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restraints as are essential to the due and impartial regulation of this species of occupancy. Of the former disposition I have had ample proof in the result of an inquiry lately instituted as to the number of ticket-ofleave holders in unauthorized occupation of crown land. The dishonest practices of this class of persons in such occupation had been represented as one of the principal evils which required a remedy. I have, however, discovered from the returns of the magistrates, which I called for, that not more than twenty to thirty ticket-of-leave holders occupy crown lands throughout the whole colony, and of these a great proportion are reported to be particularly honest and industrious."

Our next quotation is from a despatch of General Bourke's, dated September, 1837, on the price of land question.

The South Australian theorists had already begun to find some difficulty in carrying out their concentrating schemes. They applied, in the person of one of their commissioners (Colonel Torrens), to have the price of land in the neighbouring colonies raised to the South Australian level—a most impudent demand, considering the terms on which they first asked to be allowed to try their experiment.

They began by saying, our principles of colonization are so superior that we only ask leave to try them, convinced that other colonies will be but too happy to follow our example. But, when they had obtained permission to cut off their own tails, they next demanded, as an act of justice, that neighbouring colonies should be compelled to decaudilize themselves. They particularly objected to the pastoral advantages of Port Phillip, where land was being sold by auction at an upset price of 5s. an acre.

The result of this application to prop up the bubble price of land in South Australia, by affixing the same price to land in Port Phillip and New South Wales, was a despatch from Lord Glenelg to Governor Bourke, authorizing him to raise the upset price of land if he thought fit. Sir Richard Bourke had the courage not to take the official hint, and gave reasons in detail for adhering to a minimum of 5s. an acre for country land, which the experience of the last fifteen years has amply justified and confirmed :

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"Whatever minimum is fixed there will be found instances in which land acquired at that price without opposition will prove a cheap bargain; but such is not often the case. Land even of very inferior quality, happening to possess a peculiar value to the individual purchasing in consequence of its proximity to his other property, finds a sale solely on that account, cannot be considered as cheaply obtained, even at the minimum price. The cases in which land

SALES OF LAND.

109 is sold without opposition, from ignorance of its marketable value on the part of the public, or from the secret agreement or friendly forbearance of those otherwise interested in bidding against each other, must diminish yet more and more as the colony advances in wealth and population; nor are such accidents, even if they were more numerous, deserving of much consideration. It is upon general tendencies and results that all questions of public policy are to be decided.

"The lands now in the market form a surplus, in many cases a refuse, consisting of lands which in past years were not saleable at any price, and were not sought after even as free grants.

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"By deciding to dispose of them at 5s. an acre, it by no means follows that they will be sold at a higher rate. The result may be to retain them for an indefinite time unsold, a result more certain in consequence of the alternative at the settler's command of wandering over the vast tracts of the interior. A facility for acquiring land at a low price is the safest check to this practice. The wealthiest colonists are continually balancing between the opposite motives presented by the cheapness of (then) unauthorized occupation on the one hand, and the desire of adding to their permanent property on the other. The influence of the latter motive must be weakened in proportion to the augmentation of the upset price.

"It is possible that the augmentation of the minimum price would have the injurious effect of checking the immigration of persons possessed of small capital, desirous of establishing themselves upon land of their own."

We shall hereafter show that all Sir Richard Bourke's predictions were realized. To this hour, in the midst of settled districts, large tracts of land remain the haunt of wild dogs and vermin, which are no more likely to be worth £1 an acre in twenty years to come than they were twenty years ago.

Sir Richard Bourke seems to have been the only governor, with the exception of Macquarie, who had no free population to act on, thoroughly impressed with the importance of encouraging and protecting, against the prejudices and oppressions of the great settlers, a class of agricultural yeomanry. Since his time, especially under Sir George Gipps, every possible impediment has been thrown in the way of those becoming possessed of freehold farms, who were not rich enough to be great flockowners, but not willing to be mere servants.

The Assignment System.

Another very important event under Sir Richard Bourke was the move toward abolition of assignment, which had previously given settlers

servants for both domestic and field work at the mere cost of clothing and maintenance. He was directed to discontinue the assignment of convicts by a despatch from Lord Glenelg, dated 26th May, 1837, which took effect in 1840.

In answer to inquiries contained in that despatch, Sir Richard Bourke stated that from four to five thousand convicts might be profitably employed on public works in the colony, under the control of military officers and non-commissioned officers. He observes, with his usual good sense, "If the abolition of (the assignment of convicts) be resolved on, it should without doubt be gradual, as the sudden interruption of the accustomed supply of labour would produce much distress.” The system was suddenly discontinued during the administration of Governor Bourke's successor. Great distress among the colonists did ensue, and there can be no question that tenfold more crime was created and perpetuated by the gang system, which under Lord Glenelg's orders superseded the assignment, than had ever existed in the colony previously.

