the Colonial Minister, he declined to give it his sanction unless the Council would consent that one-third of the Committee of Correspondence should consist of nominee members—that is to say, in the same proportion as the council. To this the elective councillors would by no means agree, and the official appointment of Mr. Scott, and his salary, remained in abeyance, with many other questions of greater importance; but in the meantime Mr. Scott exerted himself with considerable success to oppose the bill prepared by Lord Stanley, on the information of Sir George Gipps, for settling the tenure of pastoral lands, and entered into a correspondence, from which we make the following extracts.
In a letter addressed by Mr. F. Scott to the Speaker of the Legislative Council, dated 30th June, 1846, he refers to "the small amount of attention which colonial questions command in parliament," and adds te two more examples to one given in a previous letter," in the fact that twice the House of Commons had been counted out when he had motions standing for considering the subject of emigration. So that at that time it was impossible to find forty members willing to listen to Mr. Scott, on a question vitally affecting an important colony.
He then goes on to state that he had ascertained that the bill for the regulation of waste lands of Australia, laid on the table of the House of Lords by Lord Lyttleton, the under-secretary of the recently-appointed secretary, Mr. Gladstone, was substantially the same as one which had been printed the previous session, laid on the table of the House of Commons, and sent out to the colonies. He observes—"After a year's deliberation, after ascertaining the opinions of the colonists to be opposed to the measure, it is a matter of deep regret that the government should introduce the same bill to settle a question of vital importance, which it leaves more unsettled than ever." Then he adds these remarkable words coming from a Conservative of the old school: "I am not aware that the opinions of any one in this country connected with New South Wales, or of any one in the colony except his Excellency Sir George Gipps, were either ascertained or asked for. So that it would appear that the transmission of a bill by the government in this country for the consideration of a colony with a Legislative Council as a deliberative assembly, is little more than its transmission to the colony for the signature of the colonial governor without the council. The bill seems to be framed rather in accordance with the observations of the land and emigration commissioners than with a view to the interests of the Australian public."
The principle of the bill protested against was to maintain the high
