198 A HISTORY OF THE COLONY OF VICTORIA 



against the Council, described as representing the well-to-do classes 

 only, that a number of the members regarded the Upper Chamber's 

 interference with their 300 a year as the result of pure spite, and 

 they burned for retaliation. They openly expressed this belief, 

 declaring that the action now taken was a vindictive reprisal for 

 the land tax they had forced the Council to accept. The members 

 of the Council, it is true, were beyond their reach, but it was 

 possible to strike at them through their relatives, friends and 

 acquaintances. It is difficult now to trace the real author of this 

 suggestion. Popular opinion at the time fixed the blame primarily 

 upon Berry, Lalor, Duffy, Longmore, Woods, and Trench the 

 Attorney-General, undoubtedly aided and abetted by the Governor. 

 Most of the men inculpated have at different times repudiated 

 responsibility, or endeavoured to minimise the influence they ex- 

 erted. Sir Charles Duffy in his autobiography emphatically declares 

 that he knew nothing of the proposal until he saw the Gazette 

 announcement. Sir George Bowen, in vindicating himself with 

 the home authorities for the part he had taken, declared that he 

 felt bound to accept the assertion of his Ministers " that the mode 

 of dealing with the Civil Service of Victoria is purely a matter of 

 Victorian concern ; and consequently Ministers have the exclusive 

 right of dealing with it on their own responsibility". He went 

 further, and declared that if, " after the rejection of the Appropriation 

 Bill, Ministers had disbanded the police, opened the gaols, stopped 

 the railways, shut up the Courts of Law, and so interrupted the 

 administration of justice, they would have done only what Lord 

 Canterbury had declared to be the legitimate consequence of the 

 stoppage of supplies". 



On the 8th of January, 1878, the morning papers announced 

 that the Ministry had in contemplation a large reduction in the 

 cost of the Civil Service, and that they had impressed the Governor 

 with the necessity of husbanding their resources until such time 

 as the passage of an Appropriation Bill rendered the public revenue 

 available. In the evening of the same day Melbourne was startled 

 by the issue of a Government Gazette Extraordinary, announcing 

 that the Governor in Council had dismissed all persons then holding 

 the office of Judges of County Courts, Courts of Mines and In- 



