Page:The Present State and Prospects of the Port Phillip District of New South Wales.djvu/46

 been an attempt to concentrate the colonists in a country not calculated, in its present condition, to support a dense population, but above all others suited to pastoral pursuits, and where common sense and experience point to dispersion as the only means of making its resources available.

The squatting system has been the necessary though monstrous result of this injudicious attempt. According to the present system of colonization, government is placed in the position of an immense monopolist of land, and as land is the only thing from which a livelihood can be derived, they can impose what terms they please upon the colonists. As the mode of deriving wealth from the land, pointed out by the peculiar circumstances of the colony, was through the medium of grazing, and as it was impossible to buy land for that purpose without paying at least £1 per acre—a price amounting to a prohibition—it followed, as logically as any conclusion in Euclid from its premises, that men, in order to prosper, must adopt some other mode of obtaining a tenure, and the squatting system was the result.

That which is commonly known as the squatting license, is a license from the crown to depasture unoccupied crown lands. For this license, £10 a year is paid to the crown, as well as a poll tax of 1d. for each sheep, 3d. for each head of cattle, and 6d. for each horse depastured under it. It is granted for a year, but is revocable at pleasure; and it is optional with the com-