THE SQUATTERS' VICTORY 141 



limited Victoria. There the demand for agricultural 

 land or land for townships was keener and less easily 

 satisfied, and the resentment against the Orders-in- 

 Council was stronger. Mr. Fawkner, one of the founders 

 of Victoria, and (as Mr. Rusden would say) a squatter 

 manqui, denounced the squatters as robbers. Lieu- 

 tenant-Governor Latrobe took the same side, though 

 he, of course, did not use the same language. He was 

 more argumentative. In 1851 he was still opposed to 

 making anj'^ concessions to the pastoralist occupiers. 

 He warned the Government of New South Wales against 

 the impolicy of recognising the claims of the squatters 

 to the fee-simple or to the right of pre-emption over 

 them. He advised the revision of the Orders-in-Council 

 and, especially, the rescission of the acknowledgment 

 of the squatters' pre-emptive rights. Sir Charles 

 FitzRoj^ the squatters' Governor, considered the ex- 

 tinction of these rights, or even the qualification of them, 

 as "incompatible with the preservation of the faith 

 of the Crown pledged by the Orders-in-Council." The 

 subject was referred to that solvent, or confuser, of all 

 colonial political problems — the Colonial Office, which 

 on this occasion thoroughly earned the title of the 

 Circumlocution Office. The Duke of Newcastle was 

 then at the head of the hybrid department of War and 

 the Colonies — and in those days there was apt to be a 

 wonderfully close connection between war and the 

 colonies. The Duke took ample time to consider the 

 many knotty questions submitted to him. He thought 

 to shelve the question by referring the decision on it 

 to the law-officers of the Crown. Their opinion, or that 

 of one of them, would have settled the matter, could 

 any legal opinion have settled it. So high an authority 

 as Sir Roundell Palmer held that the occupants had 

 " a clear and indisputable right to leases." The Colonial 

 Office, somewhat scared doubtless by so positive a de- 

 liverance, did not venture to ask the opinion of the 

 other law-officer, Sir Alexander Cockburn. In a quan- 

 dary, the Duke of Newcastle refused to lay down any 



