Lately one of the members of the Victorian House of Representatives declared that he could, within twenty-four hours, bring to Parliament House a hundred young men—with plant, capital, health, and industry—who for months had been vainly seeking for land on which to establish themselves. In answer to this, two squatters near Camperdown, where the pick of the Western District country is to be seen, have each offered to find good land at a reasonable rental, and under a liberal lease for ten out of these hundred men. They would get entry for fallowing from July to December, 1912, and not be asked to pay any rent till March 1, 1913, when they would have been able to gather in their first crops. Such terms, it has been declared, have been offered for years, and the twenty men are not yet forthcoming, let alone a hundred. It still remains to be seen whether the English and Scotch farmers among the prospective emigrants will take a better advantage of the offer. I was once talking to an Irishman, who was working on the railway-line out here, about his own country, for which he professed the most passionate affection, bringing tears to my eyes by the description of all the horrors that had attended the eviction of himself, his young wife, and children—the barbarous disregard of sentiment and feeling. “But why?” I exclaimed at last, when I did manage to get in a word—“why? Were you very much behind with your rent?” “I was that—sure I’d niver paid it at all, at all, nor me feyther before me.” “But if they knew you could not pay?” “Ach, I could pay fine; but what should I be afther wasting good money paying rint fur? Now, tell me that.” It sometimes seems to me that many of the would-be farmers, who in Melbourne clamour for land, hold much the same opinions as did that Irishman. Why should they waste good money buying land, or paying “rint” either? though the plea which is put forward is that the settlers want to buy the land, and the squatters—the two Camperdown men among others—wish to merely lease out and not to sell their properties. Perhaps it would be as well in either case to follow the precedent of the pie-man, and insist, as he did—“Show me first your penny”—or, anyhow, show the young men, if not their pennies, before subdividing any more of the large estates; for it may yet happen that Government finds more on its hands than it clearly knows what to do with.