Page:The three colonies of Australia.djvu/201

 thousand sheep had been sacrificed; and that to maintain a high price of land on sale, land on lease had been handed over in perpetuity.

Many of those who had supported the squatters so long as Sir George Gipps attempted to confiscate their property, and had encouraged them to resist a system of taxation based on royal prerogative, similar to that which Hampden died resisting, now saw that the compromise sacrificed everything to the pastoral interest, and seriously checked the extension of that class of yeoman freeholders on whom the colonisation of the colony chiefly depended—for without farms there would be few wives and children in the bush.

Among these was Mr. Robert Lowe, who, as chairman of the committee appointed "to consider the minimum upset price of land," drew up a report, in which, on the evidence of all the most distinguished men in the colony, the whole legislation of the mother country on the subject of land was shown to be opposed to the feelings, to the needs of the colonies, and, in fact, to the colonisation of such a country as Australia.

In the same year Mr. Lowe issued a small pamphlet, entitled "Address to the colonists of New South Wales, on the proposed Land Orders," which shortly and clearly explained the defects of the compromise with the squatters. He observes:—

"The position of the squatter has always varied with the price of land. Precarious when land is low, more assured when it is high, and little short of freehold, when the sale of land is, as now, virtually prohibited. Up to the year 1841, when the price of land was raised from five shillings to twelve shillings per acre, the squatters looked upon themselves, and were regarded by the community as merely temporary occupants, depasturing the land till it was wanted for sale — as persons who might soon, and must eventually, be removed, to make way for the proprietor in fee-simple. The Act of Parliament which passed in 1842, for raising the minimum price of land to £1 an acre, was not intended to have any effect on the position of the squatter; it was intended, as Lord Grey tells us, to prevent jobbing—to concentrate the population—to bring out immigrants by raising a large land fund, and by means of such immigrants to raise the value of land. Instead of preventing jobbing, it has sacrificed almost the whole territory to one vast job. Instead of concentration, it has given us dispersion; it has destroyed the land fund which it was intended to raise, stopped the immigration it was intended to promote, and annihilated the value of land it was intended to enhance.

"The squatters, considering that they held the land till it was required for purchase, and that the purchase had been made by Parliament impossible, began to look upon their runs as their own. They began to sprout from tenants-at-will into freeholders. Sir George Gipps saw the danger, but instead of meeting it by a reduction of the minimum price of land, which would at once have