132 A HISTORY OF THE COLONY OF VICTORIA 



could not exact from the outgoing Ministry a task they had been 

 unable to perform for themselves, and he declined to consider 

 another dissolution, so the negotiations came to nothing. When 

 Mr. McCulloch met the House on the 28th of March, he stated that, 

 as no successors had been appointed, he and his colleagues would 

 continue to administer their departments, though they had not 

 formally accepted office. 



The situation was getting desperate. There was no properly 

 appointed Government, no legally available money. The huge 

 accumulating amount for which Her Majesty had already been 

 declared in default by the Supreme Court began to make the 

 Ministry desirous of drawing a line somewhere. Civil servants 

 were unpaid ; public works at a standstill ; charitable institutions 

 were incurring overdrafts and restricting benefactions ; and business 

 generally was paralysed by monetary stringency and doubt about 

 what was coming next. Beyond all this, Ministers knew, though 

 it had not so far been revealed to the public, that the Home Govern- 

 ment had sternly rebuked the Governor for sanctioning practices 

 that were declared by the Colonial Secretary to be unquestionably 

 illegal. The instances cited were collecting duties not legally im- 

 posed, contracting a loan without sanction of law, and paying 

 salaries without sanction of law. In another communication the 

 same authority had said : " You ought to have interposed with all 

 the weight of your authority when your Ministers continued to levy 

 the duties notwithstanding the adverse decision of the Supreme 

 Court " ; and in a still later despatch a very sufficient reason was 

 given for these instructions : " Her Majesty's Government have 

 no wish to interfere in any questions of purely colonial policy ; 

 and only desire that the colony shall be governed in conformity 

 with the principle of responsible and constitutional Government, 

 subject always to the paramount authority of the law ". 



It was evident that the Governor would be removed. The 

 despatches were not confidential. Some of them were practically 

 answers to the petitions which had been addressed to the Crown, 

 and eventually they would have to be made public. McCulloch 

 was uneasy at the impending revelations. He desired to re-intro- 

 duce the Tariff Bill with some slight alteration, but the Speaker 



