Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 2.djvu/307

 on this ground the Council rejected the measure. It is not necessary to follow the conflict into detail, but practices were adopted to enable the Government to pay the public creditor—without an Appropriation Bill which it is impossible to justify in cold blood. As all these measures had the assent of the Governor, a fierce wrath against him sprung up in the community, and an address to the Queen assailing his public conduct as a violation of his duty and of the Constitution, was signed by nearly every Executive Councillor in the colony except those holding office. But a more fatal stroke came from his own* hand. In a despatch to the Secretary of State referring to these Executive Councillors the Governor said that if the current of public opinion carried them into office, he must receive their advice with doubt and distrust, and as this was far from the neutral feeling which a Governor ought to entertain towards his probable advisers in the future, the Imperial Government determined to remove him from office. As the loss of his appointment would ruin Sir Charles Darling, who was a poor man, Mr. Higinbotham proposed to grant him compensation for what he considered a serious wrong, by a vote of £20,000. The proposal was adopted by the Assembly, and the item was accordingly placed in the Appropriation Bill; but as the Council insisted that so grave and unprecedented a policy ought to be submitted to them in a separate measure which they could modify or reject, they refused to pass the Appropriation Bill containing this provision. To this crisis affairs had arrived when I returned to the colony. I had always been opposed to the excessive pretensions of the Council to interfere in fiscal questions, but this was a case in which I thought they were justified. Our Constitution provided for a balance of powers between three branches representing the Crown, the propertied classes, and the democracy; but if one of these branches could bribe another branch with a vote of money, the balance was overthrown. I resolved, therefore, to vote against the proposals of the Government. If the grant was embodied in a separate Bill to be reserved for the Queen's pleasure, the honour and character of the Assembly had got so implicated, and the confusion of public affairs had become so disastrous, that I suggested it might be better to accept it and send it home