XVI. 
and squatters; but in the light of present knowledge of the careers of men like 
William Macleay and his contemporaries mentioned below—all of whom have 
but recently passed away—and of many others, some of them still with us, it would 
hardly do at the present time to apply to squatters as a class all that that trenchant 
divine, Dr. Lang, said of them in 1852, as follows :— 
“Many of the squatters were men of standing and education from the mother-country, who had 
merely gone out to the colonies, as adventurers go to the East or West Indies, to make their fortunes and 
to return to England. Notwithstanding the vast tracts of pastoral country which they held in temporary 
occupation under their squatting licenses, very few of them were possessed of the fee simple of a single 
acre of ground in the colony. They had, therefore, no permanent tie in it—for very few of them were 
married—and no peculiar interest in its moral welfare and social advancement. Besides, a considerable 
number of these gentlemen were men of aristocratic notions and feelings, who disliked the advances that 
were evidently making by the middle and industrious classes of the free emigrant population around them, 
and who felt that their own dignity and selfimportance would be much more easily maintained in the 
country if there were no middle class in the community at all—nothing, in short, between the master and 
the slave.” (Vol. I. p. 386.) 
And again: ‘Through the discovery of gold in Australia, and the consequent influx of population 
from the mother-country, the ascendancy of the squatters of the Australian colonies will also cease to 
determine. The object of these gentlemen was to occupy and engross the country for themselves exclusively, 
to partition it out in immense sheep-walks and cattle-runs, and (virtually) to prevent the influx and settle- 
ment of an agricultural population. Their object, in other words, was to keep the people down when they 
were down, and to give them no chance of rising for the future. . . . But this game is now up, and 
the days of squatting—in the sense of a powerful political party for whose aggrandisement the interests of 
the public were compromised and sacriticed—are now ended. Like the Grave, the Diggings have already 
levelled these past distinctions, and they are fast placing the wealth and property of the country in the 
hands of men of nerve and sinew—men of industry and perseverance—men of honesty and integrity ; who 
are perfectly willing to accord to others all they claim for themselves—‘a fair field and no favour.’”* 
(Vol. II. p. 425.) 
One aspect of the other side of the question may be put in in a few sentences 
from a speech by the late Sir John Hay, the President of the Legislative Council, at 
a banquet tendered to Sir William Macleay by a number of his old Parliamentary 
friends on the eve of his departure in the Chevert in May, 1875. Said Sir John, 
who had been twitted by the late Hon. William Forstert with having been a 
squatter :— 
“T must remind the honorable member who has spoken of me as a squatter who came to the front 
at an early period, that it has not been at all unusual for squatters to come to the front in political matters. 
I will bring to the recollection of my honorable friend that he himself was a practical squatter, and 
although the honorable gentleman’s great squatting abilities have been lost sight of in a kind of halo of 
glory which surrounds his political character, still he is not less a squatter than J or my friend Mr. Macleay. 
My friend on the left, too [the Honorable John Robertson], who is now the Premier of the Colony, and the 
* Historical and Statistical Account of New South Wales. By J. Dunmore Lang, D.D. Third Edition, 2 vols, 1852. 
+ Whose successful efforts in bringing under the notice of Mr. Krefft the type specimens of the Queensland mud-fish 
(Ceratodus Forsteri) are now a matter of history. 
