less
attention to the subordination than to the independence of a country
like Victoria.

The foundation of the whole scheme is the admission of the complete and
unquestioned supremacy of the British Parliament throughout every
portion of the royal dominions. No Colonial statesman, judge, or lawyer
ever dreams of denying that Crown, Lords, and Commons can legislate for
Victoria, and that a statute of the Imperial Parliament overrides every
law or custom repugnant thereto, by whomsoever enacted, in every part of
the Crown dominions. The right, moreover, of Imperial legislation has
not fallen into disuse. Mr. Tarring[42] enumerates from sixty to seventy
Imperial statutes, extending from 7 Geo. III. c. 50 to 44 & 45 Vict. c.
69, which apply to the Colonies generally, and to this list, which might
now be lengthened, must be added a large number of statutes applying to
particular colonies. The sovereignty of Parliament, moreover, is
formally recorded in the Colonial Laws Act, 1865 (28 & 29 Vict. cap.
63), which itself may well be termed the charter of Colonial legislative
authority. This essential dogma of parliamentary sovereignty, moreover,
is not proclaimed as a merely abstract principle--it is enforced by two
different methods. Every court, in the first place, as well in Victoria
as elsewhere throughout the British dominions, is bound to hold void,
and in fact does hold void, enactments which contravene an Imperial
statute, and from Colonial courts there is an appeal to the Privy
Council. The Colonial Governor, in the second place, though from one
point of view he is a constitutional monarch acting under the advice
given him by his Ministers, bears also another and a different
character. He is an Imperial official appointed by the Crown--that is,
by the English Cabinet, which represents the wishes of the Imperial
Parliament--and he is, as such representative of the Imperial power,
bound if possible to avert the passing of any Bill, and when he cannot
avert the passing, then to veto any Act of the Colonial Legislature,
which is disapproved of by the Home Government as opposed either to
Imperial law or to Imperial policy. Thus, a Victorian Act, even when
sanctioned by the Governor, must pass through another stage before it
finally becomes law. It must receive the assent of the Crown, or, in
other words, the assent of the English Secretary of State for the
Colonies, and unless this assent be either actually or constructive