86 A HISTORY OF THE COLONY OF VICTORIA 



not get it from the Government, were ready enough to make a bargain 

 with those who could. Large agricultural areas that had been 

 thrown open in the Western Districts had undoubtedly been secured 

 to a considerable extent by adjacent pastoral tenants of the Crown. 

 In many cases no doubt by the assistance of "dummies," but also 

 in others by the bond-fide sales of the selector, whose hopes of pro- 

 fitable wheat-growing, so far from a market, were too often easily 

 dispelled. It was notorious in the sixties that the men who suc- 

 ceeded in getting land in the early proclaimed areas rarely had 

 success to boast of in their dealing with it. Most of them fell into 

 the grip of the money-lenders, and found that when they had paid 

 their interest and provided their frugal rations, there was neither 

 profit nor poetry in the hard calling. The well-to-do artisan, easily 

 earning his 3 a week in Melbourne, was loud enough at the Con- 

 vention meetings in denouncing as a betrayer of his trust the dis- 

 heartened selector whose annual crop, generally hypothecated in 

 advance to the storekeeper, often failed to yield him a surplus equal 

 to what his brother of the city could lay aside in a few weeks. And 

 it was a noticeable fact that the demagogues who so coarsely derided 

 the squatters, and proclaimed as their battle-cry that every man in 

 the colony ought to have "a farm, a vote, and a rifle," were by no 

 means the class of men who were prepared to bend their backs to 

 the laborious occupation of the farmer. 



It was evident to Mr. Heales that while the choice lands of the 

 colony, the asset that should pay for railways and provide for im- 

 migration, was being needlessly sacrificed, the persons proposed to 

 be benefited were not the ultimate gainers. He sought some remedy, 

 and thought to find it in free selection before survey, and the defer- 

 ring of payments on a generous scale. Probably it did not occur 

 to him that this was an invitation to the impecunious to "jump," 

 in mining parlance, any attractive piece of country, and to trust in 

 Providence for the means of paying for it. Such changes, however, 

 could not be effected by regulation, they required an amending Act. 

 Meanwhile, the Attorney-General devised a plan whereby a clause in 

 the Nicholson Land Act relative to " Occupation Licences " (expressly 

 intended only for sites for miners' residences, stores, inns, etc.) might 

 be so worked as to justify their issue for purposes of settlement and 



