tralia united in deciding upon the continuance of
the system by which free emigrants were sent out at the expense of the
land fund of each colony, notwithstanding that such emigrants would
probably leave for Victoria immediately after their arrival. Of the
existence of this contingency there could be little doubt. On January
16, 1852, the Governor of Tasmania wrote: "I have a number of men who
have come back from Mount Alexander after an absence from this colony of
not more than eight weeks, with gold to the value of one hundred twenty
pounds to one thousand pounds." During the five months which followed
the writing of this letter, four thousand persons (most of them
wage-earners in the prime of life) left Tasmania for Victoria. As the
whole population of Tasmania was at this time only about fifty thousand,
the matter was serious. Nevertheless, Tasmania tided safely over the
difficulties of the gold period, and even was able to help her sorely
tried sister.

For it was upon the newly established Government at Melbourne that the
strain of the new era most severely fell. The Government at Sydney was
an old and tried institution, with traditions of more than half a
century, and a staff of experienced officials under an exceptionally
able chief. When Hargraves made his discoveries in 1851, the population
of the mother-colony was nearly a quarter of a million, exclusive of the
Port Phillip district, and such a population meant a government
organization of corresponding magnitude. Moreover, the people of New
South Wales had always, from circumstances, been accustomed to much
governmental control, and did not resent it; while Victoria had been
started as a colony whose people were too prosperous and contented to
require more than a minimum of guidance. When the gold discoveries
suddenly drew into the colony, not merely the most turbulent characters
of Australia, but the crews of deserted ships and the general
offscourings of the civilized world, and when, overcome by the
contagion, the government officials threw up their posts, one and all,
and started for the diggings, it became evident that the
Lieutenant-Governor had his hands full. Even so early as November, 1851,
he began to anticipate trouble from the preemptive clauses of the Crown
Lands Leasing Act of 1847, by which the squatters had a right to
purchase land in the neighborhood of the gold-fields. The claims of the
squatters barred the way, and the squatters themselves