326 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA 



hope that the measure would not be re-enacted. In 

 due course it was re-enacted, its author declaring that 

 if the bill Avere not perpetuated, he would leave the 

 Colony. The beneficence of the Act appears to have 

 been unmistakable. Wentworth's chief opponent. Sir 

 Edward Deas Thomson, Colonial Secretar}^ and long the 

 official leader of the Council, admitted that the operation 

 of the Act had saved many a squatter from imminent ruin. 

 Hitherto, the squatters had it all their own way. So 

 stamped with the brand of pastoralism was the legis- 

 lation of the foities and fifties in New South Wales 

 that Sir John Robertson, the son of a squatter, for 

 some years his father's superintendent, and latterly 

 himself a squatter, denounced it as partial and unjust. 

 Examined before a Parliamentary committee in 1855, 

 he declared that the object of it, or at all events, its 

 tendency, was to depress the agriculturist and, at 

 his expense, exalt the pastoralist. He asserted that 

 the two classes ought to be placed on a like footing, 

 and claimed that the facilities afforded to the one 

 should be granted to the other. He especially referred 

 to the Impounding Act, which gave the grazier an unfair 

 advantage over the agriculturist. The Lien on Wool 

 Act should be extended to agricultural produce. The 

 Mortgage on Cattle Act, which aided the pastoralists 

 in a similar manner, was another unfair discrimination 

 against the agriculturists. Lastly, he condemned the 

 system by which favoured pastorahsts occupied Crown 

 lands, for an indefinite period and at a nominal rent, 

 while tile agriculturist was subjected to more strin- 

 gent requirements. The doughty ex-squatter's denun- 

 ciation of the privileged class that he belonged to was 

 to raise a tide of feeling which embodied itself in 

 just such laws as he demanded. Hardly a lustrum 

 more and the agricultural interests were to gain the 

 ascendancy that had long been enjoyed by the pas- 

 toralists. Robertson himself who had become an 

 agriculturist on a large scale, was to lead the new 

 crusade. 



