1042 ADMINISTRATION AND LEGISLATION [rarTV 
had not been an issue at the election of 1897, and that as 
a matter of fact the contract and the Bill were rushed through 
the Houses of Parliament without full consideration and 
opportunity for protest. Moreover, a very discreditable 
fact shortly came to light : the Governor ascertained that 
the member of his Council who was most active in pushing 
the Bill through the Legislature was also the paid legal 
adviser of the contractor for the line, Mr. Reid. The 
Governor then called upon the minister to resign all his 
offices save that of Queen’s Counsel, and the minister in 
question did so, as he did not wish to remain a member of 
the Executive Council if his presence there were distasteful 
to the Governor.l 
To all these representations the Secretary of State replied 
declining to disallow the Act for reasons which are set out at 
length in the dispatch of December 5, 1898, which follows, 
and which it is desirable to give in full, for it epitomizes 
the precise duty of the Imperial Government in regard to 
Colonial legislation, and while it added theoretically no new 
principle to those by which Secretaries of State had long 
been guided, it applied an old principle in circumstances 
which formerly would probably have been deemed to exclude 
the ordinary rules because of the manifest gross impropriety 
of the Act in question. The dispatch runs: 2— 
I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your 
dispatch of October 6, forwarding copies of the resolutions 
passed at a public meeting of the inhabitants of St. John’s 
on October 4, urging that Her Majesty should be advised, 
either to disallow the Act passed in the recent session of the 
Legislature of Newfoundland to give effect to the contract 
with Mr. Reid, or that, in any case, I should defer tendering 
advice to Her Majesty in regard to the Act, until the people 
of the Colony have had an opportunity of expressing their 
views on the question at a general election. 
2. I have also received your dispatches of the dates noted 
in the margin, covering further petitions and resolutions 
to the same effect from different parts of the Colony, as 
well as a memorandum by the ° Citizens’ Committee’ of 
! See Parl. Pap., C. 9137. ? Ibid., pp. 26 seq. 
' Of October 13. 27, 27. 29, November 10, 12, and 17, 1898.