AN ERA OF CONSTITUTIONAL STRUGGLE, 1864-1868 127 



iniquitous character of the retrospective clauses was universally 

 condemned. It was an attempt by an ex post facto law to prevent 

 private persons from obtaining the rights which had been formally 

 decreed to them by the highest legal tribunal in the land, the very 

 idea of which is repugnant to all English notions of justice. 



A few days later Parliament was prorogued, and on the llth of 

 December it was dissolved for an appeal to the country. For a 

 time the colony was practically without any legal Government. 

 No Appropriation Bill had been passed for the year then closing : 

 no payment could be made, except with money raised by the col- 

 lusive judgments, and the disbursement of that was under no 

 legally authorised control. Yet in his prorogation speech the Gov- 

 ernor was made to say to the Assembly : "I am glad to be able to 

 announce that although your grants have not obtained the form of 

 law, they have been rendered available for the maintenance of the 

 functions of Government and the fulfilment of its legal obligations ! " 



If the Legislative Council could have been concurrently dis- 

 solved, there might have been some sort of excuse for going to 

 the country ; but as the question between the Houses involved the 

 interpretation of constitutional law, on which learned counsel and 

 eminent jurists had argued heatedly for a whole year without con- 

 vincing each other, it was little short of absurd to place such an 

 issue before the manhood suffrage electors of the Assembly. The 

 question which the Council deemed of sufficient importance to 

 submit for the decision of the highest court of appeal in the Empire 

 was contemptuously thrown by Mr. McCulloch to the arbitration 

 of the man in the street, with a distinct implication that he was to 

 find for the plaintiff, lest a worse thing befal him. For although 

 Mr. McCulloch, in his election address, professed to ask them to 

 decide whether the right of taxation was vested solely in the 

 Assembly, the rallying war-cry of the majority of the candidates 

 was Protection to Native Industry, and the maintenance of the 

 rights of the people against the schemes of a plutocratic Council, 

 whose desire to get rid of the Ministry was declared to be not un- 

 connected with insidious designs on the public estate. 



The general election proceedings extended over a month, which 

 was a period of great turmoil. Charges of the most defamatory 