Undoubtedly the time had arrived when the colony was sufficiently productive and attractive to secure a stream of free emigration. The assignment or white-slave system cannot go on together with immigration of free labourers. The two systems will not work together. The best class of emigrants of any rank, but especially labourers, will not resort to a convict colony. The masters of convicts do not know how to treat free men. In New South Wales it took some years to teach them. It was not extraordinary that an excess of crime arose. In a population so constituted as that of New South Wales during the existence of the convict system, with such imperfect discipline, such an inequality of sexes, such absence of means for regularly training and educating the rising generation, it is not the amount of native felonry that astonishes us, but that it was not universal. God scattered seeds of virtue in the land which the statesmen and saints of the home country forgot, while all their care and cost were spent on barbarous tribes of cannibals, on Hindoos and negroes. The unbaptized child of the white convict grew up with no more training or teaching than the savage he

displaced.

The abolition of the assignment system and of transportation to New South Wales, the result of the selfish conspiracy of a party of landjobbers, was effected in a hasty ill-considered manner, by the enthusiastic exertions of a number of excellent men, who were overpowered by a “case" cooked in a manner then new to the House of Commons, but now perfectly understood. A change that should have been effected

RETIREMENT OF SIR R. BOURKE.

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gradually was made hastily, to the serious pecuniary injury, and eventual benefit, of New South Wales and Port Phillip, but to the ruin, social and financial, of Van Diemen's Land, on which alone was poured the stream of felonry previously distributed over New South Wales.

But this is one of the questions environed in so much difficulty that the government of the day were not specially to be blamed. After fifty years' neglect they were forced by active public opinion to do something. Not knowing how to dilute or deodorize the open drains of human crime which they had been sending through New South Wales for that period, after a series of vain experiments, they ended by turning Van Diemen's Land into one vast overflowing cesspool, ten thousand times more noxious than the evil it was intended to cure.

When Sir Richard Bourke retired-deeply regretted by all the colony, except a small section of prison-flogging magistrates and officials of the true colonial school-New South Wales had attained the highest state of prosperity; Port Jackson was crowded with shipping bringing free labourers and capitalists, the banks overflowing with money, and the whole population full of the happiest excitement.

The discussions of the Council, although still secret and irresponsible, had assumed a real character, and prepared the way for representative institutions. Restrictions placed upon the summary conviction of prisoners by magistrates, and preparations for the abolition of the assignment system, concurrently with the introduction of free emigrants, by funds derived from the sale of lands, had laid the foundation of a free colony. The colonization of Port Phillip and South Australia by emigrants of a superior class had done much towards directing the attention of this country to an island which had previously been only considered a receptacle for criminals; while the discovery of vast tracts of fine land in the interior, with an overland communication between the three districts, greatly stimulated the increase of live stock, the growth of wool, and the general value of Australian exports. Australians began to think they could walk alone without the aid of convict labour, and the money of the commissariat.

The great event of Sir Richard Bourke's government was the land mania, which, acting and reacting from colony to colony, drove some of the soundest heads to acts of the wildest folly, in which the wealthiest families were involved in ruin, and from the effects of which Australia was eventually relieved by the perpetual increase of flocks and herds feeding on boundless pastures, and tended by the emigrants whom the funds derived from the land mania helped to introduce. He was succeeded by Sir George Gipps.

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EARLY DISPUTES WITH THE COLONISTS THE REVENUE-PASTORAL INTERESTLAND SALES-CROWN PATRONAGE EMIGRATION LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL

BECOMES ELECTIVE-COMMITTEES APPOINTED-THEIR REPORTS-CASE OF THE INSOLVENT REGISTRAR-PROTHONOTARY-MADHOUSE KEEPER.

THE

HE appointment of Sir George Gipps was, at the same time, most creditable to the government and unfortunate for the colony. He was, when an officer of engineers quartered in Canada at the time of the rebellion, appointed secretary to a commission with Lord Gosford, and then wrote and published an ingenious plan for educating colonies to the use of representative institutions, by establishing a kind of municipal government, under the name of District Councils.

At a time when the colony had advanced from the Algerine rule of Phillip, Macquarie, and Darling, to enjoy the externals of a free state; a legislative council, no longer secret, although not elective; courts of law regularly constituted; trial by jury for political offences; the right of unlicensed printing; and the liberty, freely exercised, of assembling to discuss political questions at a time when all the fiery intellect of the colony was burning to acquire the rights of representation and taxation which they had forfeited by becoming colonists,— Sir George Gipps arrived, determined to govern on high prerogative principles; to carry out the determined plans of his master's and his own preconceived views, however distasteful or unsuitable to the colonies. He was a man whose really great abilities were neutralized by a violent, jealous, over-bearing temper. Inflated with pride, he assumed to unite the characters of sovereign and prime minister, to be the chief of the legislative and of the cxecutive. In the one capacity he framed, introduced, and pressed on his pre-conceived schemes, supporting them with vigorous eloquence of tongue and pen; in the other, he treated opposition, or even that fair discussion which a British minister would expect and invite, as so much personal insult, almost as high treason. Like a true despot, every political opponent was in his eyes a rebel. He was a vain man, too, and could not endure that any measure likely to be creditable to the author, or of benefit to the colony, should originate with other than himself.

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