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Legally the King can refuse to accept Cabinet resignations. He can instead command the Premier to form a new Cabinet. He can disregard the advice of a retiring Premier and can charge a man of his own choice to form a new Cabinet. Likewise he can refuse to dissolve Parliament. In the legal sense, the conception of Blackstone, famed 18th Century jurist, is still true; the king is the fountain of honor, of office and of privilege.
The refusal of the King, for example, to accept the resignation of a Ministry defeated in Parliament would have serious effect, but Parliament could not legally force the Cabinet to retire. It would be powerless to legislate, for the King's consent is necessary to each Parliamentary bill before it can become law. All it could do, short of causing a revolution, would be to refuse to vote supplies, thereby depriving the Government of money with which to conduct its business; or to decline to pass any measures framed by the Government, thereby deadlocking the legislature.
Alongside the laws which govern the King's powers (chiefly those of the settlement of 1689—Declaration of Rights) are extra-legal rules cemented by precedence and the disuse of the King's prerogative, or what Maitland called "constitutional morality." This means that the King, in order to prevent a clash of laws or arouse public opinion against him, is compelled to do what his predecessors have done. He therefore usually accepts the advice of his ministers, dissolves Parliament when requested, gives his assent to laws.* But it remains an incontrovertible fact that he is legally within his right to undertake an independent action.
Prorogation. After the Premier had informed the House of Commons that Parliament was to be dissolved, the King's speech proroguing! Parliament was read.
Dissolution. At a meeting of the Privy Council, presided over by the King, the royal proclamation dissolving Parliament was signed, sealed and delivered. The fifth‡ Parliament of King George V and the second Parliament of Great Britain and Northern Ireland was at an end.
Election. Premier MacDonald announced that the general election would take place on Oct. 29. In the Lords, Lord Buckmaster asked with amazement: "What is the explanation of this extraordinary haste?"
The Lord High Chancellor replied: "We are assured that it is the desire of the commercial community and the general community to get rid of the election as fast as possible."
But the real reason was that the three great political parties have been preparing for an election for months and were, as subsequently proved, ready to start the campaign within a day's notice.
Onus. Who was responsible for calling an election that is generally unpopular with the public? The Laborites declared that it was the Liberals, who, by joining the Conservatives, had deliberately turned them out of office on a trivial issue. The Liberals contend that the Labor Government was to blame, because it refused to "face an impartial inquiry into the circumstances which led to the withdrawal of the prosecution" against Editor Campbell. The Conservatives most heartily concurred with the Liberal contention. The Times of London said: