taxation impossible, and which placed in the hands of the governors the nomination of an officer with powers of taxation."
Of the want of a "responsible government," the governor being, in fact, merely a subordinate officer of the Colonial Secretary of State for the time being; and the governor's official advisers in a position which made them practically as independent of the Legislative Council as if they had been merely his private friends. Thus, so long as the governor and his official advisers satisfied the home authorities, the colonists were without remedy for any illegality committed by the colonial government, however flagrant. As an instance of the working of the system, the report cites £127,000 applied to various illegal (not fraudulent) purposes by the governor in the course of seven years; "and a sum of £30,743 15s., which was not only expended by his excellency without any authority of the Legislative Council, but applied, by the governor's mere fiat, to the payment of debentures and other purposes to which the ordinary revenue was not applicable by law."
They further protested against the expense in police, gaols, and judicial expenditure inflicted upon the colonists in consequence of New South Wales being made a receptacle for the felons of England, after it had ceased to derive the profits of their labour on the assignment system; and of the violation of the [alleged] compact by which the surplus land revenues and other casual revenues of the crown had been ceded to the colonial treasuries. Under this head the committee claimed a large sum—£831,742 3s. 7d., and for the future an annual payment towards police, gaols, and courts of assize of £74,195 6s. 8d.
And finally, they requested that persons having claims of any description against the local government should, by special Act of Parliament, be enabled to sue a public officer as nominal defendant, and that the judges of the Supreme Court should be placed in the same position as to tenure of office and security of salary as the judges of the mother country, and no longer be liable to be suspended by the fiat and removed by the report of the governor.
But it would be impossible within any reasonable space to detail the series of overt acts which characterised the sedition-breeding policy of Sir George Gipps.
Nominally, a portion of the land revenue was set apart for the benefit of the aborigines; but when application was made for curing a native of a dangerous infectious skin disease, the governor "had no funds for such a purpose," and poor Jemmy Nyrang was pushed out of the government hospital.
Session after session it was a game at cross purposes and crooked
