over the mountains, those who remained created such a feeling in the country that Mr. Boyd could not venture to visit his stations until the time of the year when the police magistrate, with a guard of policemen, took his annual round.
Fortunately all squatters were not like the Boyd clan, and the productiveness of the land defeated the combination. Had it been otherwise, a very few years would have produced a servile war of men against masters. From the Boyd clan proceeded stories founded on fact, and dressed to suit a purpose, about allotments of land sold for quarts of rum, champagne drunk in buckets by shearers and shepherds, who insisted on having pickles with their [measley?] pork.
Another order of men, chiefly permanent colonists, residing on their own property, were represented by Mr. Charles Campbell as employing from fifty to sixty shepherds and watchmen. "He had been obliged by the pressure of the times, to reduce his old servants to 18 for shepherds and 16 for watchmen, and had not found them so reluctant to accept the reduction as he expected. He would hardly like to see wages lower." He thought a great oversight had been committed by settlers in neglecting to form villages on their estates. He says, "Many of those who now complain of want of employment in Sidney might have been comfortably settled up the country in small villages, containing from ten to twelve men, heads of families, in various callings. In the present state of things we employ, at sheepshearing and reaping, men who wander through the country, from one place to another, in quest of occasional employment. Many of these are handy, clever fellows, but unmarried, and of irregular and dissolute habits. All these men earn is frequently spent in the first public-houses they come to after leaving the station where they have been employed. If, instead of employing men of this class, the flockmasters and landowners had invited married emigrants to settle in small villages, by allowing them land at a low rent, and not attempting to monopolise their labour, permitting them to choose their own employer in the neighbourhood, we should have our reaping, mowing, and shearing done at a cheaper rate; and the emigrants, by means of the money made during the busy season, added to their earnings, would maintain their families well, and their children, from not being scattered, might have opportunities of learning to read and write, and of receiving religious instruction. Many would in a few years become small farmers—first as tenants, then as landholders, and in either capacity would increase the demand for labour."
This was sound sense in Charles Campbell, as contrasted with the selfishness of Benjamin Boyd; but although Mr. Campbell's views were
