ing further
consideration. The Natal Ministry immediately resigned; and as there was
no chance of the formation of a new Government, the Imperial authorities
hastily withdrew.[37]

Differences have arisen even on so grave a matter as the succession to
the throne. The union of England and Scotland in 1707 was preceded and
hastened by the so-called Act of Security, by which the Scottish Estates
asserted the right to name a successor to the throne of Scotland, who
should not (except under certain specified conditions) be the person
designated as sovereign by the English law. And during the illness of
King George III. in the year 1788, Grattan, in defiance of the views of
Pitt and of the majority in both Houses of the Imperial Parliament,
carried in the Irish Parliament an address to the Prince of Wales,
calling upon him (without waiting for a Regency Bill) to assume the
Government of the Irish nation, "and to exercise and administer all
legal power, jurisdiction and prerogatives to the Crown and Government
thereof belonging"--words borrowed from the address by which in the
Revolution of 1688 William of Orange was requested to assume the Crown.
Happily, the Viceroy declined to present the address, and a deputation
sent from Ireland to present it found on their arrival that the king had
recovered; but the incident might have led to a conflict upon a matter
so important as the exercise of the royal power.

The fact is that the word "supremacy," so often used in this
controversy, is one of ambiguous meaning. Parliament is supreme in the
United Kingdom, Parliament is likewise supreme in New Zealand; but the
two supremacies are of widely different kinds. Supremacy consists of two
ingredients--authority to enact and power to enforce; and without the
latter the former is little more than a legal figment, which may have no
more practical importance than the theoretical right of veto which is
retained by the Crown. Mr. Balfour, speaking on the second reading
debate of the 1893 Bill, referred to this matter as follows:--

"Legally, of course, the Imperial Parliament would be supreme: no
one has doubted it. But what layman takes the slightest interest
in these paper supremacies? For my part I take no more interest in
the question of whether the Imperial Parliament is on paper
superior to the Irish Parliament, than I do as to the order of
precedence at a London dinner party. The thing is of no public