Alexandra Times at KellyGang 2/6/1868 (2)
Before concluding these few introductory remarks, we would take the opportunity of informing the numerous supporters of the late Wood's Point Times and Mountaineer that we feel reluctantly compelled to discontinue that paper. After mature consideration it appeared to us much better to concentrate all our force and energy in one good paper than weaken our efforts by separating our staff and dividing our plant for the purpose of producing two indifferent ones. Although personally removed from Wood's Point the interests of that important district shall still be dear to us. A residence of four years in that mountain region as journalists has secured for us many sincere and valued friends, and although the place is now suffering from the effects of a mad and reckless career of unprincipled and misguided speculation, yet we have the most implicit faith in Wood's Point, as a permanent gold-producing locality. The present escort returns clearly prove that the district is steadily recovering, and that the glory is far from being departed from this once celebrated gold-field. We shall supply our readers at Wood's Point, Gaffney's, Raspberry, Matlock, Jericho, Gooley's Creek, and surrounding places with the Alexandra Times in lieu of the Wood's Point Times and Mountaineer to the end of the current quarter, after which we shall discontinue unless we receive a fresh order.
Assuming for a moment that the majority in Legislative Council were to succeed in obtaining from the House of Assembly an acknowledgment of the claim of the Council to drive from office any Ministry, with whose financial policy the Council disagreed, we are utterly at a loss to know by what means the novel system of government, which would be thereby created, could be carried on. The most important by far, of the various functions of the Assembly in a new country possessing responsible government, is the raising and expending of revenue. Long before the Constitution of England settled down into its present form, contemporaneously almost with the gathering of the first parliament, in the year 1265, the people of England demanded of their Kings that taxes should not be levied without the consent of the people, and they carried this principle so far that in 1339, each order in parliament, viz., the classes now distinguished by the familiar titles of Lords and Commons, taxed themselves separately and in different proportions. The Lords apparently would not allow the Commons any authority over them in that respect, and maintained this distinction by their great military power, but as the commercial system gradually swallowed up that of armed authority, the Commons obtained that control over the financial policy of the kingdom which they have ever since retained, and which is now the corner stone in the tower of British liberty.
About the year 1407 the action of the three branches of the legislature was reduced to the system which, with many improvements, now exists. In process of time the present rules of parliamentary proceeding in the preparing and passing of measures affecting the nation became matured. The Lord always claimed co-ordinate jurisdiction with the Commons in matters of general legislation, but in financial measures ? Commons continued to assert and maintain their right to initiate in their own house, ? measures of taxation and expenditure, ? throughout the entire constitutional history of England not one instance has occurred ? the House of Lords having rejected the of the Commons appropriating the revenue nor have they in any one instance attempted to introduce into their own house, ? measure of taxation not previously sanctioned and prepared by the Commons.
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