I assume that the owners or possessors of these paintings or documents are persons of integrity, and we will try to deal with them from our point of view as fairly as possible. I think I can assure the Senator, in the first place, that as far as the Library authorities and my Department are concerned, we would try to deal fairly with persons who have these things.
They would have to acquaint us—I think there would be no way out of that—if they had documents over 100 years old or, in the case of the Minister having made a special Order covering a particular document in a particular person's possession, or covering some series of documents such as the Parnell manuscripts which I have mentioned, and in that case we would try to give an Order to the owner, if we knew the owner, and he would then be in a position to make known to us the description, the actual description, of the document or documents. I think I may say that all we would ask the owner to do is to let us know, in the first instance, what actually the document was like, to give us a description of it. Generally, the Library authorities will be able to determine from a short description whether it has any interest for them or not. They have spent all their lives at this work. They have a fairly good idea of what documents are there. It would be only one chance in a thousand that some document would turn up that they would never have heard of before. We must assume that they will have a general idea of what there is in the country and, therefore, they will be able to judge, from a comparatively short description, whether a document is of value to them or not. If they consider it to be of value to the historical collection, then they may ask for permission to examine the document, and under the Bill we are empowered to get facilities to examine it.
When the Senator talks of ransacking collections, I think he is viewing the thing in a most unfavourable way. I do not know why it should be suggested that responsible servants of the State should go out to ransack anybody's collection or create inconvenience and unpleasantness for themselves as well as for those with whom they are dealing. When they get a description of the document, if they are interested in it, the Bill will entitle them to write—and I am sure they will write in a proper way—asking for permission to examine the document or documents described. Having examined the document, they will then be in a position to say whether it should be photographed or not, and I think I can assure the Senator again that the Library, in the future as in the past, will try to carry out its work with courtesy and with the least possible inconvenience to anybody.