4 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA 



a new departure. Henceforth, the convict staple 

 steadily loses ground, absorbed by the new elements, 

 or dying out, and no longer replenished from without. 

 On the convict base it had been founded ; from this 

 new pastoral root it grew. Now the real hfe of Australia 

 begins. 



The local Government was alarmed by those ugly 

 duckhngs, who thus boldly took to the water. Urged 

 by the Home Government to put down such unauthor- 

 ised squatters, it endeavoured to suppress them. The 

 character and the very existence of the Colony were at 

 stake. It had to be determined whether those immi- 

 grant pastoralists should be hunted like wild animals 

 and turned into Bedouins of the desert, or should be 

 encouraged to grow up like the patriarchs of old, nursing 

 within themselves the germs of the future State. The 

 English authorities hesitated long, seeing their plans for 

 Austraha on the point of being completely overthrown 

 by events they could never have foreseen. At first, 

 the Imperial Government decided in favour of adhering 

 to their original design, and instructions were issued to 

 arrest the overflow of unauthorised squatting beyond 

 the boundaries. It was too late ; the colonial Canute 

 who would have said to its waves : " thus far, and no 

 further," Avould have been as impotent as Mrs. Parting- 

 ton with her mop. Two wise Governors endeavoured 

 to regulate the inundation they could not dam, and by 

 a series of ordinances they introduced law and order 

 into the lawless doings of the adventurers. In these 

 they saw the promise of opulence and the beginnings of 

 a mighty State. These sagacious men reported to that 

 effect to the authorities in England, and succeeded in 

 persuading them of the justice of their views. Squat- 

 ting was legalised and regularised, and, giving an 

 impetus to free colonisation, it lifted the community 

 to a higher plane, and started it on a new career.* 



This, then, is the true germinal protoplasm of the 



* Drish Essays, by CArRicoBNus [Georoe Ranken], Edin- 

 burgh, 1872, pp. 4-5. 



