for the Queen's judgment than permit the colony to be ruined, but I would on no account vote for it as an item on the Estimates. I reminded the Government that if it were proper to compensate the Governor for losses sustained in a party contest, the money ought to come out of party funds, not out of the Treasury, which belonged equally to his opponents and his supporters.
There was another difficulty, perhaps more serious. Such an overwhelming majority of the Assembly had declared for Protection, that that policy seemed certain to prevail for many years to come.
But the section of the Government policy which concerned me most was their method of dealing with the Land Question. Mr. Grant applied himself to opening the lands for the people as far as he was permitted with a squatter at the head of the Government who held more runs than any man in the colony had ever done before,[1] and could not maintain his position without the vote of the squatters in both Houses. Mr. Grant's intentions were excellent, and he got a hearty recognition of all he did, and of much that he did not do. He had found a method, it was said, of reconciling central authority with local knowledge and experience, from which much might be expected. And so he had indeed, but he found it in the Land Bill on which I had been put out of office, and incorporated it in his Act, without any addition or alteration whatever. The best administration of the best law where there are great personal interests at stake needs vigilant criticism, but while such criticism was still forthcoming on Free Trade it had become languid and intermittent, I was informed, on the question of the public lands. An old agitator assured me that this apathy arose from the death or insolvency of most of the early agitators, who had been ruined by neglecting their own affairs. Many of them were Irishmen, and Dr. Owens had recently said to him that the Irishmen were the only class
- ↑ "In their own name, Messrs. McCulloch, Sellar and Co., hold nine stations, and are also understood to be interested in several others. These stations are not in parts of the country at present almost inaccessible to the agricultural settler, but, on the contrary, many of them are on the proposed line of the North Eastern Railway, and great care appears to have been taken to ward off the vexatious incursions of free selectors by means of special reservations."—Argus.
