THE FIRST LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL 357 



on any one station was 640 acres. These figures are not very 

 important, out of the colony's area of 56,000,000 acres. It was 

 probably what was aimed at rather than what was secured that 

 roused the public antagonism. 



If the squatters did not secure the unreasonable privileges 

 which the Privy Council unintentionally conferred upon them, the 

 invasion of their runs was more than compensated for by the creation 

 of a local market for all the stock they could spare, and an increase 

 of prices beyond their most sanguine expectations. Some few of 

 them on the goldfields, and some in the oldest settled districts, 

 suffered deprivation and loss, as was inevitable ; but on the whole 

 the change brought far greater profit than loss, and scores of men 

 who in 1850 had found hard work and rigid economy necessary 

 conditions of life, now developed into a kind of territorial aristo- 

 cracy, often rather too ostentatious in displaying the power of the 

 purse. They had undoubtedly been enterprising and useful colonists, 

 to whose industry the country owed its substantial prosperity, but 

 as the area of Victoria was comparatively limited they were destined 

 to receive at the hands of the gold-attracted immigrants the treat- 

 ment which they had themselves accorded to the aborigines. If 

 it had once been thought wrong to reserve thousands of acres for 

 the hunting grounds of a handful of blacks, it was now considered 

 equally wrong that many square miles should be patrolled by a 

 few shepherds, instead of being dotted with a score of cottage 

 homes, covering happy families, and surrounded by waving corn 

 fields. Though the press and the people combined to make common 

 cause against the squatters, they were by no means an insignificant 

 body, for at the date of the proclamation of the New Constitution 

 there were upwards of a thousand licensed runs in the colony 

 carrying nearly 5,000,000 sheep and 53,000 head of cattle, from 

 which the Government derived a revenue of 70,000 a year. 



Perhaps it was some recognition of this importance that led the 

 Legislative Council in November, 1854, to appoint a Eoyal Com- 

 mission to inquire and report upon the whole question of squatting 

 tenure. The Governor's message described them as "gentlemen 

 of high standing, and representing all shades of opinion," a com- 

 bination that unhappily made their labours futile. After many 



