THE SQUATTERS' VICTORY 143 



the leaseholder. The character of the Orders seems 

 beyond cavil. They granted practical temporary pos- 

 session to all holders and permanent possession to all 

 men of adequate means. 



It was a squatters' victory, and was on all grounds 

 defensible. For that longer or shorter period in the 

 history of every Australasian colonj^while the pastoral 

 age endured, such a hold on their tracts of pasture-land 

 was acquired as would enable that age to be lived out 

 to the fullest measure of the colony's capacity. Nothing 

 less than a degree of possession while it lasted would 

 have sufficed to treat those pastures and breed those 

 sheep and cattle that have formed far greater stores 

 of wealth than have been dug out from the bowels of 

 the earth. Nothing less would have reared the men — 

 grazier, stockman, drover, carrier, shepherd and shearer 

 — who solidly laid the human base of the pastoral age. 



