car. 1] THE CHURCH IN THE DOMINIONS 1431
Henry VIII. c. 19, regulating appeals to the Crown in eccle-
siastical causes, it was enacted that for lack of justice in
any of the King’s dominions it should be lawful to the
parties grieved to appeal to the King’s Majesty in the Court
of Chancery, an enactment which gave rise to the Commis-
sion of Delegates for which the Judicial Committee was
substituted by an Act of 1832. Moreover, in any case, by
the Act 3 & 4 Will. IV. c. 41, Her Majesty had power to refer
to the Judicial Committee for hearing or consideration any
matter whatsoever as Her Majesty should think fit, and on
June 10, 1864, by an Order in Council the petition of the
appellant was referred to the Committee.
It will be observed that this judgement bases the denial
of power to create a bishopric upon the grant of an indepen-
dent Legislature to the Cape and to Natal. Moreover, it is
clear throughout the judgement that a Crown Colony was
deemed by the Privy Council to be one in which the King
retains his power to legislate by Order in Council. In the
case of Natal they did not advert to the fact that the Legis-
lature was, unlike that of the Cape of Good Hope, not a
representative body, and it is possible that this point had
escaped their notice. It is also possible that they assumed
that the letters patent establishing a Legislature of Natal
could not be revoked, as they contained no power of revoca-
tion. It would seem certain, both on grounds of unbroken
practice and of principle that the decision must be restricted
in law to cases where a representative Legislature existed ;
this indeed is clearly the basis of Campbell v. Hall! and,
moreover, as it is clearly the case from the Colonial Laws
Validity Act, 1865, that a non-representative Legislature
cannot alter its Constitution,2 Natal would have been unable
to change its Constitution at all, if this dictum of the Privy
Council applied to non-representative Legislatures. As a
t 20 St. Tr. 239.
* Inorder to allow British Columbia to do so an Imperial Act, 33 & 34 Vict,
c. 66, was passed, then by an Order in Council under it of August 9, 1870,
a legislative body of nine elective and six nominee members was created,
and it altered its Constitution (see the preamble to British Columbia Law,
No. 147, 1871).
