Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 2.djvu/309

 who had any politics except their own interest, and their zeal was abated since the O'Shanassy and Duffy quarrel. Mr. Higinbotham did not hesitate to declare that the new Land Act would have failed completely but for the 42nd Section, which Mr. Grant strained wisely, as the lawyer thought, to purposes never contemplated by those who passed the measure. I find the groans of a disappointed reformer in my diary at this date:—

"There is no intention, I understand, of bringing out the foreigners skilled in Southern industries, provided for in the Land Act, and who would enrich the colony. Some of the ministers, who are commission agents, have no sympathy with the design, and others don't understand it. Punch thought it a fine stroke of wit to represent the foreign immigrants as Irishmen in masquerade. 'What are you, Mike?' 'I'm a Swish.' Other of my reforms go the same way. I established a system of competitive examinations in the department of Land and Works. No sooner was I gone than it was discontinued. I established a system of recording the services of officers with a view to their permanent promotion, which also stopped the moment I left. A man must do the duty of his position or die of selfcontempt, but let him not mistake the penalty. Of all the ills that have befallen me, not very great indeed, but sometimes very irritating, the majority have sprung from doing my duty. I am assailed daily by G. P. S., who I am told is nephew of a squatter whom I prevented from outwitting the Land Department, and often by W., whom I punished for a detected fraud, but it is idle to complain. So it was always. Leave, as Mangan sings:

Before I found a seat in Parliament, a Bill to establish a new education system was introduced to the Assembly by Mr. Higinbotham, at that time the most powerful man in Victoria, and known among politicians as the Dictator. From the foundations of the colony two systems of education, one secular, one denominational, had been supported by the