140 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA 



hand to mouth ; they might now plan and build and 

 breed for a decade or (as in their intoxication they be- 

 lieved) for all time. The squatters had triumphed. 



A strange reaction in public opinion ensued. The 

 Colony appeared to wake up to a sense of what it had 

 done, and realised that it had bartered away its birth- 

 right, for no visible equivalent. By the admission of the 

 squatters' historian, G. W. Rusden, Earl Grey's bill, 

 with the Orders-in-Council that gave effect to it, ex- 

 asperated the community against them, because it 

 locked up the land, squandered a magnificent inheri- 

 tance, and led to corruption in the Government de- 

 partments by favouring intrigues to obtain land. A 

 profound jealousy of the great pastoralists sprang up 

 and bore bitter fruit for many years. Their very friends 

 turned against them. Robert Lowe had fought hard 

 for them, and when — largely through his agency, we 

 are assured on the high authority of Wentworth — they 

 had got all that they claimed, this ardent advocate of 

 their rights wheeled round and became the squatters* 

 implacable foe. None had more strenuously battled 

 against the proposed squatting regulations of 1844 than 

 Dr. Lang, but from the moment the Orders-in-Council 

 of 1847 were issued, he reprobated the squatters as the 

 natural enemies of the rest of the Colony. The popu- 

 lace even lifted up its heel against the man who had 

 long been its idol, and when Wentworth stood for re- 

 election in 1851, he had to make a passionate personal 

 appeal to the electors of Sydney, who were bent on 

 driving him out, and who relented so far as to place 

 him at the bottom of a poll where Dr. Lang, his sworn 

 foe, was at the top. The democracy at last realised 

 that the squatters were its natural enemies. 



In New South Wales the great extent of the land 

 that remained in the possession of tlie Crown, which 

 was still available to make provision for new selectors 

 without infringing on the integrity of the runs held 

 by the squatters, hindered the question from becoming 

 a matter of life and death. It was otherwifce with more 



