Old Queenslanders who still survive, and can meditate retrospectively upon the past, will be impressed with the marvellous optimism of all classes of the population 50 years ago. The townspeople, enfranchised with most political power by reason of their numbers, knew little of the dormant resources of the inland country or its climatic vagaries. They could not realise the privations, the hard labour, and the deadly monotony of early settlement upon the land. The farmer had usually no market, and in raising his produce he had to contend against droughts, floods, pests, and isolation, and he was fortunate if his produce brought from the store-keeper the cost of rations on which his family could frugally subsist. The squatter, too, incurred enormous risks, though he had a market for his wool at all times; and, if there was no domestic consumption of sheep and cattle upon which he could rely, his surplus stock brought a fair return from the boiling-down pots. But he had to get his produce to port before a money return could be secured; and as pastoral settlement pushed further out transport obstacles were often crushing. It was no unusual occurrence for one wool clip to be detained on a remote station until the next year's shearing had commenced. A lien had therefore usually to be given on the clip, and the rate of interest, including agent's commission, was commonly 12 per cent. per annum, while the high carriage rate made rations extremely costly; so that even with good seasons the margin of profit was small. In bad years ruin became well-nigh inevitable. The pioneer squatter spent most of his strenuous life in the saddle, alternately worried by bad seasons, low prices, and his bank overdraft. It is easy, therefore, to understand the temptation which assailed him to regard as his own the country which he had reclaimed at the expense of his vitality as well as his capital. When he visited town after a term of voluntary exile human nature often asserted itself, and the holiday-making squatter disbursed his hard-earned money with a prodigal hand, a fact not forgotten by his political opponents. The shepherd, too, yielded to temptation, and at the end of a year's solitary life in his bush hut longed for nothing so much as an alcoholic stimulant or a bottle of pickles and gay human society. Thus he prodigally knocked down his cheque in town, and in a week or two again abandoned civilisation at the call of the bush. Fifty years ago the urban people perhaps lived almost as comfortably as they do to-day, but the bushman, whether farmer, squatter, shepherd, or stockman, had usually a life of exhausting labour, bad food, dull surroundings, and often in consequence indifferent health. Still the landless colonist of 1860 had unbounded faith in his country; and if he fought earnestly, sometimes passionately, against what he termed squatting encroachment, it is now apparent that had not the pastoral