310 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA 



representatives to the rural districts than to the towns, 

 the new Act provided that 1,500 voters in the rural 

 districts, which were controlled by the squatters, could 

 elect one member, while 15,000 votes were needed in 

 Sydney to elect a single member. 



One of the two cardinal principles of colonial evolu- 

 tion is that each colony severally repeats, in an abridged 

 form and with local modifications, all or most of the 

 phases through Avhich its metropolis or motherland has 

 itself passed.* So does the pastoral age in the British 

 colonies at the Antipodes recapitulate the corresponding 

 stage in the history of England. 



For many centuries, but notably from the signing of 

 Magna Charta and the beginning of the thirteenth cen- 

 tury, the power of the great territorial nobility had been 

 steadily growing in England with the growth of their 

 landed possessions. In the seventeenth century the 

 King of England was still desperately contending for 

 the power that was slipping from his grasp, but the 

 djmastic revolution of 1688 for ever robbed him of the 

 reality of sovereignty, leaving him only the shadow of 

 it. From that date onwards till the epoch of the great 

 Reform Act the government of England lay in the hands 

 of the territorial nobles. They were the advisers of the 

 sovereign, premiers and Secretaries of State, ambassa- 

 dors and governors of dependencies and colonies. Save 

 for a few lucky lawyers, they monopolized the House of 

 Lords and membered the House of Commons. They 

 seem to fill the stage. What pamphleteer in our days 

 would persistently attack the leading nobles as Junius 

 assailed the Dukes of Bedford and Grafton ? The 

 higher subordinate ofhces, including the permanent 

 under-secretary ships, were filled with their connections. 

 The bench, more rarely, was occupied by their crea- 

 tures. The country gentry officered the army and the 

 navy. The greater prizes of the Church were in the hands 

 of the peer and the squire : they virtually created bishops 



* See a series of seven articles (by J. Collier) on The EvolU" 

 tion of Colonies in the Popular Science Monthly, in 1898-99. 



