Official Record of the Debates Volume P. 2 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1891 Excerpt: ... then sent to the select committee without a vote being taken. Sir HENRY PARKES: I am by no means sure that I understand what the hon. member asks. I. as the mover of these resolutions, have no special power over them, and the only thing I insist upon--and I insist only as a matter of opinion--is that the whole of the resolutions should be dealt with. If it had been proposed at the outset to set them aside, I should have assented. If it had been proposed to refer them all to a committee, I should have assented. But as the Convention has deliberately entered upon a course of debate, I think that debate should extend over the whole, and that all the resolutions should be dealt with in some way or other. I shall be content if the Convention thinks well to negative any of them. I have said, times out of number, that I throw these resolutions, as it were, before the Convention as a commencement, leaving the Convention to deal with them as they will. I do not consider that I have any right to express an opinion as to how they are to be dealt with, beyond this, that as they have been entered upon, I think they should be finished in some form or other. That seems to me to be due to our own character as a body of deliberative men, and it is certainly due to mine. Sir John Bray: It is not expected that we shall make these resolutions complete in themselves Sir HENRY PARKES: Certainly not. Suppose Sir John Downer at this moment changed this resolution of mine so that it should be in quite a different form from that in which I submitted it, I should not complain of that. It is the right of the Convention. I should shape my own course afterwards accordingly; but I could not complain of the Convention in its undoubted right deciding anything upon my resolution. What I w...