134 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA 



taxation, without the assent of the semi-elective Legis- 

 lative Council that then represented alike the governors 

 and the governed. The squatters skilfully made what 

 was really their cause appear to be the popular cause. 

 A question of tea lighted up a national insurrection in 

 North America, and a question of land-tenure gave 

 birth in Australia to a quasi-national rising ; for it 

 was as passionately urged in Victoria and the future 

 Queensland as in New South Wales. For once, and 

 once only, the three most potent personalities in the 

 Mother-Colony made common cause and branded them- 

 selves together against the action of the Governor. 

 Wentworth opposed them, and endeavoured to stamp 

 out what he called " the leprosy of the beautiful Squatter 

 Regulations," because he had quarrelled with Gipps, 

 and because he belonged to the threatened class and 

 saw his personal interests endangered ; but he opposed 

 them on larger and more creditable grounds as invasions 

 of that British fetish — the liberty of the subject. Robert 

 Lowe opposed them, it is said, because he too had quar- 

 relled on pitiful personal grounds with hisfoimer patron 

 Sir George Gipps, but far more, we may hope and be- 

 lieve, because the regulatioi^s were in collision with 

 those Liberal principles of which he was all his days 

 the convinced exponent. Finally, Dr. Lang opposed 

 them, partly (we may suspect) because Gipps had 

 thwarted the repayment of a large sum to the Scots 

 Church — that is, to Dr. Lang — which Lang had ex- 

 pended in its name ; but again, we are fully assured, 

 because they constituted — or appeared to constitute — 

 an attempt at taxation by the Executive without the 

 indispensable sanction of the Legislature. 



The squatters saw their supremacy threatened, their 

 very existence endangered, and they fought as men 

 fight pro aris et pro focis. Not only the squatters, but 

 merchants and traders, A\ho however must have been 

 largely dependent on the squatterocracy, united to op- 

 pose the new encroachments on the privileges of the 

 Legislative Council (whose prerogative of legislation 



