cuap. 11] THE POWERS OF THE GOVERNOR 143 
minister of the Crown in the Colony. The view was, however, 
rejected by the Secretary of State on the advice of the law 
officers of the Crown. 
It is hard to see any useful purpose served by this relic 
of ancient times. It would be easy for the Colonies to bar 
the right by appropriate legislation, but that has never yet 
been done and so the practice remains in force, though cases 
are rare. It is somewhat strange that none of the Colonies 
should have taken so easy a step. All have some sort of 
provision in force for dealing with claims against the State, 
and all of them extend that provision a good deal beyond 
the limits within which the petition of right lies in the 
United Kingdom, but that leaves the prerogative untouched, 
and in the case of Western Australia some at least of the 
petitions have been due to the fact that the time-limit 
appointed by the Act has expired, while against the common- 
law right time does not run. 
There is a difficult question! whether the prerogative runsin 
cases of those Colonies in which, like the Province of Quebec, 
the Cape, Natal, the Transvaal, and the Orange River 
Colony before union, and the Crown Colonies of Mauritius, 
Ceylon, St. Lucia, and Trinidad, the law of the land is not 
English law. It has often been held that the petition does 
not lie, and the opinion can quote in its favour the view 
that the right is one of common law, and therefore cannot 
exist except under the common law. But it should be noted 
that the right is no more or less than the right of the Sovereign 
to waive the right of refusing to be sued in his own court, 
! See Code, Petition of Right, p. 36. Robertson, Civil Proceedings by 
and against the Crown, p. 340, is wrong in denying the right to fiat a petition 
against a Colonial Government; the thing has been often done as mentioned 
above, and is one sign of the unity of the Crown in the Empire ; cof. Williams 
v. Howarth, [1905] A. C. 551, and below, Part VIII, chap. i. The Canadian 
Supreme Court seems to have held the view that in the Province of Canada 
no petition of right could have been brought because there was no means of 
getting a royal fiat ; see 36 8. C. R., at p. 34. But it is difficult to see how 
it could have been refused if asked for at home, and the court did not take 
the point of the differing law of Upper and Lower Canada ; indeed the case 
goes expressly on the similarity of practice between the two Canadas.