1390 THE JUDICIARY [PART VI

to prescribe a position for the minister in which, on submitting
 petitions to the Governor, he is to express an opinion
on each case, to be viewed as embodying no more than
a recommendation ’, after which he is to have no further
concern in the matter. I cannot subscribe to this principle
of ministerial conduct, if this be what was intended by
Mr. Robertson.
There can be no question, I believe, that from the beginning
of the present reign the Home Secretary in England decides
absolutely in all matters of this kind in the name of the
Crown, and that the Crown does not in practice interfere.
At no former time when the Crown took an active part in
such decisions, could the Crown, in the nature of things, be
subject to a superior or an instructing authority. The wide
difference between the position of the minister and his
relations to the Crown and to Parliament in the Colony and
in England is at once apparent on reading the dispatches from
the Secretary of State. The Governor is invested with the
prerogative of the Crown to grant pardons, and, by the letter
of the instructions conveyed to him by Lord Kimberley’s
circular of November 1, 1871, he ‘is bound to examine
personally each case in which he is called upon to exercise
the power entrusted to him °. By the instructions previously
conveyed to the Governor of this Colony by Lord Granville,
in reply to Lord Belmore’s dispatch of July 14, 1869, he is
told that the responsibility of deciding upon such applications
 rests with the Governor’, and, in reference obviously
to advice that may be tendered, it is expressly added that
the Governor ‘ has undoubtedly a right to act upon his own
independent judgement’. And, finally, after the question
has been re-opened by Sir Alfred Stephen, it is repeated by
Lord Kimberley’s dispatch of February 17, 1873, that ‘in
granting pardons’ the Governor ‘has strictly a right to
exercise an independent judgement ’.
It seems to be clear that the ‘portion of the Queen’s
prerogative > entrusted to the Governor of a Colony, unlike
the prerogative in England, is intended to be a reality in its
exercise. It is undeniably the case that the representative
of the Crown in a Colony, unlike the Crown itself, is
subject to a superior or instructing authority. What,
then, is the position of the minister, and what is intended
to be the nature of the advice he may be called upon to
give, and under what circumstances is that advice to be
given ?
In no sense of responsibility, in this respect, has the