RESULTS OF PAUPER EMIGRATION. 133 The result we now see. For fifteen years the agents of the colony and the emigration commissioners have been recruiting and sending out emigrant recruits. Their most successful operations have been conducted in times of distress in the home labour market. The fund in the early period of the system down to 1839, when all the colonists were madly engaged in nodding at the government continental land sales, was sufficient to pay the passages out of fifty thousand emigrants. For a time the market was apparently glutted, but the increase of stock, and the judicious measures introduced by Caroline Chisholm, the only individual who has ever brought practical talent of the first order to bear on colonization, soon absorbed them. Soon arose an increased demand for labour. The land fund was dried up; the sales were few and far between, except in the copper-mining colony of South Australia; but by degrees the rents from pastoral occupations of crown lands became so large that security was found for an emigration debt, to which was added, from time to time, the produce of sales of town and suburban, and, as the population increased, occasionally of special lots of rural, land. But it occurred more than once that when labour was needed in the colony there were no funds, and, when funds were forwarded to England, that the commissioners found a difficulty in collecting suitable emigrants. Indeed, until the discovery of the gold-fields, very few, except the utterly destitute among the labouring classes, turned their attention to Australia. The regulations of the emigration commissioners, as prescribed to them by the pastoral interest, excluded families as much as possible, and so virtually it became the office of the commissioners to transmit "pairs of paupers." Thus all classes were taught to look on a free passage to Australia as a sort of pauper relief; and the aristocratic representatives, although often discontented with their bad bargains supplied by the commissioners, were always anxious not to have emigrants who would be "too independent." Thus, although the emigration land system had the effect of rapidly transplanting many thousand pauper souls, it has also had the effect of discouraging the emigration of the working class abovethe condition of paupers, just as a lax poor-law increases pauperism, and of excluding those in whom the domestic affections and social virtues were strongest. The large number who emigrated under the auspices of the emigration commissioners were isolated units, who could seldom read or write, or, if they could, were unable to find any easy means of com municating with their friends, of transmitting money, or paying the passage of a parent, a wife, or a child. The true interest of a parent state, in regard to such prolific lifesustaining colonies as the Australian, is to promote colonization by industrious families of all classes: their calling is of no consequence, so long as they are able and willing to support themselves. But it has been the policy of our government to maintain a pauperizing system for the mere purpose of supplying pastoral proprietors with hired servants. There is a very close connection between the various degrees of the labouring classes, and that is a suicidal course of colonization which gathers up only the poorest and least respectable, and offers inducements to those inclined to emigrate to affect pauperism, if they do not endure it. There is no more reason why a public fund should pay the passages of emigrants than that it should find work or provisions. Committees on emigration were appointed by the Legislative Council in 1839, when the bounty system was in operation, in 1842, in 1843, and in 1845; and in 1843 and 1844 committees on the "distressed labourers" of Sydney collected important evidence bearing on the same subject. It is worthy of remark that in these, as in committees appointed by the British Parliament, witnesses have seldom been called from among the respectable mechanics and labourers, who are most interested in emigration, and best acquainted with the emigrating classes. The committee of 1839 reported that emigrants were being introduced at the rate of 12,500 souls a year, at a cost of about £17 per adult, expressed a decided preference for bounty over government emigrants, and recommended a loan to be raised on the security of the land fund, and devoted to emigration a bounty at £19 a head for adults only, excluding children, and very humbly prayed that the crown would devote the land fund, which they calculated at not less than £150,000 a year, to emigration purposes. It is curious to remark that the committee object to the introduction of emigrants over forty years of age. The government emigration agent had invited emigrants of fifty years of age. The gold discoveries have recently enlightened the pastoral interests to the value of parents of even sixty years of age. In 1842 the committee repeat their preference for the bounty system, announcing that in the preceding twelve months 23,000 emigrants had been introduced, and the cessation of emigration, in consequence of the falling off of the land fund, to an extent unexpected by the home government. They gently hint at the propriety of a reduc THE HUNDRED THOUSAND SHEEPMEN. 135 tion of the price of land to 5s. an acre. The tone of the document is that of a respectable nominee council. The committee of 1843 represented the wealthy squatting class, and the majority took an entirely colonial and pastoral view of the labour question. They wanted shepherds as quickly and as cheaply as possible, and nothing else. No seven-shilling a week farmer-no cottage-destroying landlord-no unlimited time-labour manufacturerno woman-employing coal-worker-could have taken a narrower view of the question. There is unfortunately in all of us a fund of selfishness which, when unchecked by public opinion or political opposition, is apt to grow into injustice and tyranny. In private life many of the squatters were excellent, generous, hospitable men; but one large proportion had been accustomed to convict servants, who cost nothing beyond their board and lodging, and another consisted of young bachelors of capital, who arrived in the colony to make a fortune, intent on returning to the old country as soon as it was made. The one despised and the other were indifferent to the opinions of the working classes. Both dreamed of naturalizing in Australia the miserable wages of the southern counties of England and the highland counties of Scotland. To