162 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA 



ciples as a Liberal, he would himself have asserted. He 

 put himself in the wrong by not at once resigning the 

 seat he had been given on the implied condition that he 

 should support that very policy. At length he did resign, 

 and the pastoralists of two combined counties elected 

 him their representative. In that position he lent to 

 the squatters' cause his powerful advocacy. He joined 

 the Pastoralists' Association Committee, and loudly 

 trumpeted its claims and contentions. So effective 

 was his championship that, to believe the magnanimous 

 Wentworth, " there was no one whose speeches and 

 whose writings had so much weight with the Home 

 Government in the concessions it made to the squatters." 

 It was ungrudging. From none of the pastoralist con- 

 tentions did he Avithhold his support. He strenuously 

 aided WentAvorth, who for almost thirty years had been 

 crying out for a political constitution that would enable 

 the Colony to govern itself and the squatters to govern 

 the Colony. In supporting him he out-Wentworthed 

 the ultimate author of the Constitution. A genuine 

 Liberal, he had fought side by side with Wentworth. 

 He was at first imaginative, and, so early as 1846 — the 

 very year in which Sir George Grey was scheming a 

 federation of New Zealand with the South Sea Islands — 

 he forecast a far grander federation, wherein " England 

 and her colonies would be knit in an iron confederacy 

 supreme in its strength." Then he became vituperative 

 and menacing. He charged the Home Government 

 with " wilfully and of malice aforethought murdering 

 the liberties of the ColonJ^" If it refused to listen to 

 their remonstrances — " if the Government of Great 

 Britain would insist upon thrusting a Governor on the 

 Colony when we are quite ready to govern ourselves," 

 then the time would have come when the Colony should 

 consider whether its connection with the Motherland 

 should not be dissolved. He was a member of the Com- 

 mittee of the Legislative Council on Transportation, 

 and, jointly with Wentworth, he was responsible for 

 the Report advising the resumption of transportation. 



