NUESTROS "INDEPENDIENTES"

Other issues compounded conservative mistrust of the ministry. Not only did it introduce bills to make the Council elective, but it introduced them in the Assembly.

Conservative members of the Council viewed this as a breach of privilege and announced that they would refuse to consider any

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reform which did not originate in the Council. They were also angered by the ministry's failure, when the estimates were not passed, to authorize its expenditure by a vote of credit from

the Council as well as the Assembly, and the ministry fell 4

just in time to avoid censure on the matter. Finally, some of them resented the ministry's acquiescence in the separation of Queensland. When the government took office, it asked the Council to adjourn for ministerial elections, but five

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conservatives including Isaacs, opposed the request mainly because they would be unable to debate motions condemning the dismemberment of the colony until after the separation had

^"Cf. Loveday and Martin, op.cit., p.30.

,M.H., 15, 16, 21 December 1859. The bill was also opposed by George Hill, who had previously voted as a liberal and

still sat on the liberal benches. .M.H. , 1, 2, 8 December 1859. 4

Johnson had given notice of a motion condemning expenditure by votes of credit from the Assembly. (S,M.H., 8,

23 February 1860.)

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Including Edward Hunt, hitherto a liberal, but who from this, time usually voted with the conservatives.

been accomplished.1 Most members agreed with the President's ruling that failure to adjourn would be contrary to

parliamentary practice and ministers were saved the

embarrassment of having to explain their policies to the

Council while campaigning in their electorates. However, when the Council resumed, the issue of Queensland still clouded its affairs. Johnson and Isaacs, leaders of the conservatives'

extremist wing, immediately expressed concern that the government seemed to have accepted the separation. They disrupted the

proceedings of the Council by trying to have their motion of protest given precedence over all other business, although it was a day on which government matters were customarily given priority; they insisted that documents on the separation should be read aloud by the Clerk of the House, a task which occupied

some forty minutes; and when Geoffrey Eagar, the Minister for Works and the government's principal representative, moved that the documents be printed, they objected on the grounds that this might imply that the Council countenanced the

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separation. They were impartial in their obstruction, and even a ministry to which they were favourably disposed was made

to suffer inconvenience.

The second reason why conservatives were cast in the role of an opposition, even when the government was as congenial to their viewpoint as circumstances allowed, was that they were not simply conservatives, but men conscious of their rights and dignity as members of the Legislative Council. All

governments had to heed majority opinion in the Assembly and none could repudiate that body's estimate of its own

superiority. Ministers had to reject, in accordance with the view which prevailed in the Assembly, the Council's claim that

it could amend money bills; they had to maintain that a vote of credit from the Assembly, if not strictly legal, was a

sufficient authorization for expenditure; and when the Council claimed the sole right to originate legislation concerning itself, they could not agree without seeming to denigrate the powers of the Assembly.

1S.M.H., 27 October 1859. .M,H,, 1 December 1859.

Moreover, it had been the conventional wisdom of the constitution's framers that in any protracted difference of opinion between the two houses, the Council should ultimately be prepared to give way.'123**6' It was partly for this reason that they had chosen a nominated Council, and in subsequent years moderate conservatives like Thomson acted upon the same

principle by urging that the Council should submit, rather than engage imprudently in a contest of wills with the

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Assembly. But liberals, and governments speaking for the ‘popular’ branch of the legislature, pressed this argument to its limits. Whenever the Council showed a disposition to reject the views of the Assembly, they claimed that the Council should defer to the representatives of the people. In debate,

liberal members of the Council and the representatives of governments responsible to the Assembly were inevitably cast in the role of men who denied the Council's right to act without regard for the views of the Assembly. They adopted

this position not only because it harmonized with liberal assumptions, but also because it strengthened their position in debate. Conservative members of the Council, on the other hand, perceiving the triumph of democracy in the Assembly,

tried to redress the balance by claiming more powers for their own branch of the legislature. They rapidly developed a view of their own rights and importance which was repudiated even

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by conservative members of the other house. This conception

■^See Chapter I, above. 2

Thomson, for instance, led the conservative climb-downs over the Electoral Bill in 1858, the Appropriation Bill in 1860 and the land bills in 1861.

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Conservatives in the Assembly, with the exception of Martin, thought the Council should not amend money bills (cf. Martin, Faucett, Alexander Campbell, Kemp, Plunkett, Hay and Darvall in S .M .H ., 20, 21, 22 June 1860); as members of the Parker and Forster ministries, they spent money on the authority of the Assembly alone (Executive Council, Minutes, 29 December 1856, 6 February 1857, Archives Office of N.S.W., 4/1534; V . & P .

(L.A., N.S.W.), 1859-60, vol.I, p.399); and they did not

object when Forster introduced in the Assembly bills affecting the Council. (S .M.H., 7 December 1859, 9, 15, 25 February 1860.)

of their power and dignity made them independent of all

ministries. They were Legislative Councillors first and last. By the same token, the liberals filled impartially the role of supporters of the government. When Forster took office, they still sat on the government benches;

J.F. Hargrave, who had succeeded Lutwyche and W.B. Dailey as Cowper's Solicitor-General, accepted the same post in the new government; Geoffrey Eagar, who had recently been appointed by Cowper, became the Minister for Works; and most liberals gave

the ministry fairly consistent support in divisions and in debate.^" They thereby proved their independence of those liberals in the Assembly who worked for Forster's downfall.

It was partly consciousness of their independence of all governments which led members of the Council to deny that they belonged to any 'party1; and such denials were also a

recognition that men voted 'independently', rather than as

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delegates of an outside body or as men bound by a pledge. But the denials went further than this and expressed the Councillors' determination to maintain that they personally,

if not their opponents, had remained true to the ideal of the Council as a non-party house. To deny that they belonged to

any type of party was important for those who had defended the Council as a body which was 'above party'; and such denials were vital for the judges, whose presence had been justified by the pretence that they would not become involved in politics. They could not even apply to themselves Burke's favourable

definition of party as 'a body of men united, for promoting by their joint endeavours the national interest, upon some

In particular they provided the only support for the Cattle Driving Act Amendment Bill and the Land Titles Declaration Bill, and they gave better support than the conservatives to the Crown Lands Temporary Regulation Bill and the government's request that the Council adjourn for ministerial elections.

(S .M.H., 27 October, 21 December 1859, 2, 9 February I860,) 2

Thomson, while admitting that the conservatives met outside the House to discuss legislation, was at pains to deny that they were pledged to follow the course decided upon.

principle in which they are all agreed', ^ although this description fitted their own case tolerably well.

Consequently, although parties as operational entities undoubtedly existed, although members on both sides of the house used the terms 'supporters of the Government' and

'Opposition', and although they sat with 'those with whom they usually acted', they felt constrained to deny that they

belonged to any 'party', just as members of the Assembly vehemently repudiated charges of 'faction'.

The tactic most commonly used by those wishing to

dissociate themselves from 'party' was to define the term in such a way that it was irrelevant to the particular version of party which existed in the Council. They often defined party

as members of the Assembly defined 'faction' - a group of men joined together for no higher principle but simply to further their own base interests. Thus, Deas Thomson was able to claim, less than three weeks after the conservatives had with complete solidarity boycotted the Council, that 'He was

himself of no party', for he had come to the discussion of the electoral bill 'not in any party spirit, but with a wish for

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the public good'. He adopted the same line of defence when justifying meetings which the conservatives held to determine their attitude to the land bills. The meetings had been called, he said, 'merely to consider the bills, in their effect upon

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