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alter some of its conditions without agreement, so long as this
overriding-provision was within the terms of-the-main contract
which he entered. With hesitation, we conclude that that
principle is applicable also when any term is capable of unilateral variation, and that such a clause does not destroy the contractual relationship between the Crown and public officers,
however vulnerable the latter may be as a result. At least
!
public officers can enforce the terms of the contract, so long
as they are in force.
We must recognize also the practical difficulties of
as we have found, there
reaching any other conclusion,
If
is a contract between the Crown and its servants, and the
overriding provision for unilateral variation were held to be
inoperative, the Crown would be obliged to secure the agreement
of each public officer to every change to G.Rs., however minute.
This is unrealistic and unworkable, at least until the Crown
has separated, as discussed above, G.Rs. into those which are
genuinely referable to a public officer's general contract of
service and those which are not.
It is perhaps worth noting what the result would have
been had we come to the conclusion that the clause for the
unilateral variation by the Crown of the contract of service
so strikes at the root of the contractual relationship as to
destroy it. We should have had to conclude either that the
clause prevented there being any contract at all, or that the
remainder of the contract stood but that this-clause was nugatory.
Had we concluded that there was no contract which binds
the Crown, this would have left the Crown free, in the exercise
of the power inferred by the Letters Patent to regulate and
control the public service, to make G.Rs. from time to time,
as it thought fit and without any agreement from the public
officers' concerned. C.S.R. 11 would therefore have been
valid and effective for all purposes,
C