Even if the squatters suffer by a drought and lose their stock, they've more stock and money in the bank, or else credit to fall back on; while the like of us lose all we have in the world, and no one would lend us a pound afterwards to save our lives.' 'It's not quite so bad as that,' said George.

'I shall lose my year's work unless rain comes, and most of the cattle and horses besides; but I shall be able to get a few pounds to go on with, however the season goes.' 'Oh! if you like to bow and scrape to rich people, well and good,' I said; 'but that's not my way.

We have as good a right to our share of the land and some other good things as they have, and why should we be done out of it ?' 'If we pay for the land as they do, certainly,' said George.
'But why should we pay?
God Almighty, I suppose, made the land and the people too, one to live on the other.

Why should we pay for what is our own?
I believe in getting my share somehow.' 'That's a sort of argument that doesn't come out right,' said George.
'How would you like another man to come and want to halve the farm with you ?' 'I shouldn't mind; I should go halves with some one else who had a bigger one,' I said.

'More money too, more horses, more sheep, a bigger house! Why should he have it and not me ?' 'That's a lazy man's argument, and--well, not an honest man's,' said George, getting up and putting on his cabbage-tree.