appointment to Cabinet of ministers without portfolio, who were not required to run for re-election. Progressives and Liberals saw the use of "acting ministers" as against the spirit of the convention, and moved for no-confidence in Meighen's government, which lost confidence by only one vote at 2 am on 2 July 1926. Meighen subsequently requested a dissolution of parliament, which was granted by Byng on 2 July, and an election was called for 14 September. King's Liberals won a plurality of seats in the House of Commons, while Meighen lost his seat. Legacy Upon returning to power, King's government sought at an imperial conference to redefine the role of the governor general as a personal representative of the sovereign in his Canadian council and not of the British government (the king in his British council). The change was agreed to at the Imperial Conference of 1926 and came to be official as a result of the Balfour Declaration of 1926 and Statute of Westminster 1931. In a letter to King George V, whom he represented in Canada as governor general, Byng expressed surprise that Mackenzie King, a staunch nationalist, had requested that Byng consult the Colonial Office in London over the matter. Byng said: "I have to await the verdict of history to prove my having adopted a wrong course, and this I do with an easy conscience that, right or wrong, I have acted in the interests of Canada and implicated no one else in my decision." The Colonial Secretary, Leo Amery, privately informed Byng that had he appealed to the British government for an answer, "I could only have replied ... that in my view it would not be proper for the Secretary of State to issue instructions to the Governor with regard to the exercise of his constitutional duties." Byng returned to the United Kingdom, leaving Canada on 30 September 1926 a much respected man in both countries, despite the political crisis. Some authorities have held that Byng was constitutionally obligated to refuse King's request; for example, Eugene Forsey argued that King's advice to Byng was "utterly unprecedented" and said further: "It was tantamount to allowing a prisoner to discharge the jury by which he was being tried ... If the Governor-General had granted the request, he would have become an accomplice in a flagrant act of contempt for Parliament." The relatively brief time that King had