The powers of the New Zealand governor under responsible government

Abstract

I have endeavoured in this thesis to treat the erosion of the powers of the New Zealand Governor under responsible government, not from a purely insular point of view, interesting as this may be, but from the point of view of the general development in the peculiarly British type of constitution that has been established in England and in her colonies. At the period when responsible government was transferred to the colonies, it was not exercised completely either in Great Britain or in the distant members of the Empire. In tracing the progress of ministerial responsibility in New Zealand to its logical fulfilment, I have had to bear in mind three considerations - the development of constitutional practice in England itself, developments in the colonies which have significance for New Zealand, and finally the relations of the colonies to Great Britain. In connection with the last, it is to be remembered that the Governor is the representative of the King, and until 1926 he was also considered the representative of His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom. The powers that he exercised until so recently were intimately bound up with the question of colonial status. The struggle for colonial autonomy in internal and external affairs has been a long one, to which all the colonies have contributed at different periods, ourselves not least. The constitutional history of New Zealand must be studied within the broad Imperial framework. I have treated the erosion of each power separately rather than trace the general development of all the Governor’s powers in strict chronological sequence. The departmental arrangement gives a clearer idea, I think, of the types of power the Governor exercised, and it simplifies the management of material. The chronological arrangement, while it conveys a clearer impression of the general tendencies at any particular time, tends to confuse the story by a necessarily complicated system of reference and cross-reference. The question of the powers of the colonial Governor, and all that it implies in the spheres of democratic institutions and of inter-Imperial relations, is of particular interest and significance to-day, when democracy is in retreat throughout the world, and the colonies are ranged with the Mother Country in a war of which no one can hazard the outcome.