Page:History of Australia, Rusden 1897.djvu/542

The encouragement afforded by the government to free settlers contrasted strongly with the animosity displayed towards them by Macquarie.

Macquarie had been jealous with regard to the occupation of the interior. He allowed no one to depasture stock in the "new country" without special authority from himself. He did not perceive what was afterwards clear to Gibbon Wakefield, that, so long as the government might retain the freehold for sale at a fitting price, it was beneficial to all that the annual grasses should be converted into a means of prosperity. But he could not watch his ever-widening frontier; and a class of men, many of them labourers who had been convicts, strayed across it, and, in secluded gullies, built huts, planted gardens, and kept a few cattle, whose numbers were unnaturally increased by theft. Nor were cattle the only objects of rapine. These lawless occupiers were called "squatters." In the course of about twenty years the term was transferred to all those who lawfully occupied Crown lands under temporary licenses, which were readily granted by Sir T. Brisbane to the free settlers who migrated to the colony after the departure of Macquarie and the publication of Bigge's Reports.

Brisbane made no effort to prevent injustice and brutality towards the natives. Settlers who were disposed to treat them kindly could do so. Those otherwise inclined did as they listed. In June 1824, Brisbane told the Secretary of State that he proposed to raise a troop of cavalry at Bathurst to coerce the natives who had been committing outrages. He did not say that the convict servants of the settlers had provoked them. But he did say that seven of those servants had been slain.

In Aug. he proclaimed martial law "in all the country westward of Mount York." Accordingly, in all that country the natives were shot like wild beasts. The thing was not done in a corner. The Sydney Gazette (30th Sept.) published an account of the killing of sixteen blacks by an overseer and two stockmen. Five hundred acres of land were offered for the capture of "Saturday."^[1] After four