350 A HISTORY OF THE COLONY OF VICTORIA 



with such additional clauses as might be necessary to render it 

 more effective. It was done. On the 16th of November it was 

 carried by a large majority, and Sir Chas. Hotham, unwilling to 

 accentuate the difficulties by which he was surrounded on the eve 

 of the outbreak at Ballaarat, considered it wise to placate public 

 opinion, and gave his formal assent to the measure for one year. 



The Home Government, harassed and distressed at this time 

 with the disasters in the Crimea, no longer offered active opposition, 

 and the Act remained on the statute book of Victoria as an illustra- 

 tion that sometimes the claims of personal safety may outweigh the 

 principles of abstract justice. 



But if the defiant attitude of the colonists in the matter of the 

 convicts placed the Lieutenant-Governor in the unpleasant position 

 of a buffer between them and his Imperial employers, he had a still 

 more difficult and harassing task in honestly seeking to harmonise 

 the legal and equitable claims of the squatters with the changed 

 conditions which the advent of the mining population brought 

 about. In this case the fiercely contending parties were on the 

 spot, and he was called upon to administer contradictory regulations 

 under an ill-defined Act, and to decide questions of momentous issue 

 to individuals, from which the most learned judge in equity might 

 have asked to be excused. The conditions of pastoral tenure under 

 the Imperial Ordinance of 1846 have been described in Chapter IX., 

 and there can be no doubt that they were fairly applicable to the 

 condition of the colony at the time, and gave a reasonable security 

 for the investment of capital in an industry that was undoubtedly 

 the mainstay of the settlement. They proved, however, under the 

 suddenly altered conditions of population, a source of protracted 

 political controversy, and stirred up a class hatred which gave to 

 some of the subsequent legislation a suspicion of injustice and en- 

 gendered much pitiful quibbling with the letter of the law when it 

 ran counter to the manifest spirit. The crux of the controversy 

 rested mainly on the right of pre-emption, reserved to the holders 

 of leases in the intermediate and unsettled districts by the Order in 

 Council of March, 1847. 



The boundary of runs had been originally defined with a generous 

 vagueness, but before leases could be issued surveys were necessary. 



