314 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA 



was bred to the bureaucracy, but belonged to the 

 squatter-class, and, after holding some minor offices, 

 applied himself to pastoral pursuits, but never seriously 

 or with much success. His heart was in politics. He 

 did not therefore win the squatters' hearts. James 

 McArthur, son of the celebrated John and inheritor 

 of Camden Park, intrigued against him, when standing 

 for Camden, and succeeded in running him out. 

 Cowper's turn soon came. McArthur stood for the 

 county of Cumberland ; Cowper was new to the con- 

 stituency, if not to the constituents, but he defeated 

 his opponent by a large majority. Another hereditary 

 squatter, Sir John Robertson, who, along ^^^th Captain 

 Towns and Sir Charles Cowper, " held immense tracts 

 of pastoral country ... on the Norman and Albert 

 Rivers near the Gulf of Carpentaria," was, as Wentworth 

 claimed to be, a champion of the freehold. How large 

 a part the recreant, as his fellow squatters doubtless 

 deemed him, played in landed politics, we shall subse- 

 quently see. " The father of separation," Edward Curr, 

 the reputed author of the severance of Victoria from 

 New South Wales, was manager of the Circular Head 

 squatting company in Van Diemen's Land. 



After the introduction of responsible government 

 into the Australasian colonies in the middle fifties, the 

 squatting element in the various legislatures was by no 

 means proportionally diminished ; perhaps it was 

 increased. Squatters were freely elected to the more 

 popular chamber — by whatever name it was known ; 

 and the second chamber, or Legislative Council, became 

 their stronghold. W. J. Brodribb, who has told his 

 own story, may be taken as a type of the post-consti- 

 tutional squatter. Migrating from New South Wales 

 to Victoria, and standing for a suburban constituency, 

 he favoured the pohcy embodied in the Robertson Act 

 of 1861, and, as a Victorian legislator, he assisted in 

 passing the Duffy free-selection Act of 1862 ; on no 

 other terms, doubtless, could he have been elected for 

 an urban constituency. Removing to New South Wales, 



