CHAP. I] THE DOMINION OF CANADA 729 
law as in spirit the constitution requires the Governor- 
General to act on ministerial advice. But he hoped that 
there would, as a result of the correspondence. be little 
chance of friction. 
Todd,? in his review of the case, thinks that the real sense 
of Governor-General is Governor-General in Council, and he 
Quotes s. 54, where the recommendation of Money Bills is 
given to the Governor-General, as negativing the idea that 
the words should be read as giving a personal discretion. 
He urges in favour the opinion of Sir John Macdonald,® who 
asserted that all the powers of the Governor-General must 
be done with the advice of his Council, whether formally 
declared in the Act to be dome by him or by him in 
Council. But this argument is a mistake : the rule cannot 
be made absolute, or if it were made absolute it would defeat 
the essence of responsible government—the fact that the 
Executive Council itself holds office at the pleasure of the 
Crown in the person of the Governor-General, and that this 
discretion cannot be fettered : so that the only conclusion 
which can be drawn is that each section must be examined 
for itself, to see if by constitutional practice it confers an 
independent authority or not. Much more effective, in 
truth, is the fact that the power has always been exercised 
tn Council, and that no case of dispute has yet been known 
to occur where the Governor-General attempted to disallow 
an Act of his own motion. Todd’s third argument, that 
Since the Queen in Council has no authority as declared by 
the Lord President, the Governor-General as an Imperial 
authority cannot have any, is quite invalid. It might well 
have been intended that the Governor-General should have 
been the vehicle of Imperial authority, just as, in fact, in 
* Canada Sess. Pap., 1877, No. 89, pp. 449-58, 
: Parliamentary Government in the Colonies, pp. 340 seq. 
Parl. Pap., C. 2445, p. 109. So Higinbotham J. in Atlorney-General v. 
Goldsbrough, 15 V. L. R. 638, at p. 647 (cf. also Tasmania Interpretation Act, 
1906; Union Interpretation Act, 1910). The statement is not, however, 
Strictly correct ; it is a matter of constitutional practice. Cf. Pope, Sir 
John, Macdonald, ii. 296, 297, for his views on disallowance of provincial 
legislation. He was reallv in favour of a union not federation.