sap. vir] RELATIONS OF THE HOUSES 615 
the Appropriation Act, which is passed at the end of the 
session, specifically appropriates to the various services 
the sums granted in Committee of Supply, and by a covering 
grant of ways and means provides the money required to 
meet the whole of the supplies granted for the year. 
In a further dispatch of August 25, 1878! the Secretary of 
State expressed regret that it had not been found possible 
to arrange for a general reinstatement of the members of 
the Civil Service of the Colony. He could not agree that 
there was anything unconstitutional in the Governor’s 
questioning the course taken with regard to these public 
officers ; the removal of so many officers involved a consti- 
tutional question of great importance as a precedent in 
all self-governing Colonies, namely, the position of the 
permanent civil servants. There was no intention to carry 
out a scheme of reduction of the service, and the officers 
had been dismissed solely to economize the funds at the dis- 
posal of the Government. The Governor was obliged, in so 
grave a matter, to satisfy himself that the action proposed 
by his ministers was justifiable, and after making every 
allowance for the difficulties of his position the Secretary 
of State did not think that the emergency was of such a 
character as to justify the course which had been adopted. 
In a dispatch of July 13, 1878, the Governor communicated 
the message with which he had opened the second session 
of the ninth Parliament on the 9th of that month. In his 
speech, which was of course an expression of ministerial 
views, he said that it was proposed to lay before the Houses 
a measure of constitutional reform intended to put an end 
for all time to the recurrence of those periodical deadlocks 
which were so injurious to trade and commerce, and a stand- 
ing disgrace to the constitutional institutions of Victoria. 
He remarked that unfortunately the attempt to embody 
in comparatively rigid law the elasticity. inherent in the 
principles and practice of the British Constitution had not 
been completely successful, and differences in the inter- 
pretation of the Constitution Act had resulted in bringing 
: Parl. Pap., C2217, p. 1. 
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