I suggest, therefore, that here is a matter of very grave consequence to which attention should be paid by those responsible for this Constitution. The amendment I have attempted to bring in does not affect any necessary safeguard for maintaining public credit. The article gives power to include in the Consolidated Fund, or as charges upon the revenue, certain items necessary and proper to be kept outside the annual vote. It only prevents the future Parliament legislating, and thereby withdrawing, so to say, from the competence of its own successors, the right of voting upon certain other items in the financial statement. Remember it would be curtailing the power of a sovereign body, its successor, which no Parliament should really have as against its own successor by such device as this clause contains. It would only open the door to frequent alternations, and to party influences or other transitory factors of that kind, which is, to say the least, most undesirable. I therefore commend this amendment to the House.
