Page:The Present State and Prospects of the Port Phillip District of New South Wales.djvu/102

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PRESENT STATE AND PROSPECTS

are entitled to be represented, while under the present law their tenure as squatters gives them no claim to be so. The government first, in their character of monopolists of land, force the most wealthy and respectable colonists to put up with a servile tenure, and then, in their character of lawgivers, recognize their political rights no more than if they were really serfs. With reference to the respectability of this class, I shall quote the words of a petition to the House of Commons on the subject of the franchise, which was agreed to at a highly influential meeting at Melbourne, but which has not yet been forwarded, in consequence, I believe, of some of the parchment rolls containing signatures having been lost. After stating the claims of squatting stockholders to the exercise of this right on the ground of property, and of direct contribution to the public revenue,[1] it thus proceeds:—


"That there is nothing in the position or circumstances of stockholders, which can warrant this exclusion, their body being chiefly composed of men of education, and numbering amongst them several members of the learned profession, and many retired officers of the army and navy, persons in influence and consideration second to none in the district. As a proof of which assertion may be cited the fact, that from amongst them have been selected the greater number of officers who fill, the most confidential situations under the crown, and nearly the whole of the territorial magistracy."


It is indeed absurd, that a man of education, the

  1. According to the estimate of the revenue for 1844, the sum likely to be raised from licenses and assessments will amount to £19,660, being about one-fourth of the whole revenue of the district.