1018 ADMINISTRATION AND LEGISLATION [PART 
months ; arrangements are or may be made in contemplation 
of it, and then, after people have become used to it, the 
Imperial Government disallows. So obviously inconvenient 
is the procedure that it may fairly be asked whether the real 
desire of those who press for the adoption of disallowance is 
not to secure that the power shall never be used at all rather 
than incur the intolerable burden of disallowance. On the 
other hand, the reservation of a Bill allows of a quiet con- 
sideration of its terms and of negotiations for amendment 
and so on, and the Bill, if assented to, becomes absolutely 
valid without the possibility of disallowance. If the Bill 
was objectionable, at any rate there has been time for fuller 
consideration, and if drastic there has been time for prepara- 
tions to meet it; thus the New Zealand N avigation Bill of 
1903 was only assented to in 1905 on an undertaking that 
a conference on merchant shipping would be held at which 
the whole subject would be discussed at length, and this was 
done in 1907, with the result that the Government of New 
Zealand was induced to undertake to amend, and did so very 
satisfactorily in Act No. 36 of 1909, which, like its prede- 
cessor, was reserved until 1911 pending discussion of certain 
of its sections. It is, in fact, clear, that in cases of serious 
doubt as to the Imperial action the advantages of reservation 
outweigh the theoretic preference for the disallowance of 
legislation on the Imperial authority. Nor could reservation 
properly be deemed to be a case in which ministers would 
be entitled to resign ; the power is a legal one vested in the 
Governor by law, and he cannot legally disregard his instruc- 
tions. At the same time, it is clear that the practice of 
requiring whole clauses of Bills to be reserved is not now 
needed, and that individual instructions such as are specified 
in the royal instructions to the Governor-General in South 
Africa are now in point. As a matter of fact, free use is now 
made of the plan of asking for telegraphic instructions, and 
that has worked better than any formal reservation of Bills. 
It secures that the royal assent will not needlessly be delayed 
with regard to minor Bills. 
The power of disallowance is conferred by express words