AN ERA OF CONSTITUTIONAL STRUGGLE, 1864-1868 133 



ruled that it could not be dealt with a second time in the same 

 session. To meet the difficulty the Governor was induced to pro- 

 rogue Parliament on the 10th of April, and to summon it for a fresh 

 session on the following day. Immediately on reassembling the 

 Bill was hurriedly passed through all its stages and sent to the 

 Council. Before it came on for the second reading there, news 

 reached Melbourne of the Governor's recall, and the Ministerial 

 minority in the Council called loudly for a conference. The 

 Assembly promptly appointed seven members to represent them, 

 carefully excluding Messrs. Higinbotham and Michie as irrecon- 

 cilables. The conference met on 13th April, and in a few hours 

 had come to an agreement. The Government backed down from 

 the position they had so fiercely contended for during more than 

 a year. They had already surrendered the claim to make the 

 Act retrospective. They now amended the preamble, recognising 

 the equal rights of the Council in legislation, abandoned the clause 

 limiting the duration of the Bill, and gave a formal assurance that 

 the Assembly in treating the gold duty as a tax, and not as territorial 

 revenue, had not intended any coercion to the Council by including 

 it in the Bill. The Council was thus fully justified in the stand it 

 had made against a tyrannical majority in the other House, and 

 the end of the first crisis was reached. A few days later Appro- 

 priation Bills for 1864 and 1865, and an advance of 600,000 for 

 1866, were passed through both Chambers, legitimate payments 

 were resumed, and the citizens, relieved as from some oppressive 

 nightmare, began to feel some sympathy for the weak Governor, 

 who was called upon to pay so dearly for the unworthy uses to 

 which his advisers had put him. 



And truly Sir Charles Darling was not without manifold out- 

 ward demonstrations of sympathy. Mass meetings and torchlight 

 processions were held under the auspices of the most " advanced " 

 members of Parliament, and Melbourne and suburbs rang with 

 denunciations of Mr. Cardwell, and praises of the noble conduct of 

 his victim. Deputations waited on the Governor, and addresses 

 without number encumbered his office table. Unhappily, a large 

 proportion of them were disfigured by sneers at or disparagement 

 of his Imperial employers, and he had to listen to remarks explicitly 



