cHAP. vii] CABINET SYSTEM IN DOMINIONS 303
the Cabinet are not summoned to meetings of the Privy
Council under normal circumstances.
Tt is curious how old and vague ideas of the Council as
a body which can act as one may revive : in the discussion
on the case of the prisoner Hudson in Tasmania’ it was
suggested in the press that the whole of the Executive
Council should be called together to deliberate on the fate
of the prisoner, but naturally that was not done. But it is
rather remarkable that in 1908 there should be so distinct
an echo of what was a favourite idea of Sir G. Bowen when
Governor of Victoria, that the enlarged Privy Council could
perhaps in a case of need be called into being.
Like the Privy Council, the Executive Council is normally
a creation of the prerogative: this is the case in all the
Colonies except the Dominion of Canada, the Commonwealth,
and the Union of South Africa. In all these cases, as there
was being created a new parliamentary body which the
Crown had no prerogative to create, it was felt right—though
not probably? necessary—that the Executive authority should
also be so created, and this remark applies also to the case
of the Provinces of Ontario and Quebec, which were created
out of the United Province of Canada by the British North
America Act. The Executive Councils in the maritime pro-
vinces and in British Columbia exist in virtue of the preroga-
tive, though the Executive Councils have in various details
been regulated—not created—by Act since : in the case of
the three provinces so far created by Canada, Manitoba,
Alberta, and Saskatchewan, the Council is created by the
Dominion Act establishing the constitution and regulated
by provincial Acts. In the case of New Zealand, Newfound-
land, and the Australian States, as in the case of the four
Colonies of South Africa before the Union, the existence of
the Council was provided for in the letters patent, and the
1 Hobart Mercury, October 20 and 21, 1908.
2 Tt is clearly recognized by Clark, Australian Constitutional Law, pp. 190
seq., that the prerogative of the executive control attached at once to
the Commonwealth as to the Federation of Canada. So also to the
Union.
