54 RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT [PART I
thinks fit. The Legislative Assembly Act of the Province,
1909, c. 2 provides that there shall be eligible for election
and voting in the Assembly any person ‘ being a member
of the Executive Council, or holding any of the following
offices, that is to say, President or Chairman of the
Council, Attorney-General, Provincial Secretary, Minister
of Agriculture, Minister of Public Works, Minister of Educa-~
tion, or the minister or head of any other public department
that may hereafter be organized by statute, of this Province’.
Yet though there is so little of legal sanction the system
of responsible government is in fullest operation throughout
the Dominion of Canada. The maxims which regulate the
tenure of office by a Government in this country are faith-
fully observed as much as in the Colonies generally, despite
one or two cases of straining of constitutional forms, which,
however, have been punished in one way or the other.
It is established usage that a Lieutenant-Governor must
govern with the support of a ministry, who again must have
the support of the Legislative Assembly, and that ministers
will retire when they are defeated, unless they ask for and
receive a dissolution of Parliament. It would be idle to
claim that there is any clear distinction between the basis
of self-government in the Provinces of Canada and the case
of English self-government, and Chief Justice Higinbotham
would never have made the statutory basis of self-govern-
ment in the Colonies a basis of discrimination had he known
the facts of Canadian history.
Of course, as in the case of England, self-government is
enforced by certain ultimate sanctions. The chief one in
the Provinces, where there is no question, as in the Mother
Country, of the needs of defence, is of course the requirement
of an Appropriation Act annually, and the refusal of such
an Act will always be successful in causing a Lieutenant-
Governor to yield : indeed, it is certain that he would now
be dismissed by the Dominion Government long before
anything so drastic took place, as the case of Mr. McInnes
in 1900 shows.! In the case of a Colony the same rule
4 Canada Sess. Pap., 1900, No. 174.
