But some current differences as to the bearing or
rights of squatting leases gave the Governor--the Superintendent being
now in that higher position--the too ready excuse for his infirmity of
indecision. Even the squatting difficulty, which could have been easily
removed by a reserve of compensation for whatever of it might have been
real, was only one part, perhaps not even the chief part, of the
wretched case. Acres by the million, on either side, along the busy
highways, and around the many goldfield outbreaks, small and great, from
which the live stock, where there had been any, were now all driven
away, might have been brought to market at once without real injury to
any interest. The squatters, naturally enough, sided with the Governor,
giving him an encouraging semblance of public principle; for did not the
one-third of united Crown Officials and Crown Nominateds, plus the Crown
Tenants, in our first so-called representative Legislature, show, on
this question, a small majority for "the Crown?"
At last, when the public scandal of so grievous a spectacle made longer
inaction impossible, when the disappointed and shiftless immigrants
began to beat a retreat from the inhospitable colony, the balance
streaming by thousands into "Canvastown," or wandering helpless
elsewhere, and mostly ruined by the cost of living--for a cabbage had
risen to 5 shillings at the goldfields, and to 2 shillings and 6 pence
in Melbourne--the Governor, by an adroit move, in the despair of the
position, referred the case "Home.
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