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 possibilities
 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.