a clear mandate from the people to pass into law, and this was not the case in the instance at stake.1

It is obvious that if the Governor-General had refused a double dissolution, the Government would have resigned and there would have been little chance of the new Government carrying on without a dissolution. But such a dissolution would have been only that of the Lower House, and on every calculation of probabilities which was possible at the time there seemed no reason to doubt that Labour would carry a real majority in that House. The country had seen without edification the struggles of a Government with a majority of but one, and with a solid minority in the Upper House. The peculiar mode of voting for the Upper House, the State forming one constituency with three seats vacant at each normal election made into six at a double dissolution, made it almost incredible that the Government could obtain a majority when in 1913 they had merely carried seven out of eighteen seats, and it was therefore probable that the country would prefer to give a real majority in the Lower House to that party which was securely entrenched in the Upper. There was also the possibility, perhaps the probability, that the Labour Government could have carried on without a dissolution, since the organization of the Government Party was not so secure as that of its rival, and some members or member > of it might have agreed to support a moderate Labour policy.

The position was therefore that all the evidence pointed in favour of the Governor-General, if he adopted the Australian view of responsible government, deciding to refuse the dissolution and to ask the Labour Party to form a Government. That with all these facts present to Sir Ronald Munro Ferguson he should have decided to grant a double dissolution is only susceptible of explanation on the ground that he felt that it was best to adhere to the principles of responsible government as they exist in their purest form in the United Kingdom. In a very real sense his action, which was

1 Cf. Round Table, 1914, pp. 550-2.

not altogether well received by Labour circles,1 constitutes a landmark in the history of responsible government in the Commonwealth, for three of his predecessors had declined dissolutions in cases where a fair claim for a dissolution had undoubtedly been made, and Labour Governments had twice been the sufferers by the refusal.

Recovering from the shock of surprise at the decision of the Governor-General, the Senate on June 182 presented an address asking for the publication of the communications between His Excellency and his advisers relating to the simultaneous dissolution of both Houses of Parliament, a request which was declined on ministerial advice by the Governor-General. On June 19 much more important action was taken. In the preceding session of 1913 and in the present session the Senate had formally passed once more the six Bills regarding the alteration of the Constitution which had been rejected at the election of May 31, 1913, and they now passed an address to the Governor-General praying that in accordance with s. 128 of the Constitution he would be pleased to submit to the electors on the day to be fixed for the taking of a poll for the election of members of the House of Representatives to the next Parliament the six proposed laws for the amendment of the Constitution which had been passed within the statutory interval by the Senate and not passed by the House of Representatives. The section of the Constitution referred to provides in the case of a proposed law for the amendment of the Constitution being twice passed with an interval of three months in the same or subsequent sessions by either House and rejected by the other, that the Governor-General may submit the proposed law to the electors in each State qualified to vote for the election of members of the House of Representatives. Now the wording of the Act is clearly permissory, and does not impose any obligation on the Governor-General so to submit the law, but it is perfectly clear that it gives him a discretion to do so. The question 1 See Commonwealth Debates, 1914, pp. 1971 seq., 2251 seq. 2 Ibid., pp. 2257–61.

therefore arises whether this discretion is personal or whether it is intended to be exercised on the advice of ministers, and in this connexion the following consideration is of great weight. If the permission to refer is to be made dependent on ministerial advice, then the clause definitely places the Senate in a false position, for the Ministry of the day must and does depend on the majority in the Lower House, which alone possesses financial initiative, and therefore it would rest with the Government of the day, i. e. the Lower House, to decide if the Bills passed by the Upper House should be submitted to the electors. But the clause manifestly is intended to put the two Houses in this regard on an equal footing, and this is right, for the Senate is representative in theory of the States, and the House of Representatives of the people at large, and an amendment may be properly brought before the people on the volition of either party. It must therefore be concluded from the mere terms of the Act, no less than from its history-it was framed in the first instance by men who were not convinced of the necessity of responsible government in the parliamentary form-that the discretion was intended to be personal to the GovernorGeneral, and not to be exercised on the advice of his Ministry. Taking this to be the clear meaning of the Act,1 the decision of the Governor-General to decline to submit the Bills could hardly be held to be justified. He had decided to give a double dissolution, which meant that great issues were to be decided and there could be no more appropriate time for deciding also the great issue of the referenda; not to do so might easily be held to be unfair to the Labour Party, who, if victorious in the contest, would still have to face the trouble of the voting on the referenda without the excitement of a general election to help the bringing of voters to the poll. On the other hand, as many good judges attributed the victory, such as it was, of the Government at the polls in 1913 to the fact that the voters came forward in unusually great numbers in their favour because they disliked the referenda though they did not dislike seriously the Labour 1 Cf. W. Harrison Moore, Commonwealth of Australia, p. 600.

