186 THE PRIVY COUNCIL. 
orders, Government measures take precedence on certain days 
and when necessary the Government take the whole time of 
the House for their own bills. The result is that Government 
bills have a much better chance of becoming law than have 
bills of private members. For all Government bills the 
Ministry is responsible. 
A (2) Summoning, proroguing, and dissolving Parliament. 
ing Parlia- he Dominion Parliament is required to meet every year’; 
in appointing the time of meeting the Governor-General is 
guided by the advice of his Ministers. The prorogation or 
dissolution of Parliament being an exercise of prerogative 
power, the Governor-General is not bound to follow their 
advice. In discharging the responsibility of deciding in a 
particular case whether a dissolution should be granted, the 
Governor of a Colony “will of course pay the greatest 
attention to any representations that may be made to him by 
those who at the time are his constitutional advisers: but if 
he should feel himself bound to take the responsibility of not 
following his ministers’ recommendation there can, I appre- 
hend, be no doubt that both law and practice empower him to 
lo so?” 
Previous to the Confederation in 1858 the Governor of 
the Province of Canada declined to grant a dissolution at the 
request of the ministry on the grounds that a new election 
had lately taken place, that some measures of great import- 
ance required to be passed, and that an election would be 
a great inconvenience to the Province’ Lord Mulgrave, 
Governor of Nova Scotia, refused a dissolution in 1860, as he 
thought it was neither expedient nor for the public con- 
venience that a dissolution should take place the year after a 
veneral election? 
LB, N. A. Act, 5. 20. 
2 Despatch of Sir M. Hicks Beach to Governor of New Zealand, quoted 
in Todd, p. 547. 
3 Todd, p. 528. 
4+ Ib. p. 537.