Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 2.djvu/250

 causes of that failure. In truth it arose wholly and solely from the manner in which the measure was drafted. The principles of a Bill are settled in the Cabinet on the initiative of the Minister who is to introduce it to Parliament; the distribution of it into sections is as strictly a professional task as the building of a bridge or the construction of a railway. As a draftsman on this occasion, the Attorney-General selected Mr. Hearne, a professor in the University, and as it would need much care and long consideration, he determined to give him the unusual fee of £500 for performing the task. Every clause was submitted in proof to me and to the law officers. Mr. Dennison Wood, the Solicitor-General, did not concur in some of the provisions, but I have never doubted that this fact made him more careful to carry them out effectually. The Attorney-General, Mr. Ireland, made self-destructive admissions at a later period, of which the reader shall hear in due course, but at this time they were wholly unsuspected by me. When the first areas were thrown open for selection it was found that the squatters who had formerly held the land set deliberately to work to evade the law. They hired persons at so much a head to make falsely the declaration required by the Act—that the land selected was for the selector's own use and benefit, when it was notoriously not for his own use, but for the use of his employer. And to increase their chance of success they had several applicants for each allotment, certain banks having entered into a conspiracy with them to allow a number of cheques to be drawn against the same deposit, as only one cheque could be successful and need to be paid. On these facts being disclosed I stopped the banking device by ordering that only gold or bank-notes should be received for the future by the land officers, and I prepared to prosecute the violators of the Act. But now the draftsman's first blunder appeared. Under the Act the person making a false declaration was liable to a prosecution for misdemeanour, and the person employing him to a prosecution for conspiracy. I caused to be collected and submitted to the Law Officers evidence against a number of dummy selectors, as they were called, and their employers. They were prosecuted, the jury con-