We need not go beyond the boun daries of colonial iife to prove this. In Australia in the early days when large fortunes were to be rapidly acquired, the squatters had little or no freehold in their runs ; the land was simply held at a nominal rent from the Crown, and while a man could work them with absolute security he was not likely to invest his capital in buying land say at /,i per acre, which he rented for a mere song. It was only when the new land laws gave selectors the power to take up land on any station in a district that the squatters were driven in self-defence to acquire the freehold of a portion of their runs in order to defend the rest. But while the squatters have been to some extent transformed from Crown tenants into freeholders, they have as a body largely suffered in fortune. The nominal holder is in the hands of banks, or loan and mortgage com panies, whose treatment he finds very different to that of an indulgent go vernment. In the colonies, therefore, we have one class of landowners whose circumstances have been very much injured by being obliged to substitute the freehold for the leasehold tenure.
