By these two measures the character of Australian colonization was completely changed. Their effects will be described in the next chapter. Here however it may be convenient to review the successive systems by which land had been alienated in New South Wales up to the time of Bourke.

Up to 1831 a variety of systems had been adopted, of which the following is an abstract :—

The Land System from 1788 to 1831.

From the foundation of the colony, until 1824, the regulations for the disposal of land were left entirely in the hands of the governor for the time being. Land was in the early days of the colony bestowed on any man, bond or free, who could undertake to support himself; as the colony progressed in wealth and population, certain situations became valuable, and were eagerly sought by parties of influence; but large portions were held, especially as pastures, under free licences of occupation, which were granted to encourage the explorations by settlers.

Sir Thomas Brisbane granted 180,000 acres at a yearly quit rent of 2s. per 100 acres. He sold, between December, 1824, and 19th May, 1825, 369,050 acres at 5s. an acre, giving a long credit, with in addition a quit rent of 2s. per 100 acres; and he also granted in two years, between 1823 and 1825, 573,000 acres at 15s. annual quit rent per 100 acres. But it must be noted that all these grants and purchases were accompanied by an allowance of a certain number of convicts per 30 acres to clear and till them, and that these convicts, as well as the settler and his wife, were rationed for a limited period at the expense of the government.

During and previous to Macquarie's time, the settler frequently obtained with his grant the use of a government gang, who cut down, burned, rolled, and cleared the timber from lots which no one would have attempted to clear and cultivate with hired labour. The great object of the governors down to the time of Darling was to lighten the expenses of the commissariat in feeding convict prisoners.

The system founded on such simple aims, in spite of a crowd of abuses, answered admirably in one point of view: it colonized and cultivated the country; and if it had been accompanied by a large importation of wives for the settlers, and measures for reforming, educating, and christianizing the colonists, considering the slight offences for which transportation was awarded between 1788 and 1825, it would have provided New South Wales with a population well suited to assist and

REGULATIONS FOR THE SALE OF LAND.

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amalgamate with free labouring emigrants, when the time came for abolishing transportation, and giving up the land which convicts had pioneered to the use of a free population.

For instance, in 1822, the Hunter River district was in a state of nature, and in 1827, for a distance of 150 miles along the river, half a million acres had been surveyed, granted, and sold to settlers, whose capital was calculated at from four to five hundred thousand pounds, and whose stock included 25,000 horned cattle, and 80,000 fine-woolled sheep. Thirty miles of excellent road had been constructed by the government with convict labour between the Hunter River* and Sydney, and the remainder of the route was in course of execution, while the improvements, buildings, fences, and cultivation, were all effected by assigned servants, whom the government fed and clothed for the first eighteen months. Nothing but convict labour could have done so much in five years.

In 1824 the Secretary of State for the Colonies issued regulations for the disposal of land in New South Wales, of which the following is an abstract:

"1. A division of the whole territory into counties, hundreds, and parishes, is in progress. When that division shall be completed, each parish will comprise an area of 25 square miles. A valuation will be made of the lands throughout the colony, and an average price will be struck for each parish.

"2. All the lands in the colony not hitherto granted, and not appropriated for public purposes, will be put up for sale at the average price thus fixed.

"3. All persons proposing to purchase lands must transmit a written application to the governor, in a certain prescribed form, which will be delivered at the surveyor-general's office to all parties applying, on payment of a fee of two shillings and sixpence.

"4. The purchase-money must be made by four quarterly instalments. A discount of 10 per cent. will be allowed for ready-money payments.

"5. The largest quantity of land which will be sold to any individual, 89,600 acres. The land will generally be put up in lots of three square miles or 1,920 acres.

"7. Any purchaser who, within ten years of his purchase, shall by the employment and maintenance of convicts have relieved the public from a charge equal to ten times the purchase-money, will have the

* In consequence of the facilities of steam navigation to the River Hunter, and the barrenness of this land route, it has been abandoned.

money returned, but without interest. Each convict employed for twelve months will be computed as £16 saved to the public."

Persons desirous of becoming grantees without purchase might obtain land on satisfying the governor that they had the power and intention of expending in the cultivation of the land a capital equal to half the estimated value of it.

On grants of not less than 320 acres, and not more than 2,560 acres, subject to a quit rent of 5 per cent. per annum on the estimated value, redeemable within the first twenty-five years at twenty years' purchase, with a credit for one-fifth part of the sums the grantee might have saved by employing convicts, no quit rent was required for the first seven years. But the grantee was subject to forfeiture of his grant if unable to prove to the satisfaction of the surveyor-general that he had expended a capital equal to one-half its value.

It is evident that detailed regulations as to expenditure of capital could never be enforced. In practice, quit rents fell in arrear and could not be recovered. Thousands of acres granted turned out and remain valueless.

