180 A HISTORY OF THE COLONY OF VICTORIA 



The particulars of the formation of the Association have already 

 been given in Chapter V., and it is only necessary to add that the 

 majority oi the partners in the adventure were men of a superior 

 status to the average Van Diemen's Land settler. They included 

 in their ranks members of some of the learned professions, Govern- 

 ment officials, merchants and bankers. They not only brought a 

 practised intelligence to bear on their enterprise, but they liberally 

 backed their opinions by a considerable monetary expenditure. 

 Above all, they were scrupulously careful to protect the rights of 

 the aborigines, and, as their Deed of Association, already quoted, 

 shows, the colonising principles which they adopted were such that, 

 if carried out in their integrity, they would have rendered Govern- 

 ment supervision almost unnecessary. And yet had they been an 

 organised gang of cattle stealers, they could hardly have been 

 warned off more roughly by the Government, or more persistently 

 denounced by a large number of their contemporaries, who were 

 playing a lone hand in the same game oi' territorial acquisition. 



Probably the chief reason for the denunciation of the Sydney 

 Press is to be found in the fact of the Association having at the out- 

 set made their request to Governor Arthur, and to the unmistakably 

 friendly feeling which he manifested towards them. Fawkner was 

 never weary of attributing to personal greed on the part of Governor 

 Arthur the favour which he showed to the adventurers, but he 

 was never able to adduce any proof of direct interest, and his sus- 

 picions were certainly not shared by the colonists generally. That 

 the Governor took a sympathetic interest in the movement is un- 

 doubted, and in addition to the fact that his nephew had a share in 

 the partnership, and that his former Attorney-General was the 

 moving spirit of the enterprise, it is not unlikely that he had an 

 ambition to extend his authority to such a region of promise. 

 Certainly he was justified, in view of the existing means of communi- 

 cation, in assuming that it would be more conveniently supervised 

 from Van Diemen's Land, whence all the settlers came, than from 

 the remote centre of the New South Wales Government. 



And if, as the Association claimed in the first letter to the Colo- 

 nial Secretary, the district was not within the limit of New South 

 Wales, both the Governor and the adventurers had a reasonable 



