258 THE EXECUTIVE GOVERNMENT [PART 11
If, however, the passing of such an Act is likely to raise
any collateral issues, or otherwise to be attended with
difficulty or delay, I think that in the present case, which
is rather constitutional than legal, the desire of the com-
munity would be sufficiently expressed by an Address from
both branches of the Legislature.
If therefore the Council and Assembly should request you
to be hereafter guided by the advice of your ministers in the
execution of the duties imposed on you by the 55th section
of the Constitution Act, Her Majesty authorises you to
accede to that request, and will then hold you relieved of
the personal responsibility which now attaches to you.
Not much resulted from this correspondence, for the truth
is that the necessity of providing money by such warrants
will always exist unless a Parliament has strong traditions
of financial responsibility, and whatever the cause—whether
from the practice in Crown Colony days where the authority
of the Secretary of State is acted upon whenever given,
and the grant ratified afterwards, a procedure harmless
in a case where the Secretary of State has control of the
Legislature or from the needs of young communities—the
Colonies have not as a rule strong views as to constitu-
tional action in financial matters. Thus in 1910 the New
South Wales Act No. 44 covers over £207,000 suspense
expenditure in anticipation of sanction. There are excep-
tions to that rule: on a recent occasion in Canada in the
face of obstruction in the House of Commons, the Govern-
ment refused to pay salaries,! but this step was regarded as
decidedly a case of financial purism, and the Conservative
Government in 1896 went on spending moneys freely though
supply had expired? until the Governor-General questioned
U Canadian Annual Review, 1908, p. 53. One of Lieutenant-Governor
Angers’s charges against Mr. Mercier was of illegal expenditure ; see Cana-
dian Gazette, xviii. 296, 513. The lack of parliamentary authority for the
sxpenditure of funds was insisted on by Sir W. Laurier as a ground for
inaction in regard to sending troops to South Africa in 1899 ; see Willison,
Sir Wilfrid Laurier, ii. 339. For a case of Commonwealth irregularity, see
Queette, 1911, pp. 1222 seq.; Act No. 2 of 1910.
2 See Canada House of Commons Debates, 1896, Sess. 2, pp. 58 seq.,
620-852. Cf. also Sir R. Cartwright’s remarks, ibid., 1891, pp. 4537 seq. ;
Sess. Pap., 1896, Sess. 2, No. 8; but of. Canadian Annual Review, 1905,
pp. 147-9, for the resignation of the Auditor-General, as a protest.
