194 A HISTORY OF THE COLONY OF VICTORIA 



sponsible duties of arbitration, were not allowed to concentrate their 

 attention on this one claim. Petitions poured in upon them from all 

 the unauthorised occupants of trie pastoral solitudes of Port Phillip. 

 One, with over forty signatures attached, was supported by a delegate 

 from Hobart Town, in the person of Mr. John Dobson, and made a 

 strong point of the fact that while the memorialists had undergone 

 equal hardships and expenditure in giving a new colony to the 

 British Crown, they had carefully abstained from intruding on its 

 just prerogative, by making any fanciful purchases from the natives, 

 though they alleged that they had equal opportunities with the 

 Association of doing so. Another petition from residents in Van 

 Diemen's Land who had sent over stock to Port Phillip, bearing 

 amongst others the signature of Mr. W. J. T. Clarke, asked that 

 they should be placed on the same footing as to any advantages 

 His Excellency might be pleased to afford to others, and claimed 

 that they sent no delegate, because they were quite satisfied to 

 trust to his known justice and impartiality. 



With these documents before them the Executive set to work, 

 and on the 21st of October recorded their decision in an exhaustive 

 official minute. At the outset they recognised that to comply literally 

 with the Secretary of State's instructions, which were to put the 

 land at Port Phillip up for sale, and at the same time to allow 

 any priority of purchase was impracticable. They therefore set to 

 work to discover in what way their case differed from that of the 

 numerous other unauthorised occupiers of Crown lands in New 

 South Wales, and on the grounds of discovery and the transfer 

 of capital from Van Diemen's Land they decided against them. 

 They somewhat ungenerously belittled the idea of discovery, by 

 saying that it was no more than could be claimed by any stock- 

 holder within the colonial boundary pushing on to the outlying 

 tracts of country which he desired to occupy. And as for the in- 

 troduction of capital, which at one time commanded equivalent 

 free grants of land, that practice had now been finally abandoned 

 by the Crown. The claim was therefore limited to the steps taken 

 and expenses incurred by the Association, under an erroneous opinion 

 of the validity of their treaty with the natives, to the extent that it 

 existed prior to the Governor's proclamation of 26th August, 1835. 



