32 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA 



the other. The Government, like all early rulers, 

 possesses the eminent domain of the land, grants, 

 leases, or sells it to suitable or favoured recipients, 

 and controls the cultivation of the soil. To a very 

 late date — doA^Ti to the present time, indeed, and more 

 actively now than ever — the Government incessantly 

 intervenes in the landed evolution, experimenting 

 in the mode of tenure, leasing or selling it, allocating 

 or repurchasing on a small or a large scale. In the 

 early days its intervention was more personal and 

 arbitrary, and the apparitions of individuals on the 

 stage were moredr amatic and sometimes sensational. 

 In these encounters high, even heroic attributes — 

 sagacity, firmness, strenuous resolution, indomitable 

 persistence through the opposition of those in authority, 

 determined battling for the right — were brought into 

 collision with the ignoble spirits that gnaw at every 

 beneficent undertaking — petty malignity, mean jeal- 

 ousy, and dark insanity — and win out of the most 

 discouraging circumstances a genuine success — we might 

 say, a real triumph. 



