cap. 111] THE GOVERNOR AND MINISTERS 159 
permanent letters patent and instructions, leaving the 
Governor merely to receive a commission. referring to the 
letters patent and instructions. A draft of those suggested 
for Canada was enclosed and suggestions for amendment 
asked. The form proposed was not a happy one: it was 
a common form for any Colony including in the letters 
patent provision for an Executive Council, grants of land, 
appointments of judges and other officers, pardons, dis- 
missals of officers, appointments of deputies, summoning, 
proroguing and dissolving Parliament, and the granting of 
marriage licences, of letters of administration, probates of 
wills, and the care of idiots and lunatics and their estates. 
The instructions contained provisions for the Executive 
Council, including the duty of the Governor presiding, the 
keeping of minutes, and the duty of consulting, which was 
based on the Newfoundland form, with power to differ, and 
requiring consultation only if the matter was not urgent or 
not trivial, and if consultation would not be prejudicial to 
the service. Then clauses forbade the mixing up of different 
matters in one law, gave a list of reserved Bills, instructed 
him as to sending home journals and seeing as to laws 
having marginal abstracts, regulated the power of pardon, 
and required the Governor to promote religion and education 
among the natives, and to send home a blue-book. The 
sending of such a form was in many ways foolish, for it 
was clearly a Crown Colony form, and was quite at variance 
with the form issued even to Lord Dufferin in 1872, but 
the criticisms which were made upon it resulted in the 
removal of the numerous antiquated forms presented by it. 
But the most important part of the representation of the 
Minister of Justice was his criticism on the clauses relating 
State. Later, on the request of the Opposition after Sir J. Macdonald’s 
Government took office, the further correspondence was made public in 
Canada; see Sess. Pap., 1879, No. 181. Permanent letters patent were first 
issued for Canada on Oct. 5, 1878; Newfoundland, March 26, 1876 ; New 
South Wales, April 29, 1879; Victoria, Feb. 21, 1879; Queensland, April 13, 
1877; South Australia, April 28, 1877; Western Australia, Aug. 25, 1890; 
Tasmania, June 17, 1880; New Zealand, Feb. 21, 1879; Cape, Feb. 26, 
1877; Natal, July 20, 1893.