172 THE GOVERNOR-GENERAL. 
Governor-General to act on the advice of his ministers. The 
duty of finally deciding rests on him alone, but in actual 
practice there is no doubt that it would be only under very 
exceptional circumstances that such advice would be dis- 
regarded ; and in the correspondence between Canada and the 
Imperial Government prior to the issue of the above In- 
structions, it was understood that in all cases of a merely local 
nature the Governor-General should act on the advice of his 
ministers’. 
Previous to the issue of the new Instructions, the 
Governor-General had felt himself at liberty to disregard the 
advice of his ministers, and that with the approval of the 
Home Government. In a despatch of Earl Carnarvon to the 
Governors of the Australian Colonies? he said, “it is true that 
a Governor may (and indeed must if in his judgment it seems 
right) decide in opposition to the advice tendered to him.” 
In accordance with this principle, in 1861 Sir Edmund Head, 
Governor-General of Canada, granted a reprieve in a case of 
murder contrary to the advice of several ministers’; and in 
1875 Earl Dufferin commuted a capital sentence on his own 
responsibility *, 
5. PREROGATIVE POWERS. 
Appoint- As Her Majesty’s representative the Governor-General may 
APA appoint Queen’s Counsel. In Lenoir v. Ritchie” a majority of 
Counsel. the Court expressed the opinion, that the sole right of 
conferring the rank of Queen’s Counsel belonged to the Queen 
or her representativethe Governor-General, and that a Province 
could not by a statute confer this right on a Lieutenant- 
Governor, inasmuch as the Crown was not a part of a 
provincial Legislature and therefore no provincial statute 
could affect its prerogatives. 
t Can. Sess. Pap. 1879, No. 181. 
3 Patterson’s Case, Todd, p. 269. 
S230an. 8S. CGC R. 575.