is responsible to no one; and although the Legislative Council, like the doctor, may recommend removing restraint, he knows better. We have not space to go into the jail cases, where the governor provided himself with coachman, footman, gardener, and a crew of boatmen, out of the criminals sentenced to imprisonment for colonial offences, and the convicts of Hyde Park Barracks were left under charge of a convict turnkey, who let them out to rob at so much a night, with pistols hired at ten shillings for each case.
With these examples we leave the subject of official responsibility, and return to the two great questions which agitated the colony during the whole administration of Sir George Gipps, and which still continue to excite the interest and apprehension of all who look ahead—"The Land," and "Emigration."
THE LAND QUESTION.
The question of the terms on which the waste lands of the colony were to be sold, and, until sold, occupied by flock-owners and stock-owners, formed the subject of the most bitter contest between Governor Gipps and the colonists. To the colonists the question was one of existence; it involved not only the liberties so dear to every English-speaking race, but the means of existence.
Just before the departure of Sir Richard Bourke, the pastoral proprietors of New South Wales, as well as all the merchants, capitalists, and every one else possessed of money or credit, were seized with a land mania, which can be compared to nothing less than the share and stock-jobbing manias which, from the period of the Mississippi scheme down to the last rage for railway scrip, have, from time to time, carried bankruptcy, ruin, and roguery through the length and breadth of the infatuated nation.
The disease arose in South Australia in the manner which will be found described in the chapter devoted to the foundation of that colony, and it received a great stimulus from the foundation of Port Phillip, where a considerable extent of picturesque, and more than ordinarily fertile land, easy of access from the port, became the object of competition among English colonists with more money than colonial experience. Mr. Gibbon Wakefield's theories seemed to receive, in one important respect, confirmation from the large sums paid into the colonial treasuries by colonists bidding one against another for land at government auctions. These large funds were placed in the colonial banks. The banks, in order to employ the government deposits, gave unusual
