PART V. IMPERIAL CONTROL OVER 
DOMINION ADMINISTRATION 
AND LEGISLATION 
CHAPTER 1 
THE PRINCIPLES OF IMPERIAL CONTROL 
§ 1. CONTROL OVER DOMINION ADMINISTRATION 
TuE control which can be exercised by the Imperial 
Government over administrative matters in a Colony is 
small and indirect. It is always indeed possible for the 
Imperial Government to instruct the Governor to pardon 
a prisoner or to refuse pardon, and such a power might 
conceivably be used for the purpose of effecting some 
Imperial end contrary to the wishes of a Colony. Or again, 
the Imperial Government could refuse to allow a Governor 
to perform some action of which it disapproved—for example, 
the signing of a warrant?! or a licence or a contract, or the 
issue of a grant, or the approval of regulations under an Act 
and so forth. An example of such control existed in an 
interesting form for many years on the treaty shore of 
Newfoundland, where the Governor was instructed by the 
[Imperial Government not to issue any land grant which did 
not contain a provision for the reservation of the French 
rights on the treaty coast. Or again, it might be conceived 
that a Governor might be forbidden to assent to some 
administrative act, such as the deportation of a native chief, 
which would not be legal without his assent. The possibili- 
ties are numerous, but there are few really good examples of 
! e.g. in the Transvaal case in 1910 (see House of Lords Debates, vi, 
101 seq.) the Colonial Office might have prevented the payment objected 
to by refusing to allow the acting Governor to sign the needful warrant.