THE CONFUSION OF 1852, 1853, 1854 387 



and though the mass of the population was carelessly indifferent, 

 the overgrown official staff experienced a flutter of anxiety lest the 

 new man should lay a sterner hand upon them. 



Mr. Latrobe's reception by the handful of people who occupied 

 Port Phillip when he took charge as superintendent has been de- 

 scribed. For at least ten years thereafter, despite a certain con- 

 stitutional timidity that made him averse to change, combined with 

 an honest doubt of the capacity of the people to rule themselves, 

 he gained the confidence and regard of the solid and enterprising 

 class, who were the real builders of the community. The animosity 

 displayed towards him by writers like Thomas McCombie and David 

 Blair found its expression mainly through the City Corporation, and 

 the press organs that espoused its cause. Its origin was, as is very 

 commonly the case, the refusal of financial assistance, and a natural 

 unwillingness on the part of Mr. Latrobe to be drawn into an atti- 

 tude of hostility to his superior officer in Sydney. The expression of 

 ill feeling was essentially metropolitan, for throughout the country, 

 before the gold era, Mr. Latrobe always retained the confidence 

 of the settlers. 



The last four years of his administration certainly proved too 

 much for him. The people whose progress he had watched, whose 

 affairs were known to him for years, and who had learned to esteem 

 him highly, were swamped and obliterated by the inrush of thou- 

 sands of adventurers, who swarmed over the hitherto peaceful and 

 prosperous land, in search of its hidden treasures. Separation, too, 

 had brought greater responsibilities, and had removed one prop on 

 which, it must be admitted, he was prone to lean. After 1851 

 matters were no longer to be settled by his personal decision. There 

 was an Executive to be brought into line : there was a Council to 

 wrangle over its recommendations. There was a tendency on the 

 part of that Council to ignore statutory obligations to the Crown, 

 and a tendency to hold the Governor responsible for predicted 

 disasters if those obligations were enforced. When he stood up for 

 the Crown, he found himself threatened with a refusal of supplies, 

 and when he made desperate efforts to keep together, at any cost, a 

 staff for administering the Government, he was denounced alike for 

 extravagance and incapacity. Nearly all the criticism was of the 



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