Government, it might have been wise for Mr. Cook to advise the Governor-General to exercise his power. At any rate, the fact that the Governor-General accepted the advice of his ministers and declined to submit the referenda to the electorate, can be explained and justified only on the ground that the British principle of responsible government should prevail in Australia. Manifestly it is not open for any successor without grave injustice to act in future in the matter of s. 128 save on ministerial advice. Doubtless this was not the view of the fathers of federation, but responsible government is too strong to be resisted in the long run.

The final history of the episode is curious: war broke out before the elections had actually been held, and the Labour Party pressed energetically that steps should be taken by means of Imperial legislation if necessary 1-to revive the Parliament then defunct. This was refused by the Government, apparently under the idea that they could secure a favourable result at the elections in view of the objections to disturbing a Government in office at such a crisis. The view was as short-sighted as ungenerous : the Government suffered complete and not undeserved defeat and was replaced by a Labour Administration.

2. THE DISMISSAL OF MINISTERS

The undesirability and unsoundness of the existing doctrine of the discretion of the Governor in granting a dissolution is borne out by considerations of the allied question of the dismissal of ministers by a Governor. There is no conceivable reason why in itself it should be more legitimate for a Governor to refuse a dissolution than to dismiss ministers, and the only real ground of discrimination must be that the one course is much less risky than another. If a Governor refuses a dissolution, he runs a fair

1 This was a moot point: mere re-election by agreement of the sitting members was also proposed. It was agreed that a dissolution proclamation ended the life of Parliament and could not be recalled. Cf. Round Table, 1914-15, pp. 210, 211. See also Part II, chap. i, § 1.

chance of seeing his ministers replaced by others who will in a sense owe their position to himself, since ex hypothesi the Ministry which asked for the dissolution was in an unsatisfactory parliamentary position. But it is different if he has to dismiss ministers, and he must, before he can risk the action, be very sure of his ground. Lord Chelmsford, for the much less serious step of refusing to give a pledge to swamp the Upper House of Queensland in 1907, narrowly escaped a motion for his recall, and a dismissed Government would certainly, if returned to power, secure the departure of the Governor who dismissed them. But both actions are essentially wrong in strict theory, though neither dismissal nor still less refusal of a dissolution can be said to be extinct. The question of dismissing ministers nearly always arises when they seem to have forfeited the confidence of the country, but cling to office either because they have still a parliamentary majority or Parliament is not in session. Reference has been made above to the fact that in the United Kingdom the Crown leaves the ministers to work out their own ruin in the due course of events, but in the Dominions less patience is sometimes shown. In this connexion an extraordinarily interesting account of a hitherto unknown incident in Canadian history has been given by Sir Charles Tupper in connexion with the fall of the Government of Sir John Macdonald in Canada in 1873.1 At the autumn session Mr. Mackenzie submitted a resolution of want of confidence in the Government. Party feeling ran high and the utmost bitterness prevailed. During the progress of the debate, according to this account, Lord Dufferin, the Governor-General, sent for Sir J. Macdonald and asked him to resign. When Sir J. Macdonald took Sir Charles Tupper alone of his colleagues into his confidence, the latter proceeded to Government. House and sought an interview with the Governor-General, of which he gives the following account :

I said, addressing Her Majesty's representative,' I think you have made a fatal mistake in demanding Sir John's 1 Recollections of Sixty Years, pp. 156, 157.