Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 2.djvu/305

 principles of the Constitution; they brought the affairs of the country into disastrous confusion, and fatally lowered the character of Parliament. While I was in Europe an Amending Land Act was passed by Mr. Grant, under which I was assured a great wrong was done to the hopes of free selectors. When the Land Act of '62 was under discussion, it was urged that the farmers who had purchased land at auction would be at a great disadvantage competing with selectors who obtained virgin soil, and paid the purchase-money in eight instalments. To put them on the same footing, Parliament gave each farmer the right to select an allotment equal to his purchased land, provided it did not exceed 320 acres, and enabled him to pay for it in the same manner and hold it on the same conditions as the free selectors. The Amending Land Act increased this power, and I was assured that many thousand farmers had got certificates entitling them to selection, and instead of using them to obtain new farms, sold them to squatters, some of whom had accumulated a number which entitled them to claim wide districts of fertile land properly belonging to intending settlers. But it was contended they remained liable to the penalty of five shillings an acre, if they did not within a year make the improvements required by the Act. A Quieting of Titles Bill was introduced to relieve them from this necessity, and in the debate Mr. Ireland declared that he had always foreseen and intended that the omission of the words "and assigns" should carry the fatal consequences which followed from it. To me the announcement was like a blow in the face. I was not in Parliament, but I immediately wrote to the Argus that if Mr. Ireland had any such knowledge or intention when the Land Bill was under debate, he had never communicated them to me; had he done so, I would not have remained a moment a member of a Government responsible for such a deception. The Argus, commenting on my letter, said with contemptuous sarcasm, "Mr. Ireland now avows that he knew all along that his colleague was under a misapprehension, and we have not the slightest doubt that the hon. member for Kilmore states the exact fact when he confesses that he also knew what would be the effect of the omission of the words 'and assigns.' We are driven to the