He knew a bit,
he'd make bold to say, about the acreage needed in certain districts per
head of sheep; he could tell a tale of the risks and mischances
squatting involved: "If t'aint fire it's flood, an' if the water passes
you by it's the scab or the rot." To his thinking, the government's
attempt to restrict the areas of sheep-runs, and to give effect to the
"fourteen-year-clause" which limited the tenure, were acts of folly. The
gold supply would give out as suddenly as it had begun; but sheep would
graze there till the crack of doom--the land was fit for nothing else.
Mahony thought this point of view lopsided. No new country could hope to
develop and prosper without a steady influx of the right kind of
population and this the colony would never have, so long as the
authorities, by refusing to sell them land, made it impossible for
immigrants to settle there. Why, America was but three thousand miles
distant from the old country, compared with Australia's thirteen
thousand, and in America land was to be had in plenty at five shillings
per acre. As to Mr. Beamish's idea of the gold giving out, the
geological formation of the goldfields rendered that improbable. He
sympathised with the squatters, who naturally enough believed their
rights to the land inalienable; but a government worthy of the name must
legislate with an eye to the future, not for the present alone.
Their talk was broken by long gaps. In these, the resonant voice of Mrs.
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