Page:The three colonies of Australia.djvu/169

  What have ye done with all your hireling brood, Compared with her the generous and the good? Much ye receive and little ye dispense, Your alms are paltry, and your debts immense. Your toil's reluctant freely hers is given; You toil for earth, she labours still for Heaven. 

CHAPTER XIV.

RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT.

ESIDE the questions involved in the price of land, the tenure and tax on pastures, the abolition of assignment of prisoners, and cessation of transportation on all of which the governor and his chiefs were at issue with the colonists, from the day of the opening of the Legislative Council, when the word "humble" was struck out of the motion for an address in answer to the governor's speech certain constitutional questions of great importance were at issue between Sir George Gipps and the Legislative Council.

The Colonial Parliament was justly incensed at finding that the new constitution gave them nothing more than the liberty of talking and taxing themselves. Three schedules appropriated upwards of 80,000 to the payment of officials, over whose appointment, from the colonial secretary down to the prothonotary, they had no sort of control. The council attempted to regulate the distribution of the funds secured by the schedules, by taking from those who did nothing to give to those who worked hard. The governor successfully resisted the attempt, and in other words told them, as Lord Ellenborough told Hone, "to protest and go about their business." Whereupon the Colonial Parliament being unable to cut down the sinecure salaries included in the schedules, retaliated by refusing to vote the estimates for the sums required over and above the estimates. The governor responded by cutting down that part of the public service which was most needed by the colonists. For instance, he retained the Prothonotary and Master in Equity, and closed the office of Registrar of Deeds, who regulated all the titles and mortgages in the colony. From that time forward the struggle between the governor and that part of the council which was not official, became relentless. Evil breeds evil—so in proportion as Sir George Gipps was despotic and insolent, the opposition became virulent and factious. Between both it was war to the knife. 