1022 ADMINISTRATION AND LEGISLATION [PART v 
{ 4. BILLS AFFECTING THE PrEROGATIVE 
Bills affecting the prerogative include, of course, all Bills 
which in any way touch upon the executive power of the 
Crown exercised by the Crown otherwise than under statute. 
It would be absurd to expect that every Bill of this sort 
should be reserved, and the instructions contemplate merely 
the reservation of Bills of an extraordinary nature and 
importance. Thus any Bill which purported to allow of the 
appointment of a Colonial peerage, baronetage, or knighthood, 
would certainly require to be reserved ; or a Bill conferring 
precedence, unless that precedence had already been agreed 
to by the Crown. Bills affecting the prerogative of mercy 
would require reservation ; the latest case is the reservation 
by the Governor of Tasmania of a Bill of this sort, passed in 
1907 (No. 17) by the Parliament, because it gave certain 
powers to the Governor. It did not take away the preroga- 
tive at all, but it conferred upon him the authority to act 
on a definite scheme of pardon with respect to offenders to 
whom the principle of indeterminate sentences had been 
applied. A corresponding Act of Victoria (No. 2106) also 
dealt with this matter, but it was not reserved because it 
contained an express saving of the prerogative of the Crown ; 
this was unnecessary, for it is a fixed rule of construction 
that the royal prerogative is not affected by anything short 
of express words or necessary intendment. In the case of 
Canada, in 1875 a proposal was made to make the Court set 
up in the place of the Privy Council as a final Court of Appeal 
the Supreme Court of Canada ; but it was clearly intimated 
to the Dominion that any such action would be sure to 
result in the reservation of the Bill, and in its probably 
failing to become law, and therefore the Act reserved the 
right of the Crown to grant special leave to appeal ;2 it may 
t Acts of New Zealand (No. 8 of 1906) and New South Wales (No. 15 
of 1905) were not reserved, and contained no saving of the prerogative. 
The New Zealand Act No. 15 of 1910 regarding indeterminate sentences 
expressly saves the royal prerogative, 
* Lord Norton, Nineteenth Century, July 1879, p. 173. Canada Act 
38 Viet. c. 11, s. 47; Rev. Stat., 1906, c. 139, s, 50.