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an Appropriation Bill in the usual form, but reserved the right to demand a conference thereon, to state objections and to hear explanations. As to other Bills, the object of which was to raise money or to authorize the expenditure of money, the Council asserted its competence to suggest alterations to the Assembly, and to assent to or reject such measures. These resolutions were agreed to by the Assembly.

It will be observed that in section 53 the prohibition of amendment by the Senate is not co-extensive with the provision as to origination, so far as concerns proposed laws appropriating revenue or moneys. While all proposed laws appropriating revenue or moneys, save those specially excepted in the first clause, must originate in the House, the Senate is restrained from amending none but the proposed law for appropriating revenue or moneys for the ordinary annual services of the Government. But in no case must the power of amendment be exercised by the Senate so as to increase a proposed charge or burden on the people. Where the power of amendment is denied, the power of suggestion is given to the Senate, and as such suggestion may be made "at any stage" in the progress of the Bill through the Senate, it is clear that the Senate may exercise the extreme power of rejection if its suggestions are not adopted.

The last clause in section 53 has a political rather than a legal importance. Australian experience has abundantly shown that no opinion upon financial powers is too wild to obtain some currency; and, therefore, it may not have been superfluous to insert words showing that the powers conferred by section 53 upon the Senate do not exhaust the powers of that body over Money Bills-that the section in general is not one granting new power, but limiting and directing the exercise of power already enjoyed.

Sections 54 and 55 are auxiliary sections designed to secure the arrangements of section 53. They prevent "tacking" in its most objectionable forms; they also deprive the House of the power of effectuating its control

over finance by including the whole of the financial measures for the year in one bill-the course hinted at by the Commons resolutions of 1860, and often adopted in the colonies for the purpose of compelling the Upper House to accept an unwelcome measure. The great resource of the Commons, however, depends for its efficacy upon a tradition which has not equal force in the colonies -that the Upper House will not embarrass the Crown by refusing to pass an Appropriation Act. In Australia, a Legislative Council, by rejecting an Appropriation Bill, merely embarrasses its political opponents, and has not hesitated thus to deal with attempts to deprive it of power over such matters as the tariff or payment of members. In fact, the old constitutional weapon-the refusal of supplies -is in new hands, and may be made to serve a new purpose. The control of the Lower House over the policy of the Crown and its Ministers is now so complete that the problem of modern governments is rather now to protect the Government from the caprice of the House than to secure further control; it is never necessary for the House to fall back upon the source of its power. But the responsibility of the Ministry to the Upper House, if it exists, is of a very indirect kind, and one of the checks upon the Ministry and the Lower House lies in the fact that the Upper House might in an extreme case refuse to pass the Appropriation Bill, and thereby force a dissolution or a change of Ministry. These are the conditions recognized by the Constitution. It marks the province of the Senate in financial matters, and prevents the House of Representatives from taking a course which might justify or excuse the Senate in rejecting an Appropriation Bill. In the balance of power in the Commonwealth, it is a factor not to be neglected that, while the Senate has a recognized power over Money Bills beyond that of any other Second Chamber in the British Dominions, it can hardly exercise the extreme power of rejecting the Bill for the "ordinary annual services of the Government" upon any other ground than that the Ministry owes responsibility

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to the Upper not less than to the Lower House. is a position which in the future the Senate, as the House of the States as well as the Second Chamber, may take up; but it is a position from which, even in the history of Parliamentary Government in the colonies, the strongest supporters of the Upper House have generally shrunk.

