Page:The Present State and Prospects of the Port Phillip District of New South Wales.djvu/102

 are entitled to be represented, while under the present law their tenure as squatters gives them no claim to be so. The government first, in their character of monopolists of land, force the most wealthy and respectable colonists to put up with a servile tenure, and then, in their character of lawgivers, recognize their political rights no more than if they were really serfs. With reference to the respectability of this class, I shall quote the words of a petition to the House of Commons on the subject of the franchise, which was agreed to at a highly influential meeting at Melbourne, but which has not yet been forwarded, in consequence, I believe, of some of the parchment rolls containing signatures having been lost. After stating the claims of squatting stockholders to the exercise of this right on the ground of property, and of direct contribution to the public revenue, it thus proceeds:—

It is indeed absurd, that a man of education, the