cHAP. Iv] THE PREROGATIVE OF MERCY 1401 
or not) which may involve Imperial interests and those 
which, not involving such interests, concern solely the internal 
administration of the affairs of the Dominion. 
The sub-committee would suggest that any instruction 
as to independent action should be limited to such cases 
which are referred to in fuller language by Lord Carnarvon 
in his dispatch on this subject to Governor Robinson of 
May 4, 1875, as cases where ‘ matters of Imperial interest or 
policy, or the interests of other countries or Colonies are 
involved’. Lord Carnarvon instances the case of a kidnapper 
tried and sentenced under an Imperial Act by a Colonial 
Court, and that of a convict whose sentence was commuted 
on condition of exile from the Colony. The latter class is 
disposed of by the sixth clause of the proposed commission. 
With the former class may be ranged those of offenders who 
are subjects of other countries, and of political offenders. It 
is probable that even in the exceptional cases suggested 
(which of course involve as well internal as external interests) 
the action of the Governor would generally be in accordance 
with advice ; and no doubt to act against advice would be to 
incur a very grave responsibility, though not to the Canadian 
people. Tt would also seem that in the vast majority of 
exceptional cases the exception would be found to be tech- 
nical not real, the substantial interests involved being solely 
Canadian, in which event the Governor would presumably 
act under advice. But the sub-committee have freely 
recognized the possible existence in the excepted classes of 
Imperial interests, and this possibility furnishes, in their 
view, the only ground for the application to these classes of 
a special rule. It appears to them, however, that this special 
rule may be applied under the general language contained in 
the 8th clause of the instructions, on which they have already 
commented, and which if interpreted or limited in the mode 
they suggest would seem to them to meet every exigency. 
It now becomes the duty of the sub-committee to refer 
briefly to the arguments upon which in the case of the 
Australian colonies it has been affirmed that the independent 
action of the Governor-General in the exercise of this power 
should be of a wider range than that which thev suggest as 
proper in the case of Canada. 
To the substantial argument for independent action in 
certain exceptional cases, the sub-committee have already 
alluded, and they refer to it now only in order to point out 
that the existence of this exception is not a reason for giving 
in all cases independent power, but rather the reverse.