THE SQUATTERS' TRIBUNE 149 



a heap, it would not amount to such a sum as was in- 

 volved in the transaction now debated. If all the job- 

 bery since Walpole M'ere piled up into one job, it would 

 not be as big a job as this that Wentworth now asked 

 the Governor or the Government to perpetrate. The 

 chief owner of twenty million acres ! He would have 

 been a squatter in excelsis ! And all these broad acres 

 bought at a price reckoned at the rate of a farthing per 

 100 acres ! That would have surpassed missionary 

 Williams, missionary Taylor, and other like worthies, 

 who " bought " only 110,000 acres from the unsuspecting 

 Maoris, and paid much more for them. But there was 

 still. Sir George held, such a thing as public virtue, 

 and pubhc integrity was not banished from the bosoms 

 of men in office. In the name of these high attributes 

 the Governor urged the Legislative Council to pass the 

 prohibitory bill, declaring that no titles to land were 

 valid that were not derived from or confirmed by the 

 Queen-in-Council. Wentworth pleaded before the Legis- 

 lative Council for two days, but the bill was passed. 

 Wentworth threw up his commission as a justice of the 

 peace, and Gipps withdrew his recommendation that 

 Wentworth should be placed in the Legislative Council. 

 It was a humiliating defeat for Wentworth, and he was 

 not one of those who forgive. He Avas thenceforth 

 Gipps's implacable foe.* 



Wentworth's defeat on this historic occasion nerved 

 him to press for the reform of the Council. A few years 

 later he partially succeeded. The Council was made 

 elective in 1851. A few more years, and he was to be 

 completely successful. Constitutional government was 

 granted to the Colony. His defeat had other results 

 still. When Gipps endeavoured to inoculate the Colony 

 with " the leprosy of his beautiful code of squatters' 

 regulations," as Wentworth called it, the great squatter, 

 not yet the squatters' tribune, led the van of the resist- 



* Dr. Lang reprints the speech of Sir George Gipps, and he 

 could hardly have taken a more deadly means of paying off old 

 scores. See his Account of New South Wales, i. Appendix. 



