Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 2.djvu/244

 holding office must be members of the Executive Council, which excludes the salutary practice of accustoming young men to public business in secondary positions. All the new Ministers had been in office before, and three of them had held the post of Prime Minister. Mr. Haines represented the original Government, Mr. Nicholson the intermediate one, and Mr. O'Shanassy the original Opposition. The new Government were determined to undertake serious and permanent work. The public service was put on an independent footing, the rural districts were brought under local government—two tasks, each of which might have occupied an entire session. Mr. Haines, the treasurer, announced that I had induced him to put a sum on the Estimates for the commencement of a National Gallery. A Royal Commission was appointed to carry out this work, and I induced John Forster, Mr. Herbert, R.A., and some other artists and men of letters in London to aid us in founding an institution which has greatly prospered, and is now one of the treasures of the colony.

But the task which excited the widest interest was the long-desired settlement of the land question. Before dealing with this measure, however, it is necessary to report an episode of high importance to me personally. The Age, which went into furious opposition to the new Government, supplemented its criticism by a statement of alleged facts so discreditable that any Government might have fallen before it. In the original survey of the Loddon district it was alleged that all the water frontages were reserved for public use, but that after being so reserved the original surveys of the district were altered at the Head Office in Melbourne under the directions of Mr. Ligar, the Surveyor-General, sanctioned by Mr. Gavan Duffy, the Minister of the Department. The reserves, it was added, were then put up for sale, and purchased by Mr. Hugh Glass, a local squatter—a purpose which had been the design of the entire conspiracy. This destructive charge was mentioned in Parliament by Mr. Higinbotham, to give the Minister, as he said, an opportunity of answering it. I answered immediately that as far as I was concerned the statement was an absolute fabrication, without any foundation, great or small; and I suggested that