Page:The Irish in Australia.djvu/112

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98
THE IRISH IN AUSTRALIA.

which he laboured to secure a creditable display of the productions of his adopted home in the metropolitan city of his native land.

Judge Casey was also closely connected with the public affairs of early Sandhurst. His daily journal, the Bendigo Advertiser, rendered good service to the cause of the diggers, and it continues to be the leading newspaper of the district. After serving his apprenticeship in the local municipal council, Mr. Casey entered parliament in i1863, and held his seat almost continuously until his elevation to the bench a few years ago. As a Minister of the Crown, he is best known and remembered for his able and popular administration of the Lands Department. He succeeded, where most of his predecessors signally failed, in effectually checking the land-grabbing propensities of unscrupulous squatters. Taking advantage of the liberal land legislation of the colony, these wealthy pastoral princes were in the habit of getting their hirelings to personate bonâ fide selectors and take up land from the Government, ostensibly for the purpose of settling on the soil, but in reality to transfer the land to the squatters as soon as the Government regulations would permit them to do so. In this fraudulent manner several of the valuable large estates of Victoria were put together piece by piece, and their owners, so far from being ashamed of having acquired their possessions by such dishonourable and underhand practices, very often glory in their successful evasion of the law, and take much credit to themselves for their smartness. This baneful and illegal system of land-grabbing is known thoughout the colonies by the expressive name of "dummyism," the persons professing to be genuine selectors, desirous of establishing themselves on the soil,