b85 
CHAP. vii] RELATIONS OF THE HOUSES 
I do not propose to answer the points of your address 
serigtim, but shall briefly put before you the position as 
[ see it. 
The paragraphs 2, 3, and 4 of your address deal with the 
constitutional position of the Upper House. Co 
That is the great constitutional issue with which my late 
Premier invited me to deal. 
I declined, because I considered the matter too grave for 
2 Governor to touch without a mandate from the people. 
By the exercise of the prerogative of dissolution the people 
are asked to say what they wish done. 
I fully recognize the inadvisableness of frequent general 
elections, I appreciate the peculiar inconveniences of an 
election at this time, but 1 regard it as of paramount 
importance that the country should speak its mind on this 
question, and therefore I have to decline the praver of your 
address, 
I recognize to the full the responsibility I have taken on 
my shoulders, throughout this disturbed political period. 
From time to time, under the constitution, a Governor 
has to take responsibility, but I cannot, shirk it when laid 
pon me. 
The reading of the reply in the House caused a somewhat 
violent explosion of wrath, the ex-Prime Minister remark- 
ing®: ‘This is a somewhat extraordinary position. His 
Excellency has turned down his thumb. The Czar has dis- 
missed the Duma. And now this matter is for the people of 
Queensland.” He proceeded later on to say that :— 
For centuries it has been recognized that the King of 
England, and in his self-governing dependencies the repre- 
sentative of the King, had no right to govern at all, had 
no right to use the people’s money, except to govern and 
use the public moneys in accordance with the wishes and 
Opinions of the representatives of the people. That is 
“onstitutional government, that is self-government, and to 
claim anything else for the King or a Governor is to set 
10 the claim that cost Charles I his head. 
The dissolution proceeded, with the result that Mr. 
Philp’s Ministry was crushingly defeated in the country, 
having only twenty-five members out of a House of seventy- 
two, while Mr. Kidston had twenty-five supporters, and 
* Parliamentary Debates, c, 1783.