AN ERA OF CONSTITUTIONAL STRUGGLE, 1864-1868 141 



Such heated language addressed by a Minister of the Crown to 

 the Opposition would soon make political life insupportable. The 

 debate had to be adjourned to enable members to cool down. The 

 Ministry, safe in their majority, checked the tendency to rush into 

 the fray, and speeches by their supporters were discouraged. Mr. 

 C. E. Jones was put up as the chief supporter of the Attorney-General, 

 for his glib fluency had won him a great reputation in the Eastern 

 Market. He had the honour of filling twelve columns in the pages 

 of Hansard with what he declared to be the people's view of the 

 question. It was only towards the close of the debate that Mr. 

 McCulloch entered the arena. Oratory was not a strong point with 

 him, but after a vigorous defence of himself from the charges 

 of suppressing despatches in connection with the late Governor's 

 recall, he declared the proposed grant not only equitable, but neces- 

 sary to maintain the honour of the House. He would not submit it 

 in a separate Bill, and it should, and must be passed where it was, in 

 the Appropriation Bill. The principal speakers for the Opposition 

 after Mr. Ireland were B. C. Aspinall, Edward Langton and Duncan 

 Gillies, but argument was of no avail, and by forty-two votes to fifteen 

 the grant was approved. The minority continued the struggle at 

 every stage of the Appropriation Bill to avert a renewal of the griev- 

 ous quarrel of 1865. It was known that an able committee of the 

 Council had ransacked the records of the British Parliament for 

 precedents as to grants of money under exceptional circumstances. 

 The result favoured the view that in all cases where there was a doubt 

 of unanimity between the Lords and Commons, such grants were 

 made the subject of a separate Bill. 



But the Assembly would not hear of the Council being allowed 

 to consider the grant on its merits. It must be accepted in the 

 Appropriation Bill, unless the Council was prepared to throw the 

 finances of the colony again into disorder by rejecting that measure, 

 with all its legitimate provisions. Naturally the members of the 

 Council were indignant at this domineering attitude, and they were 

 further irritated by the discovery that the Ministry had in this Bill 

 reverted to the old form of preamble, in place of the one adopted 

 at the conference in April, 1866, wherein the concurrence of the 

 Council in supply had been recognised. Although such an abro- 



