730 THE FEDERATIONS AND THE UNION [PART IV
New Zealand the Governor alone could de facto disallow
Provincial Acts for Imperial grounds as only three months
were available for action.!
The truth is that these curious points do not arise from
the deliberate framing of an Act: they arise here because
the framers of the clause intended to give the power to the
Governor-General without thinking out very closely in what
way he would exercise it, but probably being very far from
imagining that he would act on ministerial advice : they did
not observe that the wording left it necessary for the dis-
allowance to be done in Council. Now an Order in Council
in England and in these cases was, and is, a formal means of
doing what could be done by dispatch, and an order is made
not on the advice of the Cabinet but on a request by a
departmental minister, and the Council may not contain
a single minister at all, as any three councillors suffice for
a Council. The Council, however, in the case of Canada,
brought in the technical sense of a Governor-General acting
in Council and with the advice of ministers, and, though
it was rather a technical result, it was, strictly speaking,
correct.
At the same time, it is impossible to ignore the fact that
the decision in effect cancelled much of the security of the
provinces. It was evidently the view of Lord Carnarvon
and of his department that the plan of the constitution did
not intend that any acts of the provinces should be dis-
allowed unless illegal or unconstitutional. They evidently
considered, and it seems to have been held, that the Imperial
Government would still have retained a control over the
Provincial Acts. In 1874 it was suggested by the Secre-
tary of State that the Governor-General need not be very
anxious about obtaining the views of his ministers on the
question of a Prince Edward Island Act of 1874 to settle
the land question : but the Governor-General referred the
matter to ministers, and in due course disallowed it on their
* Cf. also Harrison C.J. in Leprokon v. City of Ottawa, 40 U. C. Q. B. 47 8, at
p. 490; 1 Cart. 488, at p. 647; Taschereau J. in Lenoir v. Ritchie, 3 S. C. R.
575, at p. 624 ; Lefroy, Legislative Power in Canada, p. 202.
