CHAPTER V. 

 OPENING UP THE COLONY. 



Sir George Gipps, who had succeeded Sir Richard Bourke as 

 Governor of New South Wales, had been some months endeavouring 

 to get into touch with the colonists and settlers generally, but in this 

 he did not seem to be a success. Perhaps this arose from his conl- 

 scious superiority over those with whom he had to transact public 

 business, and a harshness of manner to which they had not been ac- 

 customed, especially as one great object of his government appears 

 to have been, from the first, to get all the money he could out of the 

 pockets of the people, and to transfer it as -fast as possible to the 

 public treasury. This " risking the life of the calf by not sparing 

 the cow" policy was ever so strong in him that Dr. Lang says : 

 " His answer to anyone who reminded him of this would have been 

 that ' he did not care five farthings for the calf provided the cow 

 c->ulci only be made, to give him her milk. ' ' It appears that Governor 

 Bourke had fixed the selling price of ordinary land at 5s. iper acre, 

 and this had proved such a source of revenue to the colony that Lord 

 Glenelg ordered Governor Gipps to raise it to I2s. per acre, adding : 

 " If you should observe that the extension of the population still pro- 

 ceeds with a rapidity beyond what is desirable, and that the want of 

 labor still continues to be seriously felt, you will taitc .Measures tor 

 checking the sale of land, even at I2s." Governor Gipps afterwards 

 said : " I was sent here to carry out the Wakefield system, and 

 whether it suits the colony or not, it must be done." Of Mr. Wake- 

 field Dr. Lang speaks thus : " Mr. Edward Gibbon Wakefield, a 

 gentleman -for whom I have the utmost respect, and who has laid the 

 colonial world under the highest obligations for the invaluable ser- 

 vices he has rendered to s )cictv in the cause of colonisation, pro- 

 poses, in common with other colonial reformers, that the colonial 

 Legislatures should have entire freedom and independence in all sub- 

 ordinate matters, or in other words what we call municipal independ- 

 ence, but that all Imperial questions should be left to the Imperial 

 Parliament." Dr. Lang quoted Dr. Benjamin Franklin, who said : 

 " The birthright of every British subject is to have property of his 

 own, in his estate, person, and reputation ; subject only to laws 

 enacted by his own concurrence, either in person or by his represen- 

 tatives ; and which birthright accompanies him wheresoever he wan- 

 ders or rests, so long as he is within the pale of the British Dominions, 

 and is true to his allegiance" in proof of the wisdom of adopting 

 Governor Sir George Gipps' land reform scheme. 



But the strictly political questions during Governor Gipps' adminis- 

 tration were o-f far more importance than those relating to the land 

 sales regulations. One of these was the legalisation of the squatters' 

 runs, and the imposition, at the request of the squatters, of a small 

 tax per head on all horses, cattle, and shee-p to provide for the estab- 

 lishment and support of a border police for their protection. A second 

 was tin- emigration question, in reference to which it was strongly 

 ur^ed that tin- Imperial Parliament had no right under Lord John 

 Kiis^-ll's Act for the regulations of the sale of waste lands in New 

 South Wales to make it compulsory on New South Wales to devote 

 OIK- half ot the proceeds of its land sales to emigration purposes. A 

 third, and more important one, was the -ending out from England 

 of what was calK-d the Constitution Act. whereby a Legislature of 

 one ll>u>e was to be constituted, to consist of thirty-. six members, of 

 whom si\ were to be Government officers. SIX 1'rown nominees, and 

 the remaining twenty-four to be elected by the people namely, 



42. 



