Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 2.djvu/215

 transacted in private. The ministers of the Crown in their departments disposed of as much of the public property in a twelvemonth as Parliament itself, and disposed of it at their entire discretion, sometimes ignorant of the facts, and always ear-wigged by interested persons. In my own case I had to determine the granting or refusal of disputed preemptive rights, the compensation for land required for public purposes, or for injury inflicted on private property; the position of public buildings, the direction of public roads, and the like, all of them of serious practical importance, and I now made the great change of causing all this business to be transacted in a Court of Land and Works open to the public and reported by the press, a reform which has continued in operation for nearly forty years.

From the beginning the Government were assailed by persistent abuse of which Mr. Ireland and Dr. Evans were the main objects. It seemed destined to be overthrown, but as a dissolution of Parliament was in the air, it happened, as it commonly does in such circumstances, that no one would take the responsibility of precipitating that event. Among the measures promised the next session, was a Land Bill opening the country to selection, for which it was my duty to be responsible. I had taken up in public and private the ground that the alluvial land possessed by the State must be reserved for the people, agriculture, not pasturage, being the highest purpose to which it could be applied; I was also of opinion that a generous system of deferred payments was a condition without which the mass of the industrious classes could not get on the land. I had reason to fear that these sentiments were not universal among my colleagues, and when we got into recess I was constantly thwarted in the design of carrying my principles into action. I was urged over and over to sell masses of agricultural land which I thought ought to be kept for selectors. At length it was plain that I would not be aided in doing what I had undertaken to do, and I immediately tendered my resigna-