150 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA 



ance. Not till 1847, when the Orders-in-Council were 

 issued, he was at last won over to be the pastorahsts' 

 chief. A year later he recanted his Radicalism. In 

 1839, as a member of the Patriotic Association, he was 

 so much of a Radical that he advocated a £5 franchise ; 

 in 1848 he went so far back on his old contentions that 

 he deemed a £20 franchise low enough. 



A great landholder, Went^'orth was one of eight 

 individuals on the Liverpool Plains who held, among 

 them, 1,747,840 acres ; and the possession of three great 

 stations was but the just expression in landed property 

 of that puissant personality. He was the squatters' 

 tribune ; and in that capacity beyond doubt the greatest 

 service that he rendered to the cause of the pastorahsts 

 was the introduction and the carrying of the Lien on 

 Wool Act 1844 ; and he threatened to leave the Colony 

 if it was vetoed by the Home Government. 



Wentworth was not the tribune of the squatters on 

 their own terms. He had not always been their ally. 

 During the twenty years of his crusade on behalf of the 

 Emancipists he was necessarily opposed to them, and 

 in his book on Australia, published in 1819, he launched 

 an indictment against the " Exclusivists " — the squatters 

 and others who would deny to the emancipists the pos- 

 session of political privileges. In 1844 he delivered 

 against Ben Boyd, the largest squatter in Australia, 

 the most stirring of his speeches. When he addressed 

 his constituents in 1848, he admitted that he belonged 

 to an unpopular class. " I perceive that the squatters 

 are no favourites of yours," he told his audience, " and 

 I am a squatter." He was a squatter rather by status 

 than by predilection, and (I am authoritatively informed) 

 he never resided on any of his three large stations. 

 When he stood for election, he did not seek a squatter's 

 constituency ; he preferred to sit for Sydney, and he 

 long rejoiced in representing the democracy. It was 

 Robert Lowe, far more than himself, he explained, whose 

 influence and oratory had procured leases of their runs 

 for the squatters. No one, he asserted, " had more 



