178 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA 



He never tired of denouncing the curse of squatterdom, 

 and he looked back indignantly on those " dark days " 

 when the squatterocracy ruled New South Wales. At 

 all times he did his utmost to thwart its ends. Twice 

 he carried to England and the Colonial Office petitions 

 against the retention of the Clarence River district in 

 New South Wales, because he believed that that was in 

 the interests of the squatters. For the same reason 

 he opposed the retention of the Riverina. From the 

 first he hailed the gold discoveries as being certain to 

 work a complete transformation of the social condi- 

 tions. Especiallj^ did they ring the knell of the squatters. 

 " The object of these gentlemen," he wrote, " was to 

 occupy and engross the country for themselves ex- 

 clusively, to partition it into immense sheep-walks and 

 cattle-runs, and prevent the influx and settlement of 

 an agricultural population." They sought to keep the 

 people down. In 1846, by granting them long leases, 

 and in 1855, by handing over to a clique of Australian 

 squatters the noble inheritance of the people in the waste 

 lands of Australia, the Colonial Office aided them. Now 

 the ascendancy of the squatters had virtually ceased. 

 The game was up, and the days of the pastoralists, as 

 a powerful political party, were numbered." * 



For the same reason he welcomed the Free-Selection 

 Act carried by Sir John Robertson, and he told how, 

 through the financial embarrassments of the principal 

 original owners, some large estates in the neighbourhood 

 of Bathurst had been broken up, and thus prepared the 

 way for " that wonderfully salutary revolution " which 

 had " almost revolutionised the Colony." f He aided 

 in engineering the transition to the agricultural stage 

 by importing farmers and farm-labourers. He was not 

 only the scourge of the squatters ; he was largely the 

 destroyer of their class. He has therefore well earned 

 the title he took, of a " maker of a new Australia." 



* Lang, Account, etc., ii. 353-4. 

 t Ibid., ii. 214-6. 



