Council, and that, on one occasion, in reference to the Drawbacks Bill, they had almost assumed the power of initiating a money vote. Curiously enough, the principal question mentioned by him as suitable for the application of the plebiscite was that of Female Suffrage, which, introduced as a private measure, had been rejected by the Council after he had failed to secure its defeat in the Assembly. In the {178} preceding session, he said, the Assembly had vainly asked the Council to agree to a joint dissolution of both Houses when a Bill had twice been rejected and a General Election had intervened. A similar measure, passed in South Australia in 1881, had operated most successfully, its mere presence on the Statute Book having put an end to the deadlocks which had previously been of constant occurrence. It is probable, however, that the comparative absence of disputes has mainly been due to the democratisation of the Council, which has brought it into close touch with the feeling of the Assembly; and that, in Tasmania, where the electors for the Council are only one in five of those for the Assembly, a joint dissolution would produce little change in the _personnel_ of the former body. The Treasurer, Sir Philip Fysh, treating the subject historically, pointed out that the Council had thrown out year after year votes, first passed in 1863, for the expenditure of L103,000 upon the construction of roads and bridges, and had several times rejected the Launceston and Western, Hobart and Launceston, and Mersey and Deloraine Railway Bills. They had three times refused to accept a Bill for the re-assessment of the land of the Province with a view to the imposition of a tax on unimproved values. As regards its opposition to the proposed expenditure of borrowed money upon the construction of railways, roads and bridges, it would appear that the Council in most cases acted {179} wisely, and that the Province would have been benefited if it had persisted in its opposition. The total public debt at the end of June, 1896, was nearly L8,150,000, exclusive of L215,000 in temporary Treasury Bills and L250,000 in Local Inscribed Stock, and entailed an annual liability for interest of L313,000. Towards this amount, the works which should be directly reproductive, such as the railways and the postal and telegraphic services, returned a net revenue, after payment of working expenses, of only L26,000. It may be contended, of course, that the country could not have been developed in the absence of a large expenditure; but, as the liability forms a heavy burden upon so small a population--a burden, indeed, which might have become almost unbearable but for the valuable discoveries of minerals--the Council seems to have had abundant justification for its efforts to check the extravagant tendencies of the Assembly. The Ministry, after passing the second reading of the Bill in the Assembly by a small majority, withdrew it,