1010 ADMINISTRATION AND LEGISLATION [PARTY
As between the power of reservation by the Governor or
disallowance by the Imperial Government there is not very
much to be said : it was argued by Mr. Blake in his famous
memorandum of 1876, that the proper plan was for the legisla-
tion to be completed on the advice of the Ministry of Canada,
and then the power to disallow adopted where thought
essential, without fettering the discretion of the Governor-
General to assent to Bills, and so he asked very earnestly
for the deletion from the royal instructions of the clauses
relating to reservation which had hitherto been inserted
in the royal instructions to Canada, and which required
the reservation of Bills dealing with divorce, the grant of
land or money to the Governor-General, paper or other
non-sterling currency, differential duties, or imposing pro-
visions inconsistent with treaties, or interfering with the
discipline of the Imperial naval and military forces, ox
of an extraordinary nature and importance whereby the
prerogative or the rights of persons not residing in the
Dominion, or the trade and shipping of the United Kingdom
and its dependencies, might be prejudiced, and any Bill
previously disallowed or reserved and not assented to,
unless the Bill were urgent, when it could be assented to if
not repugnant to the law of England and not contrary to
treaty, or unless it contained a suspending clause. In
deference to the wishes and arguments of Mr. Blake, the
instructions were remodelled to omit any mention of the
reservation of classes of Bills, but it was clearly intimated
that reservation was not being given up but merely that
reservation as a fixed rule was abandoned, and a case of
its use occurred in 1886. Since that date various Canadian
laws have failed to pass into effect for various causes, but
the form is usually that the law is not to come into effect until
the Governor-General issues a proclamation, and no procla-
mation is permitted to be issued, as for instance is the case
with the Copyright Act passed in 1889, and the fifteenth
part of the Merchant Shipping Act (Rev. Stat., 19086, c. 113)
of Canada relating to load-lines; or as in 1910, an Act (c. 57)
! Canada Sess, Payp., 1877, No. 13.
