Page:The Present State and Prospects of the Port Phillip District of New South Wales.djvu/116

 for members and electors is at present the same as that of those to the Legislative Council. The squatters being excluded from these councils, petitioned the governor and council that their property in stock might not be made subject to taxation by, and be placed at the mercy of a body over whom they have no control; and this request being considered reasonable, landed property alone has been declared subject to taxation for these purposes, so that as long as this remains the case, the squatters have on this ground no cause for complaint. As in Port Phillip the proportion of land yielding a profitable return is very small, no tax of any amount can be raised without bearing very hard on the landed interest. The consequence is, that the district councils will not vote any salaries to the officers whom they have been obliged to elect, and there being likewise no funds to employ persons to make any assessment, or even to hire a room for the council to meet in, nobody will advance money or make himself liable for these expenses, and the thing was, when I left Melbourne, in February, 1844, at a dead stand.

As if to verify the vulgar adage that "It never rains but it pours," just before the arrival in the colony of the act of parliament, establishing these rural corporations in every county of New South Wales, the governor, with the advice of the old council, had established a municipal corporation in Sydney, and another in Melbourne, so that now we have no want of corporations, each with a salaried staff of warden, or mayor, treasurer, secretary, surveyor, &c. As when Truth, trampled under foot of men, fled from the earth, and took refuge