Page:History of Adelaide and vicinity.djvu/688

 xii ADELAIDE AND VICINITY ^ Notesonthe Constitution of South Australia Section 1. of the Constitution Act There is a proviso to Section I. of the Constitution Act which is most important. It runs as follows : — " Provided that all Bills for appropriating any part of the revenue of the said Province, or for imposing, altering, or repealing any tax, rate, duty, or impost, shall originate in the House of Assembly." This proviso was inserted because of an imagined analogy between the Legislative Council and the House of Lords on the one hand, and the Commons and the House of Assembly on the other hand ; and it formulated one of the constitutional British maxims in reference to what are vaguely called Money Bills. That there never was or could be any such analogy, the following considerations clearly show : — 1. The House of Lords is non-elective ; the members sit either by hereditary right or by nomination by the Crown. The Council is elected by the people. 2. The Lords represent only their own order. The members of the Council represent their constituents. 3. The Lords are a Court of Record ; they have jurisdiction in cases of impeachment, and committees of the whole body have jurisdiction in other cases. The Legislative Council is not a court, except as to questions arising concerning its privileges, and, except in relation to such questions, has no jurisdiction of judicature. 4. That part of the British Constitution which defines the relationship of the two Houses to each other is unwritten, and consists of the accumulated practice of centuries. The Legislative Council is the creation of Statute law. 5. The British Constitution has always been, and is still, changeable and varying, usurpations by one or other of the three bodies which compose it having at different times altered the balance of power ; the predominant partner has been at different times, the Crown, the Lords, the Commons. The powers of the Legislative Council and the House of Assembly are fixed by the Constitution Act, and cannot be altered except by an alteration of that Act. 6. In the House of Lords the Church is represented by the Lords Spiritual. The Church is not, and cannot be, represented in the Legislative Council, as by Section XXXVI. of the Constitution Act, "no clergyman or officiating minister .shall be capable of being elected a member." 7. The Crown cannot send back to the House of Lords a Bill which has passed both Houses and been presented to Her Majesty for her assent, and request the Lords to make amendments in such Bill. The Governor can transmit to the Legislative Council, by message, " any amendment which he shall deem to be needed in any Bill presented to him for Her Majesty's assent." 8. If any analogy can be or ought to be drawn (which is denied), the Legislative Council is analogous to the House of Commons. It was, in 1857, elected by the people on a considerably more extended franchise than the House of Commons, and its constituents pay the great bulk of the taxation.