626 PARLIAMENTS OF THE DOMINIONS [PART IIL 
§ 2. SOUTH AUSTRALIA 
The relations between the two Houses in South Australia 
have been as unsatisfactory as in Victoria : it would be 
impossible to say that they had been more unsatisfactory, 
and it is true that the disputes have not resulted in such 
hopeless deadlocks as has been the case in the sister Colony. 
But that is due to the democratic character of the South 
Australian people, a fact which can be traced to the origin 
of the Colony as a home of free settlers, and to its immunity 
from the influence on the one hand of the criminal population, 
and on the other from the presence of Government officials 
and their friends, who secured to themselves, at the cost 
of the commonwealth, large grants of land. 
In financial matters, as the Constitution had carefully left 
the matter totally undetermined beyond providing for the 
origination of such Bills in the Lower House, it was only 
found possible to work at all by an informal arrangement 
between the two Houses, the effect of which was that the 
Legislative Council would pass the ordinary annual estimates 
without insisting on amending them, but it would have 
a right to suggest amendments on every and any other 
proposal to raise money or warrant expenditure, and to ask 
for a conference on the estimates, and that matters beyond 
the ordinary annual estimates must be sent on separately, 
so that the Council could have an opportunity of expressing 
its opinion with regard to these measures! The Council 
can freely amend any clause of any measure which is not 
a clause raising money or warranting expenditure. 
It would be idle to deny that the Council was entitled 
to adopt this position. The idea that an elective Upper 
House should conform with the principles adopted by a 
nominated Upper House like the House of Lords, although 
* Cf. Parl. Proc., 1857-8, i, passim ; ii, Nos. 71 and 101 ; Debates, pp. 
340-70, 442, 456. In 1864 the Council again reasserted its position; in 
1876 it caused the withdrawal of certain items from a Loan Bill, and in 1877 
defeated the Government of the day and insisted on a proposal to build new 
Houses of Parliament being introduced separately ; soe Parl. Proc., 1877, 
i, passim. Cf. Baker, Constitution of South Australia, pp. xii-xiv ; Rusden, 
Australia, iii. 476-9. A land tax and an increment tax were rejected in 1910.