was impossible, claimed fixity of tenure by lease, and right of pre-emption for the squatter. The latter was the grand point with the squatters; that gained, their interest in the land question, except in promoting sales to create an emigration fund, ceased.
The opinions of the three dissentients from the report of the committee exhibit very exactly the feelings of the small class, resident chiefly in Port Phillip and South Australia, who advocate the high price of land.
These three gentlemen are—John Leslie Foster, of Leslie Park, Melbourne—Peter M'Arthur, of Arthurton, Melbourne—John Moore Airey, of Geelong.
Mr. Foster[1] says, very candidly, "I look on the price of one pound as not too much for agricultural land, and as a prohibition on the purchase of mere pastoral land. Being both a landowner and a settler, I would in both characters regret to see any reduction in the price, as it would not only reduce the value of my (purchased) land, but, by rendering it easier for others to purchase my (rented) runs, would diminish the permanent interest I now hold in them."[1]
Mr. Moore thought "the country destined, from its physical character, to become an aristocratic one;" that "the class of emigrants really beneficial to the country, English country gentlemen with some property, but with large families and limited means, would not be deterred by £1 an acre; that a class of small but independent farmers will never be generally adapted to the country; that it will eventually fall into the hands of a landed aristocracy, who, possessing the frontages to water convenient to the residence of tenants, will possess capital sufficient to guard them against the vicissitudes of the seasons, as well as means to cultivate the interior to advantage."
Mr. Peter M'Arthur (no relation to "the M'Arthur," of Camden) "arrived in the colony in 1834, specially introduced to the favour and protection of the governor by the Secretary of State." He recommends that "the governor shall have the power to grant twelve thousand eight hundred acres to respectable parties of station and education, and capital, and of habits worthy of being imitated by the humbler class;" one thousand acres to be purchased at £1 an acre, payable by instalments in ten years; the remaining eleven thousand eight hundred to be held on a perpetual quit rent of £12 per annum.
These three gentlemen evidently considered that imperial and colonial interests were bound up in the encouragement of their class, in
