THE SQUATTER IN POLITICS 317 



powerful pastoral interests in the Legislature. In the 

 unreformed days the political leaders were chiefly 

 pastoralists. After a constitution had been granted, 

 pastorahsts flooded the nominee Legislative Council 

 and copiously figured in the House of Representatives. 

 Comparatively few now sit in the Council, and, while 

 a number of squatters or managers sat in the House of 

 Representatives so lately as 1887-90, only two now sit 

 there. Three or four pastoralists have been Premiers 

 — Sir Edward Stafford, acknowledged to have been by 

 far the most capable Parliamentary leader New Zealand 

 has had ; the high-minded Weld, afterwards promoted 

 to a succession of colonial governorships ; and the 

 courteous Sir John Hall. A nominal Premier of a few 

 weeks' duration, till he Avas expelled from the Cabinet 

 by his colleague, the imperious Vogel, one Waterhouse, 

 was the most contemptible bungler that ever held the 

 office. None now count for less in the semi-socialist 

 politics of the island-dominion than the old pastoralists. 

 The Legislative Assembly grew ever more democratic, 

 but the Legislative Council in New South Wales, as 

 in most of the colonies, remained the stronghold of 

 the squatters. \A^ien, in 1861, it threatened to repeat 

 its rejection of the Robertson land bill the year before, 

 the Government of the day appointed twenty-one 

 councillors — exactly the number required to give the 

 bill a majority of one. Thereupon the President, Sir 

 W. W. Burton, and nineteen members simultaneously 

 withdrew from the Chamber, and immediately resigned 

 their seats as a protest against the swamping of the 

 Council. With this creation, which carried into effect 

 a policy only threatened in connection with the House 

 of Lords in 1832 and 1910, the protracted ascendancy 

 of squatterdom came at last to an end. It made a 

 dying sputter when it resisted the Land and Income 

 taxes proposed in 1895. Then, however, the Chamber 

 yielded to the verdict of the general elections, which 

 the Chamber of 1861 refused to recognise. The Duke 

 of Newcastle severely condemned the action of Governor 



