CHAPTER XVI 



THE squatters' BATTLE 



The squatter was engendered by the excess of individual 

 energy and enterprise over the inertness and routine 

 of Government. Finding himself cramped within the 

 settled boundaries of the Colony, he pushed out in 

 search, not of " fresh woods," but of pastures new. To 

 regularise his occupancy of such lands " beyond the 

 boundaries of location," he was granted an annual 

 license at a moderate rate, with additional stock-money 

 on his head of cattle or sheep. Then, for a quarter of 

 a century, ensued a keen contest between the squatters 

 and the local Government, sometimes aided, sometimes 

 thwarted, by the Home Government. For, by the 

 Orders in Council of March 9, 1847, the squatters gained 

 from the Colonial Office under Earl Grey, a long-de- 

 manded and bitterly denied " recognition of their claim 

 to become, by mere occupation, entitled to the ultimate 

 freehold " of vast territorial tracts. At least, so it was 

 in New South Wales and, with more uncertainty, in 

 Victoria. South Australia, wisely guided by Edward 

 Gibbon Wakefield, and New Zealand, judiciously go- 

 verned by Sir George Grey, escaped the scourge. Wake- 

 field, indeed, always protested against the creation of a 

 Crown title to the users of natural pasturage. His 

 protest had little weight with the able and conscientious, 

 but wrong-headed and crotchety Secretary for the 

 Colonies. With this exorbitant acquisition, the run- 

 holder, now definitively known as the very lordly 

 squatter, the patriarch of his county or his district and 



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