Neither have the functions in practice exercised by the Ministry or Cabinet, nor the relations which in practice exist between it and the King’s Representative, ever had statutory definition.  Whatever form the Home Rule Bill takes, it cannot give legal precision to these things.  The King’s Representative always nominates an Executive Council—­that is, a Cabinet to “advise” him in the Government, and whether, as in the Bill of 1893, that Council is called an Executive Committee of the Privy Council of Ireland by analogy with the Dominion of Canada, where it is the “King’s Privy Council for Canada,” or whether it is merely an Executive Council is immaterial.  That it is, nominally, the constitutional duty of the King’s Representative (like that of the King himself) to perform executive acts on the advice of his Ministers is never stated expressly.  He is always, and generally in the text of the Constitution, vested with the power of summoning, proroguing, and dissolving the Legislature, and of giving or withholding the Royal Assent to Bills.  He also, by unwritten law, wields the prerogative of Pardon, and appoints all public servants; and in all these cases, except in the case of appointing non-political officials, he occasionally has to act on his own personal responsibility.

This personal responsibility cannot be distinguished in practice from his responsibility to the Crown, which appoints and can remove him.  Cases have arisen where the Governor of a self-governing Colony has written home for special guidance on some specific point, and where the answer given has been that he must act on his own responsibility, or follow the advice of his Ministers.  All Colonial Governors, however, whether or not their powers are defined in the Constitution, are appointed by Commission from the Crown with powers defined in Letters Patent and Instructions as to their exercise.  These Letters Patent and Instructions are not of much importance in the case of a self-governing Colony where responsible advice so largely controls the action of the Governor.  Sometimes the executive powers given by Instructions to the Governor are indirectly alluded to in the Constitution, as in the South Africa Act of 1909, where, by Clause 9, under the head of “Executive Government,” the Governor-General is “to exercise such powers and functions of the King as His Majesty may be pleased to assign to him.”  In the Australian and Canadian Acts of 1900 and 1867 respectively, the words do not appear.  I name this point because in Clause 5 of the Home Rule Bill of 1893, and Clause 7 of the Bill of 1886, a similar course was taken in providing that the Lord-Lieutenant should “exercise any prerogatives, or other executive power of the Queen, the exercise of which may be delegated to him by Her Majesty.”  The words are not strictly necessary.  The Lord-Lieutenant will, of course, have his Letters Patent and Instructions, but the powers of the Crown are theoretically absolute.  If the Crown, acting under responsible British advice, should wish to defy the Irish Legislature, it could do so whatever the terms of the Bill.