cHAP. Vv] THE GOVERNOR AND THE LAW 255 
and I added in effect an instruction that you would not be 
at liberty hereafter to issue your warrant for any expenditure 
hot sanctioned by law, except under the conditions above 
described. 
He then quoted the protest of the Treasurer and con- 
binued — 
So formal a protest from your ministers against the 
unconstitutional character of the instructions sent out to you 
renders it my duty to explain fully to them and to the 
people of New South Wales the position adopted in this 
matter by Her Majesty’s Government and the considerations 
by which they are led to it. 
I begin by admitting unreservedly that the matter now 
in hand is one of purely local interest, in respect to which 
Her Majesty's Government only desire that you should 
conform your conduct to the wishes of the Colony when 
constitutionally ascertained. Those wishes are constitu- 
tionally ascertained through two channels, the Legislature 
and the Executive Government. 
The general rules by which the conduct of yourself and 
your ministers are to be regulated are prescribed by the 
Legislature in all free countries, the most solemn and 
authoritative organ of the national will. 
In the application of those rules you are authorised to 
accept as the interpreter of public will a Council presumed 
to possess the confidence of the Legislature and constituting 
the Executive Government. 
In any ordinary case, if the law required you to do one 
thing and your advisers recommended you fo do another, 
there can be no doubt that the deliberate enactments of the 
Legislature would be more binding on you than the opinion 
of a Council deriving its authority from that Legislature, and 
commissioned not to dispense with the law but to administer 
it. It would be your plain duty to obey the law, and it 
would be idle to speak of such obedience as unconstitutional. 
This your ministry would probably admit, but they would 
argue that emergencies may confessedly arise in which it 
may become the duty of a public officer, or indeed of a private 
citizen, to overstep the law, and that in a case like the present 
it is for the Executive Council and not for the Governor to 
determine whether such a case has in fact arisen. 
This present case, so far as it is material to this constitu- 
tional question, is as follows : 
The 53rd section of the Constitution Act provides that,