THE EVOLUTION OF COLONIES. 291 



fact that none of them was transported to Botany Bay in that or 

 later years. They were atrophied portions of the British land system 

 when Australia was founded in 1788. For fully sixteen years the 

 possession of lands granted or seized was as absolute as the English 

 law ever allows it to be. Then the landholders, finding the large 

 tracts already conceded insufficient for the development of the pas- 

 toral industry, applied for more, and themselves suggested in 1803 a 

 plan of leasing crown lands which in the following year was legalized 

 as " the first charter of squatterdom " ; it was the beginning of a 

 system that has brought under pastoral occupancy territories as ex- 

 tensive as the largest European countries. The land system formed 

 part of or gave birth to a political organization. A host of so-called 

 seigneurs imported into old Canada as much of the ancien regime 

 as would bear the voyage. Manors in Maryland reproduced the 

 feudal courts-baron and courts-leet. The great New York land- 

 owners, as inheriting both English and Dutch institutions, presided 

 in such courts and were at the same time hereditary members 

 of a powerful legislative order.* The courts were dropped on 

 the way out to Australia, but the political influence of the Eng- 

 lish landed aristocracy inhered in their representatives at the 

 antipodes. As the Southern slavearchy, through its Washingtons 

 and Jeffersons, Clays and Calhouns, was for three quarters of a cen- 

 tury the driving force in American politics, the Australian squatter- 

 archy for one generation or more ruled the seven colonies with a sway 

 that waxed as the absolute power of the governor waned. It com- 

 posed the legislature, appointed the judges, controlled the executive, 

 and if the governor was refractory it sent him home. In both south- 

 ern countries social life reflected its tastes and was the measure of its 

 grandeur. It constituted " society," ran the races, gave the balls, 

 and kept open house; the surrounding villages lived in its sunshine. 

 Why could not this patriarchal state last, as it has lasted in Arabia 

 for thousands of years and in Europe for centuries? In the Southern 

 States it was brought to bankruptcy by the civil war. In Australia 

 it collapsed before two enemies as deadly — a succession of droughts 

 and a fall in the price of wool. The banker has his foot on the 

 squatter's neck. If one may judge from the published maps, three 

 fourths of the freehold land in the older colonies is in the hands 

 of the money lenders. The once lordly runholder, who would have 

 excluded from his table, or at least from his visiting; circle, anv one 

 engaged in commerce, is now the tenant of a mortgage company 

 which began by using him too well and ended by crushing him un- 

 mercifully. 



It is also brought to a close by the rise of the agricultural stage. 



* EgglestoD, op. cit., p. 850. 



