THE KNELL OF THE SQUATTER 333 



son Act. It had similar results. All the evils that 

 ensued in the neighbouring Colony followed with greater 

 intensity in more compact Victoria. Wholesale 

 evasions of the Act took place. There arose a scramble 

 for land, which, as in New Zealand and in New South 

 Wales, only ministered to the creation of large estates. 

 The author of the Act, Duffy himself, admitted that it 

 had failed. The " very class for whom we are legis- 

 lating," he confessed, " sold their inheritance for some 

 paltry bribe." Dummyism, he admitted, was rampant. 

 The failure dejected some earnest well-wishers in 

 far-away England. In 1868 a great friend of Duffy 

 — no less a man than Carlyle — wrote to him in doleful 

 terms : — 



" A retiu'ned emigrant (newspaper editor, I think, but cer- 

 tainly a sensible and credible kind of man) gave me very dis- 

 couraging accounts not long since of the state of immigration 

 among you. ' Next to no immigration at all,' reports he ; ' the 

 excellent Duffy Land Law made of even no effect ' by scandalous 

 ' auctioneering jobbers ' and other vulpine combinations and 

 creatures, whose modes and procedures I did not well understand. 

 But the news itself was to me exti-emely bad. For the roaring 

 anarchies of America itself, and of all our incipient ' Americas,' 

 justify themselves to me by this one plea, ' Angi-y sir, we couldn't 

 help it ; and we anarchies and all (as you may see) are con- 

 quering the wilderness, as perhaps your Friedrich Wilhelm, or 

 Friedrich himself, could not have guided us to do, and are offering 

 homes and arable communion with mother earth and her blessed 

 verities to all the anarchies of the world which have quite lost 

 their way.' Australia, of a certainty, ought to leave her gates 

 wide open in this respect at all times ; nay, it were well for her 

 could she build a free bridge (' flying bridge ') between Europe 

 and her, and encourage the deserving to stream across. I pray 

 you, if ever the opportunity offer, do your very best in this 

 interest, and consider it as, silently or vocally, of the very 

 essence of your function (appointed you by Heaven itself) in 

 that Antipodal world ! And excuse this little bit of preaching, 

 for it is meant altogether honestly and well." 



Every colony in turn took up the same difficult, if 

 not impossible, mission of actively interfering with the 

 necessary operation of the natural laws of supply and 

 demand. When Lord Cardigan rode down " the Valley 

 of Death " at Balaclava, he cried out to Ms over- 



