THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. SATURDAY JULY 10, 1926. A CONSTITUTIONAL ISSUE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19376, 10 July 1926, Page 10

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. SATURDAY JULY 10, 1926. A CONSTITUTIONAL ISSUE.

It is understood that the Liberal Party in Canada is making the constitutional issue the keynote of its campaign in the pending general election following the dissolution of Parliament-. This may be a mere matter of tactics, but there are reasons that invest the Canadian situation with interest far beyond that Dominion's borders. It will be remembered that at the last general election the Liberal Government under Mr. Mackenzie King suffered a reverse. The party majority was critically reduced, and the Prime Minister himself was defeated for his own seat, and had to contest a by-election, conveniently occasioned elsewhere, in order to resume his place in the House at the head of the Government. He carried on for some months with difficulty, and at length met an adverse vote. Thereupon he requested the GovernorGeneral to dissolve Parliament. His request was refused. Mr, Mackenzie King then resigned, and Mr. Meighen, leader of the Conservative Opposition, was sent for by the Governor-General and entrusted with the formation of a Ministry. He accepted the task, but by so doing, under the necessity in Canada for the re-election, of Ministers, had to relinquish his seat in the House. However, he was able to appoint several acting-Ministers, and one of these led the Government in his absence. The makeshift Government successfully resisted two no-confi-dence motions, through a split in the small Progressive Party previously supporting the Liberals, but was defeated on a third by one vote. That motion attacked the legality of the temporary Ministers' actions. Mr. Meighen then asked for a dissolution, which was granted. He remains nominally in power, pending the general election, and is proceeding with the organisation of his Cabinet. Mr. Mackenzie King claims that the dissolution, obtained by a defeated Ministry, which a resolution of the House has declared never to have had a right to exist, was wrongly granted. He had himself, he says, a right to it, under what he believes to be British practice, and is therefore raising the whole constitutional position as ah election issue. The prerogative of dissolution has been discussed with considerable fulness in Britain during the last few years, and the weight of authority is distinctly against the position Mr. Mackenzie King has taken up. Professor Dicey, it is true, has stated that " a Ministry placed in a minority by the vote of the House of Commons has, in accordance with received doctrine, a right to demand a dissolution of Parliament." But this view has been effectively controverted by Professor Pollard, whose research in constitutional questions is unquestionably as thorough as Professor Dicey's. " I can see no warrant," says Professor Pollard, " in the law or custom of the British Constitution for the absolutism claimed for a Prime Minister in this respect." He argues that the essence of the Constitution consists in responsibility —a view from which Mr. Mackenzie King is obviously not prepared to depart, judging by his recent statements—and proceeds to declare, quite cogently, that the authority of

the advice tendered to the Crown by the Prime Minister derives exclusively from the- presumption that it expresses the views both of his colleagues and of a majority in the House. "To say that it is equally authoritative whether or not it expresses that collective opinion," adds Professor Pollard, " seems to me not merely unconstitutional, but illogical -and absurd." This view had, some years ago, the emphatic approval of so noted a Liberal leader as Mr. Asquith, and has not been successfully combated. Mr. Mackenzie King will find it difficult in the extreme to substantiate his claim. Something more than a Prime Minister's request is necessary to establish a right to a dissolution, and precedent favours the denial of the request so long as there remains a practical possibility of another party in the House carrying on the government, of the country. Of the British precedents there may be cited Mr. Gladstone's request for a dissolution when his first Home Rule Bill met defeat in 1886. Why was Lord Salisbury not sent for in preference to the granting of that request? Because that Parliament had already dismissed his Administration. The analogy fits closely the Canadian position. More recent examples in Britain serve to strengthen the case against Mr. Mackenzie King. Until all reasonable possibilities have been exhausted, the Crown has no right to presume that there is no party in Parliament able to command a majority in its support as a Government ; but when that limit has been reached the request for a dissolution becomes a demand of unimpeachable right. If there be search of colonial practice, it will be found to follow British precedent. Care must be taken in arguing from these examples, for a colonial Governor is not in quite the same relation to a colonial Parliament as the Crown is in relation to the British Parliament. A colonial Governor is virtually under the control of the House of Commons, and is a transitory official. British precedent should consequently bind him; he cannot claim to set a precedent for British practice. The fact that the colonial Governor is not responsible to the colonial Legislature has been maintained too often and too successfully to admit of reasonable challenge. Leaving this principle aside, however, it will be found that frequently colonial Governors have refused demands for dissolution when made by a defeated Administration, but have followed instead the practice of summoning another party to office, when there was any likelihood of that new Government carrying on. In Canada, the possibilities were not exhausted when Mr. Mackenzie King resigned, but they were when Mr. Meighen was subsequently defeated. To recall the former would have prolonged instability and chaos; now a general election is fully justified, whereas on the Liberal defeat it could not immediately follow as the only practical alternative.