In September, 1826, Sir Ralph Darling created a land board, composed of the colonial secretary, the civil engineers, and the auditorgeneral of accounts, which issued a set of regulations worthy, for their thorough absurdity and impracticability, of their bureaucratic descendants, the South Australian commissioners, and the New Zealand Company directors.

Persons desirous of obtaining land were (1) to apply to the colonial secretary for a form to be filled up and submitted to the governor, who (2), if satisfied of the character and respectability "of the applicant, directed the colonial secretary to supply him with a letter (3) to the land board, in order that they might carefully investigate the stock articles of husbandry, &c., and cash, forming part of his capital. On the land board reporting (4) to the governor satisfactorily as to capital, the governor furnished the applicant (5) with a letter to the surveyorgeneral, who (6) was to give him authority to proceed in search of land! When he had made his selection he had to apprise the surveyorgeneral (7), who twice a month was to report (8) to the governor such applications; and, if approved (9) by the governor, the applicant received written authority (10) to take possession of the land until his Majesty's pleasure should be known or the grant made out. Terms as to quit rents the same as the first set of regulations; viz., 5s. per cent. after seven years; grants to be in square miles; one square mile, 640 acres, for each £500 of capital, to the extent of four square miles.

́Land selected for purchase, not granted, to be valued by the commissioners, put up for sale, and sold by sealed tender, not under a price fixed by commissioners. Personal residence, or residence of a free man as servant or deputy, required on purchases and grants.

These regulations of Sir Ralph Darling were marked by every official vice- unnecessary forms, expense, and uncertainty, inquisitorial investigation, bribery and corruption among the subordinates in the various offices; in fact, everything that could be done, was done to disgust decent, unpolished, unlearned settlers. They were adopted by the Colonial Office in 1827, and had the effect of rendering the business of obtaining and granting land one series of jobs. The home government always reserved to itself the right of making grants, and exercised it in a most baneful manner.

One effect, unintentional on the part of the authors of these cumbrous arrangements for obtaining grants of land, was to encourage unlicensed squatting in districts unsurveyed, and at that period allowed to remain in "healthy neglect." So the live stock increased in spite of the forms of the "land board."

Up to 1820, the last year of Macquarie's government, 400,000 acres passed into the hands of private individuals; in 1828, 2,524,880 acres had been granted or sold by Brisbane and Darling; making in all 2,906,346 acres. But these acres cannot for useful purposes be compared with European acreage, except in Connemara, where square miles be bought at 5s. an acre, and are dear at the money.

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After the endless delays and forms of the Darling dynasty, the change in 1831 to sale by auction was a great boon to the colony, although the large size of the lots (640 acres) excluded corn-cultivating settlers of fifty acres; and the putting up to auction of land occupied and improved under expectation of grants caused many cases of individual hardship among the humbler classes.

In every point of view it is most unfortunate that the American system, which had been so far followed, has not been strictly adhered to; that is to say, surveys always in advance of sales, lots from 80 acres upwards, surveyors' maps always open free of charge, without favour, and land at a dollar an acre.

In 1831 it was further decided that part of the funds derived from the sale of lands should be applied to defraying the passages of free emigrants on the bounty system; that is, by paying to importers a certain sum per head for men, women, and children, if approved by a colonial board.

The following is the result of the first five years of open land sales, at 5s. an acre for country land :—

In 1836, land sales at Port Phillip being included, produced a total of £132,396.

In 1835 two events occurred which materially affected the colonizing fortunes of Australia. A party of stockowners from Van Diemen's Land, where the accessible pastures had been nearly all appropriated, crossed Bass's Straits, and established themselves on the shores of Port Phillip Bay, on the River Yarra Yarra; about the same time squatters gradually extended their pastures overland, and whalers settled at Portland Bay; and before the government of New South Wales, within which the unpeopled territory was included under Governor Phillip's commission, acknowledged their existence, many thousand sheep and cattle were feeding over the finest plains that had yet been discovered in the vicinity of a natural port. And these " authorized squatters," as they were called in a despatch, poured into the new land with such rapidity that the home government was very unwillingly obliged to sanction the measures which had been taken by Governor Bourke.

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This spontaneous colonization brought into the market, under the new system, a vast quantity of accessible land, of a very superior quality for both agricultural and pastoral purposes.

At the same time that the Tasmanians were swarming across Bass's Straits, and the pastors of New South Wales were marching overland with their flocks to this and other new lands of promise, in England a commission had been issued, an act of Parliament obtained, and a charter granted, for colonizing South Australia, an unexplored tract of land, traversed by a river which the adventurous Sturt had descended and ascended, and given the name of South Australia.

The history of the rise, the fall, and the revival of that now great and flourishing colony will be found in its proper place; but we

A considerable number of acres were sold by Brisbane and Darling on credit, and paid in these years.