CHAP. vir] RELATIONS OF THE HOUSES 595 
be removed save in the cases specified in the dispatch of 
1845. The effect on the Council of the entry into the Union 
Is somewhat curious, The power of the Crown to add to 
the number of councillors must be deemed to be gone, 
and therefore the number cannot exceed twenty-one, but 
the tenure during pleasure stil] prevails! Of course it 
could be altered by Provincial Act under Ss. 92 (1) of the 
British North, America Act, 1867, but the Legislature has 
only provided that the appointment of members shall be 
vested in the Lieutenant-Governor, who shall make such 
appointments in the King’s name by instrument under the 
Great Seal of the Province, a provision made in 1872, and 
a further provision in the Revised Statutes, 1900, c. 2, lays 
down that any member of the Legislative Council who shall 
be absent from hig place therein for two consecutive sessions 
shall vacate his Post, these clauses being in effect re-enact. 
ments suited to the altered circumstances of the provisions 
in the royal commission and instructions before federation. 
The question of the power of the Lieutenant-Governor 
with regard to the Legislative Council came to a head 
in 1879, when the Council rejected g measure passed by 
the Assembly for the abolition of the Upper House, and the 
Assembly subsequently passed an address to the Queen 
praying that the Imperial Parliament, might pass an 
Act empowering the Lieutenant-Governor to increase the 
number of Legislative Councillors so that the measure in 
question might be passed. The Secretary of State for the 
Colonies, in refusing the prayer of the address, called special 
attention to the Power of the Provincial Legislature under 
the British North, America Act to amend the constitution of 
the Province, and the circumstances ag placed before him did 
not lead to the conclusion that an alteration of the Constitu- 
tion had been proved to be necessary. Similarly, in a later 
dispatch of December 3, 1894, Lord Ripon laid it down 
that Her Majesty’s Government, considered that as the 
* In New Brunswick the matter was regulated in 1868 by Act (p. 592, 
0, 1), but not, in Nova Scotia until 1872 (c. 13), when the appointment was 
given to the Lieutenant-Governor in Council. 
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