The effect of these Regulations may be best understood by taking the following supposed case as an example of their operation. The Houses of the Victorian Parliament pass a Bill legalising the marriage of a widower with his deceased wife's sister. i. The Governor refuses his assent. The Bill is lost and never becomes law. ii. The Governor assents to the Bill on the 1st of January. It thereupon becomes an Act, and law in Victoria. iii. The Crown disallows the Act on the 1st of April. The disallowance is published in Victoria on the 1st of May. From the 1st of May the Act ceases to be law in any part of the British Dominions, but marriages made under it between the 1st of January and the 1st of May are valid. iv. The Crown allows the Bill. It thereupon becomes an Act which continues in force in Victoria until it be repealed either by the British Parliament or by the Victorian Parliament. v. The Bill contains a clause that it shall not come into force unless and until allowed by the Crown within two years of its passing. It is not so allowed, it never comes into force, or in other words never becomes law. The point to be noted is that the Crown, or in reality the Colonial Office, has and often exercises the power of placing a veto upon any Colonial law whatever. [44] Compare 'Victorian Parliamentary Paper,' 1883, 2 S., No. 22, and the _Times_ of September 27, October 2, 5, 10, 12, 15 and 18, 1883. [45] See Todd, 'Parliamentary Government in the Colonies,' p. 283. [46] Todd, p. 283. [47] See, e.g., a letter by Mr. Lecky in the _Times_ of January 13, 1886. [48] See pp. 221, 222, _post._ [49] See a letter in the _Spectator_ of January 2, 1886, on 'Home Rule or Separation,' by Mr. J. Cotter Morison. [50] See p. 197, _ante._ [51] _The Times_, May 5, 1886. [52] Under the political arrangements connecting the two countries, it was practically impossible that the two crowns could by legal means be separated without the assent of the English Parliament. George III. was necessarily a member both of the English and of the Irish Parliaments; and it is inconceivable that as King of Ireland he should have assented to a bill passed by the Irish Houses of Parliament which was strenuously opposed by the English Houses of Parliament. The madness of the King raised a case not provided for by the Constitution, and the accidental difference of opinion between the English and Irish Houses of Parliament, as to the Regency, has been treated as possessing more importance than from a constitutional point of view belonged to it.