Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 2.djvu/252

 advisers of the Government. The measure, amended by a subsequent Parliament, became the permanent law of Victoria, and has regulated agricultural settlement for more than a generation. The French Government in New Caledonia, where there were no squatters in possession to conspire against the law, adopted my Land Act almost in its entirety for use in that colony. Another division of the Act dealt with the rent of pastoral land. The undoubted and express intention of the measure was to obtain an increased rent; and from a hundred to a hundred and fifty thousand pounds a year was expected. When the increased rents were fixed by the Board of Land and Works appeals were taken out against them, and the arbitrators to whom the appeals were committed did not increase, but actually diminished, the entire amount heretofore paid for the use of the public territory. Against such a contingency we had provided in the Act. The Board of Land and Works were authorised to increase the rent, if it were too low, at any period during twelve months. But here again the draftsman failed fatally; it was decided that such increase could only be made in cases where there had been no appeal, and appeals had been nearly universal. I refused to acquiesce in this decision, and I immediately prepared a Bill to amend the Land Act in this respect, and in all other respects in which it had proved defective.