cusp. v] THE GOVERNOR AND THE LAW 275 
cases where the action of the Governor can almost never 
but be in accord with that of ministers. If a Ministry, 
which is presumably at least honest, assures the Governor 
that he should proclaim martial law, he would rest under 
a grave responsibility if he refused to do so and in the face 
of a crisis left the Government in hopeless confusion, while 
the Governor was running about trying to find a minister 
to accept responsibility for carrying on the Government. 
It is certainly within the bounds of possibility that a crisis 
might arise in which it was clearly the unhappy Governor’s 
duty to dismiss ministers or to refuse their advice and accept 
their resignations, but it is not probable, and it may fairly 
be said that this is one of the cases where the Governor can 
hardly be expected to differ from ministers. Similarly the 
Imperial Government cannot well disallow an indemnity act, 
for the logical conclusion of such disallowance would be that 
the Colonial Government should be deprived of self-govern- 
ment ; the matter would be a critical proof that the Imperial 
Government did not consider the Government and the 
Parliament capable of conducting with propriety the affairs 
of the country. But even so, the Imperial Government 
raised, in connexion with Act No. 5 of 1908,2 the question 
which they had before raised, that the Act was too widely 
worded and would cover certain grave alleged wrongs com- 
mitted in the course of the matter of the repression, but the 
Act was not disallowed. It may be noted that the Act 
expressly reserved power to punish civil and military persons 
for any wrongdoing in a manner to be decided by the 
Governor. The Act is a remarkable document, for it ratifies 
and makes all the actions of the Governor and the various 
officers legal, and confirms the sentences and makes them 
legal sentences, and allows pardon by express enactment 
to the Governor in Executive Council. This is a strange 
' The Bill of 1866 in New Zealand was never allowed, but a suitable Act, 
No. 39, was passed in 1867 and then allowed; Rusden, ii. 364, 365. 
' Parl. Pap., Cd. 4328, pp. 88 seq., 103 seq. See also the debates, 
Hansard, 1908, cxe. 102-29 ; cxciii. 2101 seq., and the replies to questions, 
clxxxv. 336, 672; clxxxvi. 1076. 
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