Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 2.djvu/245

 Mr. Higinbotham should move for a select committee to investigate the charges and I would second the motion. Mr. Higinbotham said he was unwilling to take so grave a course till the Minister had made his defence to the House, when it might be unnecessary. I went into the entire facts alleged, and rebutted them all. The practice of the Department was to make such water reserves as were recommended by their local surveyor, and all the reserves so recommended in the Loddon district had been made, and never afterwards altered in any respect. The report of the original surveyor and the original plan were produced, and established these facts beyond controversy. The officers of the Department in Melbourne, those who designed and those who engraved the plans, stated the circumstances within their knowledge, and the alleged alteration of plans was shown to be untrue and impossible without leaving the means of detection behind. The sole evidence upon which the shameful story had been founded appeared to have been that a contract surveyor had told an Age correspondent in conversation that all the water frontages in the district had been reserved, and as these particular ones were found not to be reserved an ingenious and unscrupulous theory was founded on his careless and inaccurate statement, in which conjectures were presented as solid facts. My answer dissipated the entire case, and satisfied the House and the Press that as far as I was concerned it was a shameful invention. But as my answer had to be made very hurriedly, I did not know the force of my own case till it had passed out of the hands of Parliament, when I discovered the facts. I asked one of my friends, Mr. Kenric Brodribb, to take a message to Mr. Higinbotham, with whom I had held no personal communication since this charge was mooted, requesting him to ask me another question, which would enable me to throw an unexpected light on the transaction. Mr. Higinbotham thought enough had been done, as the House was satisfied, and there would be no advantage in reviving the subject. Mr. Higinbotham