118 THE EXECUTIVE GOVERNMENT [PART II 
case if the prerogative were legislative. As a rule, however, 
the prerogative is now exercised under the Imperial Coinage 
dct of 1870, and has become a statutory power which has 
been exercised in self-governing Dominions like Canada and 
the Commonwealth.! But there is no record of the grant of 
the prerogative to a Governor, nor can it safely be assumed 
that he ever has possessed it. 
Nor can a Governor grant royal charters of incorporation. 
That again is a prerogative right of the Crown which is not 
a legislative act, and which has been used to create several 
banks doing business in the Dominions, besides other 
financial companies. Such a charter gives the bank a status 
in England and, subject to local law, in the Colony. Charters 
are still issued from time to time in renewal of old charters 
granted to such banks, e.g. in 1911 to the Bank of British 
North America.? But as in the case of coinage, it is recognized 
that the charter can only confer privileges so far as they 
are in accordance with the law of the land. It is presumed 
that as the charter power is a prerogative right the power to 
issue a charter would render its clauses valid except when 
they ran counter to a positive enactment, and not merely 
when they conflicted with the common law, if such conflict 
existed. Charters, moreover, sometimes purport to repeal 
clauses of Acts passed in the Colonies, but it is certain that 
such claims are empty, except when authorized by legislation, 
as they sometimes are, as in the case of the Canadian Loan 
Corporation. On the other hand, charters may have validity 
throughout the Empire if so expressed, and if, for example, 
a charter laid down certain rules which were contrary to 
rules laid down by an Act in one Colony, the charter might 
still have effect elsewhere. The system is, however, now 
antiquated, and charters are, as a rule, issued only with the 
consent of the Colonial Government concerned to great 
national undertakings, like universities or leagues of nurses, 
- It is regulated now by local Acts in these Dominions. 
* He has done so in the past, e.g. in New Brunswick ; see Hannay, i. 151. 
' The disuse of the prerogative as to a Colony believed in by Nesbitt J., 
36 S. C. R. 206, at p. 213, is hardly real.