There is one matter which from the very nature of the Senate is its special concern. As the Courts are the guardians of the rights of the States in matters that lie outside the federal power, so the Senate is the guardian of the interests of the States in matters which are within the federal power. For the rest, it has been contended that the system of Cabinet Government which has been introduced from England to the Colonies, and which the Colonies have imposed upon the Commonwealth, is essentially a feature of unitary government, and is inapplicable in a federal government; that a Ministry cannot serve two masters-the Senate and the House; that if the weakness of the Executive is one of the greatest dangers of party government with responsibility to one House, responsibility to two Houses would break down the Executive machinery altogether; and that responsibility to one House alone means unitary, not federal government. The answer to this seems to be that neither the Cabinet system nor federal government is a rigid institution. The liability of the first to change and to mould itself to conditions is its one permanent feature, and perhaps its principal advantage. Both "federal" and "unitary" governments are commonly mere approximations to a type, and neither necessarily excludes all the features of the other.

Of course it is obvious that with two irreconcilable Chambers of the Legislature with co-ordinate power, the Cabinet system would break down, and so also would any other system that could be devised. But in the Commonwealth, at anyrate, the Constitution of the two Houses is a sufficient guarantee that they will not be in perpetual conflict. It may even be that the Senate, which as a Second

Chamber is designed to contribute to the stability of Government, will perform that office in an unexpected way by protecting the Ministry from the caprice of the House; and it will be no small service to the Commonwealth if Ministers, owing a certain responsibility to both Houses, learn that it is their duty not less than that of the Crown, to preserve a good correspondence between the two branches of the Legislature. The Cabinet system depends so much upon understandings and conventions that it would be rash to declare any development impossible.

The political effect of the clauses on the financial powers is to strengthen rather than weaken the Senate, for it is enabled to exercise an effective control by means less heroic than the rejection of an Appropriation Bill. "Deadlock," then, in the strict sense-the bringing the machinery of government to a standstill-is a contingency so remote as hardly to be within the range of practical politics. But moved by the experience of more than one of the colonies, and especially of the Colony of Victoria, the Convention set itself to discover some constitutional means of reconciling differences between the Houses in any matter of legislation. All sorts of schemes were considered in the Convention, in the Parliaments, and in the press. Those who may be called the National Democrats desired that questions of differences should be settled by the Referendum pure and simple-by a simple majority of the electors in the Commonwealth. But this was a reference to the constituents of one Chamber only, and was naturally objected to by the smaller States. Accordingly, there was a party whom we may call Federal Democrats, who urged that there should be a Referendum to the constituents of the respective Houses. Then there were those who were totally opposed to the Referendum and favoured a resort to the ancient constitutional remedy of dissolution, to be applied alternatively, simultaneously, or successively to the Senate and the House. Others again thought that to make any provision at all was the surest means of precipitating conflicts which might be avoided in the ordinary course of

things by a little forbearance and good sense. In the end, the Convention adopted a system which, with a trifling alteration by the Premiers, is now contained in section 57 of the Constitution.

57. If the House of Representatives passes any proposed law, and the Senate rejects or fails to pass it, or passes it with amendments to which the House of Representatives will not agree, and if, after an interval of three months the House of Representatives, in the same or the next session, again passes the proposed law with or without any amendments which have been made, suggested, or agreed to by the Senate, and the Senate rejects or fails to pass it, or passes it with amendments to which the House of Representatives will not agree, the Governor-General may dissolve the Senate and the House of Representatives simultaneously. But such dissolution shall not take place within six months before the date of the expiry of the House of Representatives by effluxion of time.

If after such dissolution the House of Representatives again passes the proposed law with or without any amendments which have been made, suggested, or agreed to by the Senate, and the Senate rejects or fails to pass it, or passes it with amendments to which the House of Representatives will not agree, the Governor-General may convene a joint sitting of the members of the Senate and of the House of Representatives.

The members present at the joint sitting may deliberate and shall vote together upon the proposed law as last proposed by the House of Representatives, and upon amendments, if any, which have been made therein by one House and not agreed to by the other, and any such amendments which are affirmed by an absolute majority of the total number of the members of the Senate and House of Representatives shall be taken to have been carried, and if the proposed law, with the amendments, if any, so carried is affirmed by an absolute majority of the total number of the members of the Senate and House of Representatives, it shall be taken to have been duly passed by both Houses of

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