1312 ADMINISTRATION AND LEGISLATION [PART Vv 
above the Chief Justice. But in Victoria and Tasmania the 
Chief Justice and the Puisne Judges still retain their 
sxceptional position. : 
In the case of Newfoundland, the Charter of Justice of 
1825, which was issued under the authority of the Act 5 
Geo. IV. ¢. 67, gives the Chief Justice and the judges pre- 
cedence after the Governor for the time being, excepting all 
such persons as by law or usage take place in England before 
the Chief Justice of the Court of King’s Bench. The result 
of that provision is that the Chief Justice takes rank after 
the Prime Minister, if a Privy Councillor, but before a Prime 
Minister, who is not a Privy Councillor, although in 1905 a 
precedence was granted to the Prime Minister of England 
which placed him immediately after the Archbishop of York. 
The New Zealand table was altered in 1903 to give the 
Premier precedence over the Chief Justice, and the Union 
fable of 1910 gives him a similar precedence. 
An attempt was made in 1871 in South Australia to take 
way the precedence of bishops as it then existed,! South 
Australia having always been a particularly democratic and 
anti-clerical community. The Bill was reserved and never 
received the royal assent, which was refused on the ground 
that precedence was a matter especially for the King to 
regulate by the prerogative and not suitable for consideration 
in an Act of Parliament, and that it was not right to deprive 
the existing bishops of their precedence without their con- 
sent. On an address being adopted in 1872 in favour of 
change, it was promised that on no account would future 
bishops be granted precedence without the approval of the 
Colonial Government.? 
Justice respectively, could not be changed save by law. This is not a 
sase where express words are needed to bar the prerogative. 
! They were placed before all Colonial officers, just as in Canada they 
follow the Lieutenant-Governor, who represents the Sovereigu, and so they 
were placed in the provisional Commonwealth table. 
t Parl. Pap., 1871, Nou. 115; 1872, Nos. 61 and 68; Journals, 1872, 
pp. 194, 230; Debates, 1871, pp. 486, 656-63, 785-800, 887-91; 1872, 717~ 
28, 830-45, 1021-4. In Victoria in 1868 an address to the same effect was 
adopted in respect of the revised Colonial Regulations of 1867; see Debates, 
vi. 816-23, 1101, 1102. A hint was given in a dispatoh of September 16, 
(872, that the clergy should relinquish their precedence.