THE FIRST LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL 351 



When the Order in Council was proclaimed the squatters were 

 allowed some nine months to send in their applications, and by the 

 30th of June, 1848, no less than 826 leases had been demanded. 

 When these were gazetted the trouble began. About one-fifth of 

 the claims were disputed, and 158 caveats were lodged under the 

 provisions of a " Disputed Boundaries Act " then just passed. 

 These were referred to the Crown Lands Commissioners for adjust- 

 ment, but so tedious was the process that more than two years 

 elapsed before they had all been dealt with. It was the end of 

 1850 before the final confirmation of the leases was announced, but 

 that was a very long way short of obtaining the coveted deed. The 

 applications, after approval, were referred back to the Commissioners 

 for exact definition of boundaries by actual survey. This would 

 have occupied many years with the ordinary staff of the Survey 

 Department, so a number of outsiders, contract surveyors, were 

 taken on at a charge of 2 per mile. The squatters foolishly re- 

 sisted this charge as extravagant and refused to pay. To prevent a 

 block the Government, with reckless haste, reduced the rate to 10s. 

 per mile. Then the surveyors struck and refused to work for such 

 admittedly inadequate pay. No good genius was at hand to work 

 a compromise ; the Government made a feeble attempt to carry on 

 the business with its own limited staff, and before any real progress 

 had been made the Survey Department, like the rest of the service, 

 succumbed to an acute attack of the gold mania, and three-fourths 

 of the runs remained unsurveyed. With the diggers came new 

 conditions, and the squatter who had hitherto been very indifferent 

 about the leases, and had rather regarded his right of pre-emption 

 at 1 an acre as a sample of irony, suddenly became loud in his 

 clamour for the rights to which he was entitled under Her Majesty's 

 regulations. 



Meanwhile several squatters, regarding their applications for 

 leases as an equivalent to having them, complicated matters by 

 selling stations with rights of pre-emption, which, though certainly 

 implied, had as yet no legal existence. Conflict had arisen with 

 pastoral tenants upon whose runs the Government had proposed 

 to sell land, but who claimed that it could only be sold to them 

 under the terms of the lease to which they were entitled. The 



