124 THE EXECUTIVE GOVERNMENT [PART II 
provincial purposes. It would probably be a mistake to 
suppose that the passing of any Act was necessary to enable 
the Lieutenant-Governors to appoint Queen’s Counsel : it is 
clear that the Lieutenant-Governors must have themselves 
all the powers of the Provincial Executives: they are not, 
as the decisions of the Privy Council have shown, mere 
creatures of the Dominion Government : they continue, as 
indeed is declared expressly in the Dominion Constitution, 
the Executive Government of the old provinces before 
confederation minus the powers surrendered by federation, 
but the Crown is as much part of the Provincial Government 
as it is of the Federal; and conversely, while the power of 
the Governor-General to create officers for Canada is un- 
doubted, on the other hand it is equally clear that such 
officers must be federal officers, not merely provincial.l 
§5. THE ALTERATION OF SEALS 
A case which was mixed up with the case of the right to 
create Queen’s Counsel shows that the Governor would have 
no right, save through the delegation in the letters patent, 
to keep and use the Great Seal of the Colony. The great seals 
themselves are directed by the Crown? and approved by 
the King personally, being engraved as a rule in this country. 
When the Dominion of Canada was formed the old seals of 
the provinces which federated were deemed to be no longer 
appropriate, and accordingly, not only was a design for a new 
seal approved and appointed to be used in the Dominion by 
a royal warrant, which was sent out to Canada by the Duke 
of Buckingham and Chandos on October 14, 1868, but next 
year the Secretary of State sent out, in a dispatch of May 8, 
five seals for the use of the federation and the four provinces, 
with a warrant under the sign-manual requiring their use, 
t All the provinces regulate King’s Counsel and precedence; see 
the several Revised Statufes and British Columbia Act, 1900, ¢. 31; 
Prince Edward Island Act, 1898, c. 11; Saskatchewan Act, 1907, ¢. 20; 
Alberta Act, 1807, c. 21. 
‘The Governor even now is not appointed to alter the seals; all the 
seals for the new reigns of King Edward VII and George V were approved 
by the Crown, of course in accordance with the wishes of the Dominions.