270 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
stipulated in the Constituent statute that ministers were to be members of the executive council or that members of the executive council were to be, or were within a given period, to become members of one or other house of the legislature. In no case is the executive council required by law to be composed of ministers and ministers alone.
The executive council includes but does not necessarily consist only of ministers. In certain cases there is no legal necessity for members of the executive council to be members of either house of legislature.
The Act prescribed a sphere of activity within which the colonial legislature had power to make laws for the peace, order and good Government of the colony. Thus far the statute.
The instructions to the Governor empowered him to govern with an executive council whose advice he might disregard if he thought fit.
Responsible Government was based, not upon a statutory basis, but on the faith of the Crown.
Character of Inter-Imperial Relations
In the Commonwealth Merchant Shipping Agreement, the Dominions appear in a position of complete equality, comparable with that of contracting states, and differences arising out of the agreement would seem suitable for reference to the inter-Imperial tribunal contemplated by the Imperial Conference 1930. [Cmd. 3994, Part VII].
But the relations are not governed by International Law. This was asserted clearly in 1924, when the Irish Free State registered with the Secretariat of the Leagus of Nations, the Articles of agreement for a Treaty of December 6, 1921 on the score that it was a treaty within the meaning of Article
18 of the covenant of the League of Nations, and the British Government insisted that neither the covenant nor the conventions concluded under League auspices were intended to govern relations inter se of parts of the Commonwealth
[Keeth. R.G. II. 884, 885.].