afterwards enforced and illustrated with a large collection of facts gathered by the one great colonial reformer produced by Australia, yet 1851 found the pastoral interests as ill provided with permanent labour as 1843. The selfish maxims of Mr. Boyd's Bent Street Club prevailed after the ruin and death of the founder. The successful efforts to retain good land as sheep walks only,—to encourage the growth of sheep and discourage the rearing of children, found Australia, when the golden revolution broke out, largely dependent on wandering shepherds, bound by no ties, either moral or local, social or domestic, to the district or the land of which they had no share. Even at this hour short-sighted successors to the Boyd policy are attempting to forge legal bonds to retain the unwilling services of cheap shepherds, hired in Europe—anything rather than give up a share in the land monopoly, although it is melting from their grasp.
But while the governor, backed by the Colonial Office, was deep in the contest which killed him and deceived thousands—while the bounty crimps were pouring in their miscellaneous collections to work or saunter, or, if women, walk the streets while the squatters, losing sight of the just half of their claim, were factiously obstructing all government, and ready to ruin the bodies and souls of shepherds to save wool—an individual appeared, unencumbered with colonising theories, undebased by any mercenary objects, laborious in collecting facts, diffident in expressing new opinions, prepared to learn, willing to teach, and anxious to be useful to all conditions of men. This individual—Caroline Chisholm—the greatest, the only practical reformer and worker in colonisation of the age, who will be remembered and blessed by thousands following their flocks and cultivating their farms in Australia, when the names of the land-jobbers and charlatans of the "sufficient-price school," the "Protectionists of colonial capital," are forgotten.
