Page:The Present State and Prospects of the Port Phillip District of New South Wales.djvu/103

 owner of perhaps 15,000 or 20,000 sheep, and who is an extensive employer of labour, should not be entitled to vote at the election of a member, far less to sit in the Legislative Council, while, if his bullock-driver leave his service, and sets up as a water-carrier at Melbourne, occupying a house worth £20 a year, he becomes his superior in constitutional privileges. The objection to making personal chattels the basis of qualification, owing to their perishable nature, and the facility of the transfer of property in them, does not apply to stock in a country where the main wealth of the inhabitants consists in flocks and herds and in the profits derived from their produce; for there such property possesses a more permanent character than that attributed to personal chattels by the policy of the English law. So long as a man retains his license from the crown, he must retain his stock, in order to occupy his run; when through distress, or from any other cause, he parts with his stock, he also gives up his license, and embraces a totally new mode of life. The thing is as much or more a matter of notoriety than a transfer of landed property; and this it is which, in my mind, allows a broad hue to be drawn between the possession of personal chattels in England and property in stock in Australia, accompanied by the possession of a depasturing license, and the payment of an annual assessment for each head.

The only other shadow of an argument against giving the elective franchise to squatters is, that they are virtually represented under the present system. This, however, is a consideration which cannot be supposed