322 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA 



since remained the backbone of the Free- trade party, 

 and the comparative ease with which a Protective tariff 

 was carried through the ParUament of the Common- 

 wealth was partly due to the fact that not one squatter, 

 or a single representative of the class, sat in that assem- 

 bly. At this day the president of the Pastoralists' 

 Association annually fulminates agamst the creation of 

 factitious industries by means of protective duties. 



The foreign policy of the squatters was but an exten- 

 sion of their domestic policy. Surveying the pastoral 

 races among mankind, the many conquests they have 

 made, the thrones they have overturned, and the terror 

 and devastation they have spread over the most fertile 

 and warlike countries, Gibbon confesses, with some 

 reluctance, that " the pastoral manners, which have 

 been adorned with the fairest attributes of peace and 

 innocence, are much better adapted to the fierce and 

 cruel habits of a military life." We must not rashly 

 import into our as yet peaceful Australia conceptions 

 that apply to less civilised races, but it is a fact that 

 the lives of the pioneer Australian pastoralists were lives 

 of warfare. In many parts of Austraha the struggle 

 with the blacks was incessant. All the squatters had 

 fire-arms, and many of them daily went about armed. 

 Some entered into defensive alliances with one another. 

 Those who could not do so, or were of an unwarlike 

 temper, were driven from their runs. Gibbon also notes 

 that the necessity for keeping their flocks and herds at 

 night within the camp gradually introduced the rudi- 

 ments of the military art into the distribution, ordering, 

 and guarding of the encampment. Just such precautions 

 were taken by the early Australian overlanders, who 

 were the survivors of the nomad pastoralists of Europe 

 and Asia, and by the pastorahsts who travelled in search 

 of runs. They were thus in constant training for war- 

 fare. Naturally, among such pastorahsts sprang up a 

 force of volunteer cavahy ; the Austrahan Lancers were 

 at first composed of squatters or their sons ; the army 

 of the Shepherd Kings in Canterbury, New Zealand, 



