Having resigned their office, the _six_ sent a letter of explanation to Lord Stanley. In summing up their complaints they asserted that they were called on to vote an expenditure the colony could not bear,--to anticipate a revenue higher than the customs department calculated on receiving; that they were denied information, although they were bound to deliberate; that they were expected to augment an alarming debt, and, when crime was increasing, to diminish police protection; that they were told by the governor he would carry the estimates by his casting-vote, before they refused to pass or had examined them; that the governor claimed power to borrow and spend without legislative consent; and finally, that discussion and enquiry were denounced as factious, unconstitutional, and disloyal: under these circumstances they resigned their seats, as the only open course, and submitted their conduct to the judgment of the Queen. The opposition to the measures of Wilmot could not be in every instance justified if separately considered. But the colony discovered in the governor an inflexible determination to carry out the system of probation under the instructions of Lord Stanley. It was not possible to resist the secretary of state, the chief aggressor. The imperious tenor of his despatches taught the people that mere remonstrance would be unavailing. They could only arrest his attention by involving his agents in embarrassment. Repeated motions for the attainment of the same object are certainly incompatible with legislative order. A small party might retard the public business, and gain no good end by delay; but the exact line between fair and factious opposition is not easily discovered and can be often only ascertained by the result. In this instance the object was clearly expressed in a rejected resolution:--"This council do decline voting the sums stated in the estimates laid on the table for the payment of the judicial, police, and gaol establishments during the ensuing year, as far as the expenses of the convict department with respect to those items are incurred. At the same time they desire to place on record an expression of regret that they should, by a sense of duty, be compelled to adopt any measure likely even temporarily to embarrass his excellency's government."[246]