Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 2.djvu/247

 who, when they became unfit for that trying pursuit, might become discontented and dangerous to the public safety; and I hoped to see a multitude of my own countrymen, who had been driven from the land in Ireland, find a safer and more prosperous home on the genial soil of Victoria. All the agricultural land of prime quality in the colony, estimated to exceed ten million acres, was reserved exclusively for agricultural settlement. Near the chief towns, goldfields, railway stations, seaports, and other centres of population, agricultural areas were ordered to be surveyed into farms ranging from forty to six hundred and forty acres. These farms could be selected by any person of either sex who was of age and domiciled in Victoria, provided he or she appeared personally before the land officer and made a statutory declaration, equivalent to an affidavit, that the land was selected for his or her own use and benefit, and not as agent for any other person. A selector prepared to occupy and cultivate the land was alone entitled to select, and the Act contained the most elaborate provisions to punish any one who attempted to evade the law. A selector selecting on behalf of another was liable to a prosecution for misdemeanour, and the person who employed him to a prosecution for conspiracy. If any one got into improper possession a sheriff could be required to empannel a jury, who were authorised to eject him and put the lawful selector in his place. The portion of the area not selected was to be declared a commonage for the benefit of the selectors as long as it was unsold, and the commonage fees expended exclusively on local improvements. The price of land was in no case to exceed £1 an acre, which the selector might pay at once and get his title deeds, or pay for one-half, renting the other moiety at 2s. 6d. an acre for eight years, this rent being credited as part of the purchase money; a .principle which I introduced into land legislation for the first time. The price and rent of the land went into the Public Treasury, but practically to be returned to the people who paid it, one-fourth of it being expended on paying the passage of immigrants to keep the labour market sufficiently supplied, and two-fourths to be expended on the great highways of communication on the local roads and bridges, in