legislature only
with the consent of the Queen. The initiative power of taxation then is
vested in the Queen, the executive head, in practice represented by the
Governor. But such a power of initiation is of course useless unless the
legislative body is willing to support the executive, and grants it the
necessary funds for carrying on the government. What, then, is the
contrivance by which the governmental machine is prevented from being
stopped by a difference between the executive and legislative
authorities? It is the same in the mother country, and in every British
home-rule country, with this difference only--that beyond the limits of
the mother country the Queen is represented by a governor to whom are
delegated such a measure of powers as is necessary for the supreme head
of a local self-governing community. The contrivance is this in the
mother country:--the Queen acts upon the advice of a cabinet council; in
home-rule dependencies the Governor acts on the advice of a local
council. If this cabinet council in the mother country, or local council
in a dependency, ceases to command a majority in the popular legislative
body, it resigns, and the Governor is obliged to select a council which,
by commanding such a majority, can obtain the supplies necessary to
carry on the government. The consequence then is, that in a home-rule
community, if a serious difficulty arises between the legislative and
executive authority, the head of the executive, the governor, refers the
ultimate decision of the question to the general body of electors by
dissolving the popular legislative body. It has been urged in the
discussion on the Irish Government Bill that the powers of the executive
in relation to the legislative body ought to be expressed in the Bill
itself; but it is clear to anybody acquainted with the rudiments of
legislation that the details of such a system (in other words, the mode
in which a governor ought to act under the endless variety of
circumstances which may occur in governing a dependency) never have been
and never can be expressed in an Act of Parliament. But how little
difficulty this absence of definition has caused may be judged from the
fact that neither in England nor in any of her home-rule dependencies
has any vital collision arisen between the executive and legislative
authorities, and that all the home-rule colonies have managed to
surmount the obstacles which the opponents of Home Rule argued would be