330 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA 



They set themselves to thwart the ordinance of 1853. 

 While " Grey claimed that he had made an end of the 

 practice of closing the land against the poor," they 

 took effectual measures to show that he had only thrown 

 open the gates of large landed estates to the rich. " By 

 ' gridironing ' the land and ' taking the eyes ' out of 

 it wealthy individuals were able to defeat the Governor's 

 designs. Just so had Earl Grey suspected that they 

 would be defeated." * 



The history of the question in New Zealand rehearsed 

 its evolution in Australia — its visionary inception and 

 its long-delayed success. As in New Zealand, the chief 

 enemy of the large runholder was the free selector. 

 Here he was the creation of Sir John Robertson, in 

 New South Wales, and of Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, 

 in Victoria. In 1861 a minister who enjoyed the 

 prime qualification of a very complete practical acquain- 

 tance with the matter, if he had an exhaustive ignorance 

 of everything else, set himself to secure as a patrimony 

 for the people the landed estates that were the monopoly 

 of the wealthy and the privileged. The new Gracchus 

 came from the ranks of the squatters, and yet he had 

 already, years before, contended in the congenial pre- 

 sence of Sir G«orge Gipps, the anti-squatting Governor, 

 for the rights of the selector. Ten yea,TS later, in 1856, 

 he pleaded for the right of free selection over all public 

 lands. In 1861 he introduced a bill that legahsed this 

 principle. The potency or the sting of it lay in the 

 word, " free." It was a catchword that appealed to 

 the British colonist, who was proud of his freedom, 

 so much greater than he had ever enjoyed in the Mother- 

 land. Robertson used it to signify the selection of 

 land Avithout previous survey. What did this mean ? 

 Ten years earlier the sagacious Gipps had asserted that 

 a clear and sure tenure of unsurveyed land was imprac- 

 ticable. Robertson scouted the idea. His object was 

 to save expense and obvious delay. He w^ould thus 

 flood the country with freeholders who would acquire 

 * CoLLiEE, *S*> George Qrey, pp. 84-6, 



