: Responsible government in the Dominions

Responsible government in the Dominions (Vol. 2)

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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:: 1896935052

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-238139

Document type:: Volume

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

Title:: Responsible government in the Dominions

Volume count:: Vol. 2

Place of publication:: Oxford

Publisher:: Clarendon Pr.

Year of publication:: 1912

Scope:: XI Seiten, Seiten 570-1100

Digitisation:: 2022

Collection:: Economics Books

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Chapter

Document type:: Multivolume work

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Part IV. The federations and the union // Chapter I. The dominion of Canada

Collection:: Economics Books

CHAP. I] THE DOMINION OF CANADA 729 law as in spirit the constitution requires the Governor- General to act on ministerial advice. But he hoped that there would, as a result of the correspondence. be little chance of friction. Todd,? in his review of the case, thinks that the real sense of Governor-General is Governor-General in Council, and he Quotes s. 54, where the recommendation of Money Bills is given to the Governor-General, as negativing the idea that the words should be read as giving a personal discretion. He urges in favour the opinion of Sir John Macdonald,® who asserted that all the powers of the Governor-General must be done with the advice of his Council, whether formally declared in the Act to be dome by him or by him in Council. But this argument is a mistake : the rule cannot be made absolute, or if it were made absolute it would defeat the essence of responsible government—the fact that the Executive Council itself holds office at the pleasure of the Crown in the person of the Governor-General, and that this discretion cannot be fettered : so that the only conclusion which can be drawn is that each section must be examined for itself, to see if by constitutional practice it confers an independent authority or not. Much more effective, in truth, is the fact that the power has always been exercised tn Council, and that no case of dispute has yet been known to occur where the Governor-General attempted to disallow an Act of his own motion. Todd’s third argument, that Since the Queen in Council has no authority as declared by the Lord President, the Governor-General as an Imperial authority cannot have any, is quite invalid. It might well have been intended that the Governor-General should have been the vehicle of Imperial authority, just as, in fact, in * Canada Sess. Pap., 1877, No. 89, pp. 449-58, : Parliamentary Government in the Colonies, pp. 340 seq. Parl. Pap., C. 2445, p. 109. So Higinbotham J. in Atlorney-General v. Goldsbrough, 15 V. L. R. 638, at p. 647 (cf. also Tasmania Interpretation Act, 1906; Union Interpretation Act, 1910). The statement is not, however, Strictly correct ; it is a matter of constitutional practice. Cf. Pope, Sir John, Macdonald, ii. 296, 297, for his views on disallowance of provincial legislation. He was reallv in favour of a union not federation.

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