344 A HISTOEY OF THE COLONY OF VICTORIA 



ordinated general to specific interests it turned independent re- 

 presentatives into class delegates it even accepted members of 

 Parliament, who were pledged by written bond to act and vote as 

 an outside council should direct, and who were also pledged to 

 contribute to that Council a portion of the emolument they drew from 

 the State. And with this loss of independence the baleful influence 

 of outside organisations worked many disasters, and fomented dis- 

 trust and strife between labour and capital. But poor in capacity 

 and colourless in character as so large a proportion of the rank and 

 file of members have been, they have been admittedly free from the 

 charge of corruption in the ordinary sense of the term. It is a 

 legitimate boast that during all the process of nation-making, with 

 untried men and upon untried principles, the number who could be 

 charged with personally corrupt motives, or official peculation, was 

 very small, and in all proved cases transgressors were promptly 

 dealt with by their offended colleagues. Some members who lived 

 on their 300 a year had been reared in an environment which re- 

 garded 3,000 a year as emblematic of oppression and unlawful 

 gains. They ignorantly but honestly believed that it was easier for 

 the proverbial camel to go through the needle's eye, than for such 

 a man to do right for the sake of right. They saw men with such 

 dangerous incomes in the Legislative Council, who were even 

 making their riches more offensive by refusing to take pay for their 

 legislative work. When, in the presence of such feelings, the friends 

 of the Council held it up as a chamber of review, and a check on 

 hasty party legislation by the paid law-makers, it is easy to see the 

 basis of the strong antagonism and heated language to which the 

 business, and even the existence of the Council had been often 

 subjected in the Assembly. 



Much of the experimental legislation was conceived in a hope- 

 lessly wrong spirit. Incessant tinkering with the land laws was 

 made necessary by the generous but fallacious intent to put the 

 poor man who had no capital on the land, to the exclusion of the 

 man who could afford to pay for it, and to properly work it. It 

 was commonly supposed that if the State gave a man a piece of 

 land which under the conditions of so-called purchase it practically 

 did it set his feet on the high road to prosperity. It ignored the 



