Page:Diary of ten years.djvu/316

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298

I sent over there. I have serious thoughts of sending all the flock over there also, for I find it does not pay to keep a small quantity here.

Saturday.—I went to Perth on Thursday and reached home to-night. Our busy time is just now arrived (I mean in Council). Our financial year commences 1st April, previous to which time our "Budget" has to be opened, laws enacted, ways and means devised, expenditure sanctioned, and revenue appropriated, by an Act framed for that purpose. Our Governor has now ceased to fret about the control exercised over him this time last year in Legislative Council, where we carried a measure of reduction of the police in spite of him. He thinks it was unauthorized usurpation of power on our parts, and, strange to say, we have never heard from England on the subject. Both he and we deprecate the same sort of collision this year, and he seems contriving every means to avoid it, and yet carry his purposes. The 11th of this month is the day fixed for the first sitting, and we await it in suspense. He has ordered me to be on the spot all next week, and, in the meantime, I have prepared for him five bills to be submitted to the Council:—Recovery of Small Debts Bill; a Bill to amend the Act for establishing the Court; a Bill for attaching Debts, Money, Goods, or Effects, in the hands of third parties; a Bill for adopting several English Acts; and an ordinance for Appropriating the Revenue. I hope he will not want any more, for I am quite tired of them for one time. He wanted a Bill for establishing some sort of municipal authority in the town of Perth, but I persuaded him that it was premature, as indeed it is.

Tuesday.—I went to Perth yesterday morning, when, behold, there was a new arrangement; our "Budget" had been put off till the 22nd, our Governor going to York in the meantime. So I returned to spend some of the interval at home and recruit, for I have been in a feverish heated state of body for some time. Perhaps it is owing to the weather, which has