The action of the Government was illegal throughout, as the Act stated expressly that the advances should be made out of funds provided by Parliament, and no funds had been voted for the purpose, but it may be condoned on the ground of the extreme urgency of the crisis. At the expiration of a year the limit had been reached in most cases, and further advances were indispensable to prevent the immediate collapse of the majority of the settlements. The Commissioner of Crown Lands, accordingly, introduced a Bill in which he asked for authority to increase the advances, under the same conditions, to L100 per head, and for further powers of control over the settlements. The Bill, which was hotly opposed, was not passed till a Select Committee had been appointed to inquire on the spot into the conditions and financial prospects of the settlements and had reported in its favour. The report, which was dated November 14, 1895, and the evidence upon which it was based, gave a complete picture of the disadvantages under which the settlers laboured and of the drawbacks of the system of distribution. The land selected for the villages was such, it was pointed out, that it could not be cultivated except under irrigation. This had {9} necessitated the erection of a costly pumping plant, which the settlers had difficulty in purchasing, as they could offer no security for payment. When the plant was finally obtained, it was found, in some cases, to be unsuitable; in others it could not be properly worked in the absence of a capable engineer. The settlers, brought together at haphazard by destitution and not by their knowledge of agricultural pursuits, had wasted much time and labour through ignorance, incapacity, and insufficiency of proper tools. They had lacked a strong controlling hand to direct their operations, and had disobeyed the trustees whom they had themselves appointed; and as the trustees had little power discipline had been nonexistent, and quarrels, at several settlements, of continual occurrence. Order had been restored with difficulty, as the only punishment was expulsion, upon a decision of the trustees ratified by a vote of the villagers, and many villagers had voted against expulsion from the fear that they in their turn might be subjected to a similar penalty. The arrangements for the distribution of rations also had caused considerable dissatisfaction and led to disagreement between single and married men, as the former felt that the latter received a share of the stores out of proportion to the work they had done. The general system was, that rations were issued on a sliding scale, according as a man was single or had a large or small family, and was to that extent purely communistic. {10}