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INTRODUCTION.

In this work I have endeavoured to trace the rise and progress of the Australian Colonies from the several periods when New South Wales was established as a distant receptable for British felonry until it acquired first self-supporting prosperity, then freedom-the progress of colonization under the various systems followed in New South Wales, where prisoner slaves laid the foundation of exports-in Port Phillip, where the sheep were many and the officials few-and in South Australia, where a theory and theorists, acts of Parliament and boards of commissioners, were found very inferior to merinoes as colonizing agents. As a review of the Art of Colonization, illustrated by facts and figures, this part of my book is new, and, I may add, both true and instructive. All the colonizing legislation of the last twenty years has been based upon the assertions and assumptions of land-jobbing companies founded by the modern John Law, Mr. Edward Gibbon Wakefield, which I show, on evidence which cannot be contradicted, to be utterly unfounded.

An examination of the high-priced land system of colonization is of the utmost importance. It has injuriously affected all our crown colonies. In Natal the second rebellion of the Boers was caused by the colonial minister setting up royal prerogative claims to land which was of no value whatever, except in the hands of Dutch farmers, and which, after two wars, we have been obliged to abandon.

In the Falkland Islands, where no trees or corn grow, and no people willingly live, we keep up an establishment of £6,000 a year under pretence of selling land at 6s. an acre which no

one ever buys; and then the price of land in the Falkland Islands is made the pivot for fixing the price of land somewhere else.

In New Zealand, a country especially fitted for colonies of fisher farmers, on small holdings, in consequence of the difficulties of internal communication, and the very small patches in which fertile land is found in beautiful valleys opening to the sca, vested interests in high priced-land have been created in favour of associations to which large tracts have been handed over in the southern islands. These lands they cannot sell; the emigrating public, more wise than the government, will neither buy land at Otago nor at Canterbury; but, because the price of land which people will not buy is £3 an acre at Canterbury, it will be difficult to reduce the price to 5s. an acre in other districts of New Zealand a week's sail and a month's land journey distant, at which people would settle if they could get a freehold at American prices.

In Australia it is the interest of the colonies and of this country that the rude men who crowd to the gold-diggings should be counterbalanced by an influx of well-disposed, educated, intelligent families, prepared to carry on colonization by cultivation, and to rent the flocks of fine-woolled sheep which the wealthy stockowners cannot afford to retain at the present rate of wages. The high price of land, coupled with the expense of the voyage, deters an admirable class of agriculturists from proceeding to Australia; because the £1 an acre law says, If you do not choose to dig gold, you may be a shepherd, but land you shall not buy unless you have more hundreds of capital than you have shillings.

For these reasons it will be found that I have not devoted too much space to this the first history of the Australian land question-a question on which the character of the future colonization of our gold colonies rests.

In the chapters devoted to emigration I have looked at the

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question from an emigrant's point of view, and I have endeavoured to give such practical advice, founded on my large experience of the emigrating classes, as would encourage those who are fit, and discourage those who are unfit, for so great a change. I have kept in view two points of which colonizing theorists of the Wakefield school have lost sight-First, that emigration, to be continuous and not spasmodic, must be for the benefit of the emigrant; therefore all schemes based on a mere desire to get rid of troublesome paupers, or to supply rich colonists with cheap servants, will fail, and always have failed. The failure of the aristocratic Colonization Society founded by Mr. Boyd, at Charing-cross, in 1847-8-the ill odour in which government emigration was and is held among the superior class of hardworking men-are to be traced to the evident selfishness of the two movements. Secondly, the emigrating classes will always consist chiefly of the most frugal and industrious of the working classes who desire to rise to a higher condition. All attempt to fill ships with the higher and middle classes have, after a brief period of enthusiasm, failed, because they are not the class who, in a body, can succeed so well in a country where high wages are the cause of colonization as the hard-handed; therefore any attempt to keep working men down as hired servants will only end in keeping down the colony. One family of ambitious labourers is worth a shipload of glutton paupers to the colony and to the mother country. Campbell has painted the great incentive to the best class of colonists—

"The pride to rear an independent shed,

And give the lips we love unborrowed bread,
To skirt our home with harvests widely sown,
And call the blooming landscape all our own,
Our children's heritage in prospect long."

Holding these views, my practical directions on the mode of emigrating, and on conduct in a colony, have been chiefly devoted to the frugal labouring class: they are the fruit of the observa

tions and notes of my brother the bushman, Mrs. Chisholm, and other equally experienced authorities.

In the descriptive part I have not been able, for want of space, to follow out my original plan, or to satisfy myself; but with such works as those of Haygarth, Townshend, Wilkinson, