30 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
two-thirds in each house of congress and a majority (generally speak- 
ing) in the legislatures—to override that veto, the constitution does not 
conter upon the executive authority of the nation that sovereign power 
entrusted to the dominion government, of vetoing the legislation of ‘the 
states. 
Dr. James Bryce! tells us that the impression prevailed in the conven- 
tion of 1787, which framed the constitution of the United States, that the 
exercise of such a power by the federal authority ‘“ would have offended. 
the sentiment of the states, always jealous of their autonomy, and would 
have provoked collisions with them.” This has been the experience of Can- 
ada whenever the power has been exercised on grounds of public policy. 
Collisions, which threatened at one time to be serious, arose between the 
central government aud the province of Manitoba on account of the 
dominion authority vetoing certain provincial railway acts, in conflict 
with the obligations which the general government had assumed in con- 
nection with the Canadian Pacific Railway—a national work of great 
importance. The provincial acts were vetoed time and again, but the 
Manitoba government persisted in re-enacting them, and the difficulty 
was only settled by the intervention of the dominion parliament, who 
gave to the Pacific Railway certain privileges in consideration of its con- 
sent to the removal of the restrictions that had created the dispute. 
From these and other cases it is clear that the exercise of the power is 
viewed with great jealousy, and may at any moment lead to serious com- 
plications by creating antagonisms of much gravity between the central 
and provincial governments. It is now, however, becoming a conven- 
tion of the constitution that the dominion authorities should not inter- 
fere with any provincial legislation: that does not infringe the fund- 
amental law; that the only possible excuse for such interference would 
be the case of legislation clearly illegal or unconstitutional on the face of' 
it, or in direct violation of the original compact or terms on which the 
provinces entered the union, or dangerous to the security.and integrity 
of the dominion or of the empire. The debates of the Canadian parlia- 
ment of recent years have shown what an advance has been made in the 
direction of strengthening provincial autonomy since the early days of 
the union, when Sir John Macdonald, who would minimize the powers 
and privileges of the provinces to the extreme point, was bringing the 
veto in practical operation. It is now deemed the wisest policy-to leave 
as far as possible all questions of constitutional çontroversy to the action 
of the courts by the method that the law, as I have already pointed out, 
provides to meet just such emergencies. In ordinary.cases, however, 
where there is an undoubted conflict with powers belonging to. the 
central government, or where the province has stepped beyond. its çon- 

. t 
1 “The American Commonwealth,” vol. i., p. 343. 
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