SQUATTING AND DISTRESS.

Colonist, Volume III, Issue 295, 17 August 1860, Page 4

SQUATTING AND DISTRESS.

[The following speech on the evilsof squatting M.nd large runs was1 made at a meeting pf the unemployed in Melbourne, where distress is so great that serious.;proposals for the; establishment of soup kitchens, to be supported'b'y; subscriptions, are made;]! ' : ■'"■ 'i[y v f - Mr. Murphy prefaced by alluding to the causes precluding a larger attendance. There was not a man possessed of better means of knowing the distress, existing in the colooy than

himself. He had been five years in Canada and the north-western part of America, he had been twenty years in Australia, and being very nearly a teetotaller, had seen much relative to political economy in these parts, of the "world. The cause of destitution .and. poverty was the locked-up land held by the squatters, .until, it was a land made wilderness. Mr. Rolfe was in favor of a Liberal land bill and what did he say : he challenged Mr. Hervey and Mr. Bennett, the well-paid advocates of the squatting interest, and told them that 1034 tons of cheese i were brought into this country last year from America, Holland, add other places. First they lost the labor employed in making the cheese, then they lost the meat, and lastly they lost the money paid for that cheese. What better proof of the necessity of throwing open the lands was required ? Was it not as clear, as that St. Peter's was not St. Maryland that; St. Mary's was not Dr. Cairn's? After dwel-i iing'upon the importations of hay and potatoes, Mr. Murphy alleged that the fact was, that the! squatters were indebted to the banks , for £3,000,000, and that debt accounted for the whole line of public politics. He had keptj another, and still more startling fact, which he; wished them to carry home with thorn and to; reflect upon. That fact was, that 30,600 tons; of flour were brought into the colony last year,; for which was paid £950,000. They thus lost; all the cultivation of; the colony, the splitting,! the fencing, the carpentering, and what wasj dearer, the comforts of a quiet, rural, and agricultural social home. These were facts that could not be denied. Hervey, and the wellpampered squatters who listened to that fact as recited by Mr. Rolfe, laughed at it, and if those before him stood that they deserved to starve. They had tried meetings, conventions, and everything else, requiring the same system that extended from the frontiers of Pennsylvania to the confines of the 'Rocky Mountains. Their Assembly had passed a bill, yet still that Upper House persisted in their opposition. They wished to drive the working classes out of the country and keep it aa a sheep-farm. There was not a man that hated stump oratory more than he did; but he told them,-from his experience of the country, that if they with their familes, their number and intelligence, did not exercise their right of forcing a Land Bill through the Council, they, were slaves—base slaves ■ — and deserved the,ir bones to. be cursed by their children, when they were laid in the grave. If the Legislature did not settle the Land Bill the people must settle it themselves. (Loud cheering.) When they had 50,000 of people they forced separation from New South Wales. Why could they not force a Land Bill with 500,000? He remembered when the people went down to the-wharf and defied the Government to land a cargo of prisoners. The prisoners were taken elsewhere. ; Woe be to the squatters if they dare to take ! the life of any man in the present state of public I feeling. If they dared to, do so the people would root the whole squatterdom out of the :country. If that Upper House did not pass that Land Bill, fortunately there was one i remedy,—they could refuse the squatting leases, and thus drive the squatters to eternity. Men would be found to take1 the reins of Government. The only way to strike at such fellows was to strike at their vitals, and that was their pockets. (Loud cheering.)