resist the aggressions of Sir George Gipps on the pastoral interest the squatters formed themselves into a protective association, and by an easy process the association, founded to resist unjust confiscation and taxation, branched off into a combination for permanently lowering the wages of the colony. At the head of this association was the late Mr. Benjamin Boyd. Mr. Boyd arrived with the express purpose of making investments at the time (1841) that the colony was in a general state of insolvency, or, as he expressed it, "in a gam." A yacht of the Royal Squadron, an apparently unlimited capital, an imposing personal appearance, fluent oratory, and a fair share of commercial acuteness, acquired on the Stock Exchange, at once and deservedly placed him at the head of the squatocracy. His aim was the possession of a million sheep; he was the chief of the hundred thousand sheepmen, with whom he combined to obtain fixity of tenure for their sheep pastures, to put down small settlers, and to reduce wages. At the period we are describing, from 1841 to 1844, the colonial labour market presented the most curious contradictions. The bounty agents were pouring in a crowd of most unsatiable persons, who, once landed, were soon left to shift for themselves. Among the mer chants of the town of Sydney distress prevailed, consequent on the cessation of building and other works, and wages were depressed to a rate before unknown, and newly-arrived immigrants were astonished at the low wages offered, so different to the flaming representations of the crimps by whom they had been collected. But in the country districts, and especially in the bush, where sheep and cattle were breeding, while their proprietors were going through the insolvent process, wages were maintained; and the anomaly was presented of large bodies of men being employed at the expense of government, at high wages, on a sham labour test, while flocks were wanting shepherds in the interior. Several causes supported this anomaly: 1st, There was no government machinery for distributing newly-arrived emigrants; 2nd, the preference of the squatters for single men left families on the hands of the government; 3rd, the squatters' club were not sorry to see the government embarrassed by the presence of a large body of unemployed labourers in Sydney; 4th, the dishonest conduct of certain masters in withholding or unfairly deducting wages promised had given the bush a bad name; 5th, many of the emigrants were of a class who, having left parish aid behind, liked to keep close to government rations and wages. All were engaged, as far as their shortsighted views would permit, in killing the golden goose of colonization. Mr. Boyd's evidence before the immigration committee of 1843 affords, when read with the notes we can supply, a fair specimen of the haughty, gentlemanly, selfish class he represented. He had then been eighteen months in the colony, and was employing two hundred shepherds and stockmen, besides artificers. He was building a town and port at Twofold Bay; had two steam-boats, and a schooner yacht, the Wanderer. He had devised the scheme of saving labour, by putting three thousand sheep instead of eight hundred under the charge of one shepherd. He despairs of the prosperity of the colony "unless the wages of a shepherd could be brought to £10 a year, or about 3s. 10d. a week, with meat and flour, without tea and sugar." The two last had been previously universally allowed; but he expressed his intention of doing away with them, "being of very questionable utility and necessity, although such is the waste and extravagance here that 8lbs. of tea and 90 lbs. of sugar are consumed per head." He states, further, that he "had no difficulty in engaging shepherds at £10 with these rations, but much difficulty in getting men engaged at these low wages forwarded to stations, as they were generally picked up on the road." "Any money advanced towards travelling expenses was usually spent THE TWO KINDS OF COLONISTS. 137 in public-houses;" and it is his decided opnion that “ more than £10 a year only does harm to shepherds, by sending them to publichouses." Mr. Boyd also mentioned how he had kindly given a free passage to Twofold Bay, distant 600 miles from Sydney, to one hundred labourers out of employ. He did not mention that, on their arriving there, those who refused to accept £10 wages were refused a passage back for less than £5; and that, while a few strong men walked back over the mountains, those who remained created such a feeling in the country that Mr. Boyd could not venture to visit his stations until the time of the year when the police magistrate, with a guard of policemen, took his annual round. Fortunately all squatters were not like the Boyd clan, and the productiveness of the land defeated the combination: had it been otherwise, a very few years would have produced a servile war of men against masters. From the clan Boyd proceeded stories founded on fact, and dressed to suit a purpose, about allotments of land sold for quarts of rum, champagne drunk in buckets by shearers and shepherds, who insisted on having pickles with their (measled?) pork. Another order of men, chiefly permanent colonists, residing on their own property, were represented by Mr. Charles Campbell as employing from fifty to sixty shepherds and watchmen. "He had been obliged, by the pressure of the times, to reduce his old servants to £18 for shepherds and £16 for watchmen, and had not found them so reluctant to accept the reduction as he expected. He would hardly like to see wages lower." He thought a great oversight had been committed by settlers in neglecting to form villages on their estates. He says, "Many of those who now complain of want of employment in Sydney might have been comfortably settled up the country in small villages, containing from ten to twelve men, heads of families, in various callings. In the present state of things we employ, at sheepshearing and reaping, men who wander through the country, from one place to another, in quest of occasional employment. Many of these are handy clever fellows, but unmarried, and of irregular and dissolute habits. All these men earn is frequently spent in the first public-houses they come to after leaving the station where they have been employed. If, instead of employing men of this class, the flockmasters and landholders had invited married emigrants to settle in small villages, by allowing them land at a low rent, and not attempting to monopolize their labour, permitting them to choose |