SQUATTERO-MASTIX 177 



circumstances ; and if he did not distribute loaves and 

 fishes to his hearers, he might reflect that he was ad- 

 dressing gold-diggers, who could have been in no want 

 of either. Paul, he admitted, had been instrumental 

 in settHng far more ministers than he had himself been 

 in Australasia. If his disinterestedness is open to 

 dispute, he had no doubt of it himself. He never 

 shrank from recalhng that he had made great personal 

 sacrifices and exertions on behalf of pubhc causes. 

 The property he had surrendered, he claimed, would 

 now (when he spoke — say, in the sixties) be worth 

 £100,000. 



He claimed that he had made an end of the practice 

 of concubinage in official circles, and he put a stop to 

 the editing of official journals by freedmen. He brought 

 out schoolmasters of a high class, divinity students — 

 some of them men of talent, and successful ministers ; 

 and he planted and reared many a church. What a 

 host of individuals he must have baptized, married, or 

 followed to the grave in his long life ! He carried one 

 great measure through Parhament — the repeal of the 

 laws of primogeniture and entail. The carrying of 

 another — the disendowment of the four subsidised 

 Churches — v/o.^ initiated by the action he took in 1842, 

 when he renounced State aid and virtually seceded 

 from the Presbyterian Church, and was throughout 

 aided by his incessant agitation. 



Wliy have I thus fully outhned the career of the 

 Squattero-Mastix — the most interesting, though not 

 the most attractive, personahty in the history of Aus- 

 tralia ? Because it forms a large part of the social 

 environment in the pastoral age, and because his atti- 

 tude to the pastoralists is the key to nearly all his 

 activities. All the pastorahst leaders — McArthur and 

 Wentworth, Berry and Leshe — at one time or another 

 came into coUision with this clerical Ishmael. Nearly 

 all of their measures fell under the lash of his invective. 

 He urged a continuous polemic against their pohcy. 

 12 



