CHAPTER 1V 
I'HE ALTERATION OF THE CONSTITUTION 
y 1. THE CONSTITUENT AUTHORITY OF Dominion 
PARLIAMENTS 
THE next restriction on the powers of Colonial legislatures 
arises directly from the preceding, namely the need of not 
being repugnant to an Imperial Act. The Colonial Laws 
Validity Act, 1865, recognizes the constituent character of 
all representative legislatures, and allows it full play subject 
only to a proviso that the legislation by which the constitu- 
tion is altered must observe any rules laid down by Act of 
Parliament, letters patent, Orders in Council, or Colonial 
Acts applying to the Colony. The Act makes it clear that 
& non-representative legislature has no power of constitu- 
bional change ; it can in fact be altered only by the authority 
which created it in the original case: thus constitutions of 
ordinary Crown Colonies granted by letters patent in one 
form or another can only be altered by the same mode of 
procedure or Imperial Act, and it is only an apparent 
exception when the Cape was allowed by letters patent 
of May 23, 1850, to alter its constitution by an ordinance : 
the ordinance was merely a convenient means for allow- 
ing the constitution to be drafted locally, and it was 
specially ratified and altered by Order in Council of March 11, 
1853, which is with the earlier instrument the real basis of 
the constitution. In some cases legislatures not now repre- 
sentative have been so in the past, and have by Act 
vested their full powers in legislatures now existing, which 
therefore have power in virtue of that fact to change their