(A.)

Extract from the "Sydney Morning Herald" of 27th July 1872.

The rejection of the Border Customs Convention Bill by a majority of one in the Legislative Council is a disastrous exercise of an undoubted right, besides being contrary to that policy which usually governs an Upper House. The measure is one purely of administration, the mode of collecting revenue. It has, moreover, the recommendation in principle of five years' practice. The policy of those five years the late Government professed to renew.

The Members of the Upper House who voted for the Bill are mostly persons of established political reputation. Mr. Deas Thompson, Mr. Hay, Mr. Samuel, Mr. Weekes, Mr. Alexander Campbell, Mr. Owen, and Mr. Holt, are all men of long standing, of great political experience, especially conversant with subjects of Customs and finance, and all having been Members of the Lower House. In the other list, not one man has held any office in connection with the administration of Customs and finance, and only one has shared in the Government, Mr. Docker, a gentleman who owed his elevation to the Upper House to the personal regard of the late Premier, and who never was elected by the people. An adverse vote, therefore, ought to have been given under very solemn convictions, after a close examination of the subject, and a conscientious discharge of all preparatory Sessional duties.

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If the decision is to be taken as final, its wisdom will have to be proved by the event. It was a solemn thing to listen to the warnings of that distinguished public man, Mr. Deas Thomson, who has acquired by his intelligence and moderation the title to be called a statesman, when he told his hearers that the House should not look at the measure merely from a fiscal point of view-; when he told them that, for the sake of a small pecuniary advantage, they were leading to the separation of the territory; and when he warned them that, if discontent were to arise, no effort on the part of the Legislature or people of this country could prevent an event which he should exceedingly deplore. He might have added that, in a conflict of this kind, where the passions were not unlikely to be awakened, consequences might result still more disastrous; and that, as in former disagreements, it might be requisite to send the Permanent Force to maintain a system declared to be odious and oppressive. We fear that there were few much impressed with any other consequence than the immediate result of rejecting the Bill. The motives, however, which influence men are often pure as well as mistaken, and there were, in the majority of one, persons incapable of giving a vote for the sake of serving a partisan or defeating a Ministry. Yet a celebrated writer, referring to the first American quarrel, traces the views of some who precipitated a separation. "He meant," speaking of the leader of the Opposition, "only to ruin a Minister, and he destroyed an empire.

Looking at the names and connections of those who voted for the rejection of the Bill, we do not sec many persons whose lengthened experience of public affairs, and whose command of the confidence of their fellow-colonists, will explain their thwarting a measure approved by the great majority. Mr. Deas Thomson affirmed "that he could not doubt for a single moment that this measure had received as it were the assent of the whole colony."

What course the Government may choose to take should be marked by coolness and deliberation. They should not meet a vexatious exercise of power with threats, as if one error destroyed the utility of an institution. It is indeed possible, by adopting a wrong principle in the nomination of Members, to permanently impair its usefulness. If nominations are made of persons who have held no office as representatives of the people, but are chosen merely because the great man of the day thinks proper to distinguish them with his favour, we may lose that highly valuable constitutional principle which assigns a legislative power on the nomination of the Crown, but confines that nomination only to persons of an established reputation. These mistakes have in other countries led to changes which have made a Legislative Council an inferior duplicate of the Assembly in political authority, and therefore utility. Hitherto the Legislative Council has given effect to the views of the representatives in principle, and has therefore maintained the power of moderating their action. In this instance it has reversed the policy of the colony, long established and deliberately affirmed, by taking advantage of the lapse of regulations which it was the object of the Bill to restore and maintain. The Legislative Council has not therefore repelled a measure proposing a novelty, but upset a system which had till recently the force of law.

It may be proper for the Government to consider whether there is any remedy for the mischief. Nothing is more thoroughly established than the rules of Parliament which forbid the bringing in of a Bill of the same "argument" and "matter" in the same Session. We learn from "May's Parliamentary Practice" (third edition), 249th page, that so imperative is this regulation, that in 1807 Parliament was actually prorogued for a week in order to admit the revival of a Bill which had been rejected by the Lords. We infer from the proceedings in the Upper House that the wish of a majority of one was to precipitate an irrevocable decision; that the aim of Mr. Samuel was to postpone it, to give time to bring up Members to support the measure. If therefore it is known that their absence caused the Bill to be lost, the public may be saved great inconvenience, and perhaps worse, by a short prorogation. If the country had never been heard upon the subject, and if the party who had opposed the measure had done so upon a well-known and traditional policy, or if the Bill introduced any practice not already tested by years of experience, and to a late date never disputed in principle, the Legislative Council would have been justified in commending the question again to the deliberation of the country, and reserving for it the benefit of second thoughts. This, indeed, is the real business of the Upper House, and its power of maintaining an effective influence is in carefully respecting the conditions under which it is exercised. But in this instance it has attempted to arrest the discussion of an important fiscal measure, which would certainly have admitted a more careful consideration than could be given in a sitting of a few hours.

Mr. Parkes has, however, put upon the Motion Paper a series of resolutions intended to dispense with the law. The Attorney General (Mr. Butler) repeatedly told the Assembly, during the discussion on the Bill, that the collection of the customs on the border remained a legal obligation, and that it could only be abolished by the authority of Parliament. Have the Ministry abandoned this opinion, and have they consented to a policy which they declared to be unlawful? We hope not Better lose the Bill and suffer the inconvenience of delay than set up the Assembly above the whole Legislature, and especially upon an assumption utterly unjustifiable, that the Council will approve hereafter of a policy which they have condemned, and cure its illegality by an ex post facto law.