cEAP. vi] GOVERNOR AS IMPERIAL OFFICER 287 
the position of the Ministry and the Governor when a 
Governor, in obedience to his instructions or what he 
conceives to be his instructions, refuses to accept ministerial 
advice. In one point the matter is being simplified : it is 
no longer necessary, as it was even until comparatively late 
in the last century, for a Governor to act on what he deems 
to be Imperial grounds without knowing whether or not the 
matter which his ministers intend to do is really one con- 
sidered by the Imperial Government a case for serious action. 
In the early days of responsible government, when dispatches 
took two months to reach Australia, and there was no 
telegraph, the Governor held an awkward position:* he might 
either neglect Imperial interests, in which case he would 
probably be recalled, or he might fight with ministers and 
make the place very uncomfortable for himself by the process 
of setting up an Imperial interest in which the Imperial 
Government did not happen to be interested. On the other 
hand, if the difficulties are lightened by bringing the pro- 
tagonists, the Dominion and the Imperial Governments, 
together, there is also the disadvantage that a convenient 
buffer for either party has disappeared: the Imperial 
Government could in the old days dispose of the matter by 
intimating that the Governor had been too zealous, while 
the Dominion Government could assert that they had not 
objected to the substance but to the tone of the Governor’s 
communications to the Ministry. 
This question of the relations of the Ministry and the 
Governor is full of constitutional difficulty, but it may be 
hoped that care will solve it adequately : there is one thing 
in favour of a satisfactory solution, that it is being realized 
as a serious question, and that the disappearance of the 
Colonial Governments in South Africa leaves the question 
of the relations of the Mother Country and the Dominions 
to be dealt with by more responsible and prudent heads than 
can be produced by minor Colonies governed by men with 
t The history of Sir George Grey in South Africa before responsible 
government, and in New Zealand before and after responsible government, 
is instructive.