256 THE EXECUTIVE GOVERNMENT [PART II 
subject to certain charges, the revenue of the Colony ‘ shall 
be subject to be appropriated to such specific purposes as 
by any Act of the Legislature of the Colony shall be pre- 
scribed in that behalf.” The ‘Legislature of the Colony’ 
consists of the Governor, Council, and Assembly, and it 
follows that to spend money without the authority of the 
Governor, Council, and Assembly is a breach of the law. 
The 55th section of the Constitution Act provides that no 
part of that revenue shall be issued or shall be made issuable 
except in pursuance of warrants under the hand of the 
Governor of the Colony directed to the Public Treasurer 
thereof.’ 
On the Governor, therefore, is imposed the duty of seeing 
that no breach of the law is committed. 
Your ministers are of opinion that if they desire the 
Governor to sign a warrant authorising the issue of any 
amount of public money for a purpose confessedly un- 
warranted by law, he is bound, whatever his opinion may 
be, to comply with their demand, if only they place before 
him a statement, even if it appears to him to be unfounded, 
that an emergency has arisen justifying that expenditure. 
Any position less unqualified than this would leave some 
personal discretion to the Governor, and therefore some 
opening for the collision which Mr. Samuel holds to be 
unconstitutional. 
Her Majesty’s Government cannot adopt this conclusion. 
They admit that the Legislature of New South Wales might, 
if they had chosen, have deprived the Governor of all right 
to interfere with the public finance. It might have left the 
Treasurer without control in his issue of public money, or 
subjected him in this respect to the check of the Auditor or 
some other permanent or political officer. Instead of doing 
this they have made the Governor responsible for the execu- 
tion, and therefore for every violation of the law. That 
responsibility is, in the opinion of Her Majesty’s Govern- 
ment, a personal one. 
The distinction drawn by Mr. Samuel in the passage Ihave 
first quoted from his memorandum between the action of 
the Governor alone and that of the Governor in Council is 
correct and material, but it is misapplied. He rightly 
assumes that duties imposed by law on the Governor alone 
are to be exercised by him, with an amount of personal 
discretion far greater than belongs to him when acting in 
Council. But it will be seen by reference to the above cited 
clause from the Constitution Act that, to reverse Mr. Samuel’s