that it should have been reprinted in Sydney, from the Melbourne original, with the Imprimatur of the Body-that it should have been quoted and lauded to the utmost, from one end of the colony to the other, at all their assemblages.

Such, then, it cannot be doubted-for they have virtually adopted them-are the peculiarly selfish views and exorbitant pretensions of a large proportion of the Australian Squatters! Such are the terms they would make for themselves, if they had only the power of making them! Such is the heartless style in which they would appropriate for their own private uses the splendid patrimony of the humbler classes of the United Kingdom in the Waste Lands of Australia!

In one word, there are three forms of ascendancy, which three different parties are at present, each in its own proper sphere, labouring to establish in Australia; and I confess I am at a loss to determine which of them would be the most injurious to the best interests of the country, or the most opposed to the cause of civil and religious liberty in the land. The first of these is a Popish ascendancy; the second is a Puseyite ascendancy, and the third is a Squatting ascendancy.

* For a List of the holders of Squatting Licenses in Phillipsland, see Appendix, B.

CHAPTER XI.

THE SEPARATION QUESTION.

A CIVIL officer, with the title of Superintendent, has hitherto had the credit of administering the local government of Phillipsland-such as it has been. He has, in reality, been a mere our-of-door clerk in the Colonial Secretary's Department at Sydney-charged with the execution of the ukases of an absentee, illinformed and arbitrary governor; destitute of even the semblance of authority himself; mingling not a little in the party strifes of the Province, and giving such a colouring, in his private representations of men and of actions, to the Grand Seignior in the distance, as suited his own prejudices, antipathies, or caprice. It would have been difficult indeed to have defined either the duties or the exact position of this political anomaly, if he had not done it himself, with equal brevity and felicity, when he described himself, at a certain convivial meeting in Melbourne, as "Second Fiddle to Sir George Gipps." To continue His Honour's appropriate metaphor, the two violins were certainly in perfect harmony:" there was no "note" of remonstrance ever heard on the part of the "Second Fiddle,” against the arbitrary, unjust, and tyrannical measures of the "First:" but this " harmony" in the political orchestra was nevertheless inauspicious and disastrous for the people; in regard to whose real and permanent interests both of these political fiddlers, like many other abler performers on the same humble instrument, were literally "stone-blind."

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In such circumstances, combined with the various sources of grievance I have enumerated elsewhere, it was to be expected, as a matter of course, that an intense desire should arise among the inhabitants of Phillipsland for their entire separation from New South Wales, and their erection into a separate and independent colony. Public Meetings were accordingly held in the Province from an early period after its original settlement; Separation-Committees were appointed, and petitions numerously and respectably signed were forwarded first to the Imperial Parliament, and afterwards to the Local Legislature. But these proceedings proved unavailing; for under the Stanley autocracy, it was the usual practice to treat all such petitions from the colonies with silent neglect.

In the year 1842, however, a new light was supposed to have broken in upon the Province in regard to the Separation question. In that year an Act of the Imperial Parliament was passed, at the instance of Lord Stanley, granting a Constitution, such as it was, to the Colony; in virtue of which a Legislative Council was constituted consisting of thirty-six members, of whom one-third were to be nominated by the Crown, and the rest elected by the people. Of this Council the inhabitants of the district of Port Phillip were authorised to elect six members-one for the town of Melbourne, and five for the district; and as certain of my personal friends in that part of the country, where a large proportion of the more respectable classes of society consisted of emigrants from Scotland, proposed that I should be put in nomination for the district, I consented, and was nominated accordingly. To the general principle involved in such a proposal--that of ministers of religion being members of political assemblies-I confess I am strongly opposed; but there were circumstances at the period in question which appeared to justify an exception in my own favour in that particular case; and although there had been no instance of a clerical member of an Elective Legislature in the previous history of British colonization, there

were three precedents in other quarters which tended materially to strengthen my opinion. The first of these was the case of the Rev. Dr. Witherspoon, an eminent minister of the Church of Scotland, about the middle of last century, and afterwards President of a College in New Jersey, and member of the First American Congress. The second was that of Dr. Timothy Dwight, afterwards President of Yale College in the United States, who was twice a member of the Legislature of the State of Massachussetts, when a parish minister in that State. The third was that of the Rev. Alexander Shields, an eminent minister of the Church of Scotland, who had suffered persecution, and been banished for conscience' sake to America, under the tyranny of the Stuarts, in the seventeenth century; for shortly after the Revolution this minister, having been selected by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland to accompany the emigrants to the unfortunate Scotch Colony at the Isthmus of Darien, was authorized by the Supreme Council at Edinburgh to sit and vote in the Legislative Council, or Local Legislature of that colony.

From my own position at the time in question, as the head of an Academical Institution in the colony, against which the Local Government had just instituted a most vexatious proceeding in the Colonial Law Courts (in which, however, I am happy to say, they have since signally failed), it was highly expedient and necessary for me, as a means and measure of defence, to avail myself of the offer that was thus made me, at so seasonable a conjuncture, of a seat in Council. I was also in hopes of being enabled, in that capacity, to promote the cause of general education throughout the colony. But I confess my principal object was, if possible, to prevent the recurrence of a similar calamity to that which had already befallen the colony through the misappropriation of the Land Revenue and the prodigious influx of Irish Popery, occasioned through the highly culpable neglect and mismanagement of the former Legislative, Council, and the Local Government.

And with this object in view, which I was at no pains to conceal, it is somewhat remarkable that the general election at Port Phillip should have turned eventually upon the question whether that splendid province was thenceforth to be subjected to Romish dictation, and to be under the absolute control of an Irish Roman Catholic mob. The Act of Parliament, commonly called the Constitutional Act, authorized the province of Port Phillip to return six members to the Legislative Council-one for the town of Melbourne, the capital of the province, and five for the District. For several months before the election the only candidate for the town was Mr. Edward Curr, a gentleman originally from the north of England, who had amassed considerable property as manager of the Van Dieman's Land Agricultural Company, and had settled in Port Phillip; for although Mr. Curr was known to be a Roman Catholic, he was understood to be a liberal man, and Protestants of all denominations were therefore willing to support him. But not satisfied with his own unquestioned return for the town of Melbourne, which was then indubitable, Mr. Curr had the folly and infatuation, very shortly before the General Election, to denounce me, both at public meetings and through the press, as an unfit and improper person to represent the District, on account of a pamphlet I had written entitled "The Question of Questions," calling the attention of the Protestants of the colony to the various political and other evils that were likely to result from the immense preponderance of Irish Roman Catholic immigration. This pamphlet, which was merely a statement of undeniable facts, with the inferences which they warranted, Mr. Curr, (at the suggestion, as was supposed, of the Romish priesthood,) was pleased to hold forth as the most atrocious of calumnies against "the finest pisantry in Europe;" and even when he found the tide running strongly in my favour, on my visiting the District in person and confronting him at a public meeting in Melbourne, he had the unparalleled folly and presumption to tell the electors, in a printed letter,