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to local laws) to the Governor. The Legislature has wide powers to make laws, subject to disallowance, but it is not an executive on which powers of government are conferred.
12. However loosely the word "autonomy" may be used, it would be difficult to assert as a matter of constitutional law that the government of Hong Kong, or Hong Kong (qua dependent territory) is autonomous in its external commercial relations, or indeed in any other respect, when the Executive power of Hong Kong is vested in an appointee of the Crown who is subject to instructions from the Secretary of State. This conclusion is reinforced by a comparison with the history of other dependent territories which have progressed from a gubernatorial constitution, through stages in which their constitutions accorded various powers of self- government to local ministers, to full independence; and in this progress, external relations have been amongst the last powers to be retained by the Governor as representing the Crown in right of the United Kingdom. Nor is there any immediate prospect of dealing with this problem by amending the constition so as to establish some machinery of executive power in addition to the Governor on which the relevant responsibilities could be conferred.
13.
Constitutional law is not the only source of responsibility and power.
A possible approach might be to recognise the practice which has grown up of allowing Hong Kong to conduct its external commercial relations as a constitutional convention similar to (though more extensive than) those which facilitated the development of dominion self rule before 1926. The difficulties here are that by recognising that practice had advanced to the status of a constitutional convention in one field, it might be difficult to distinguish similar practices in others, and, it might well be argued, would inhibit our ability to legislate by way of Letters Patent or Royal Instructions. Further such a course would have
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/the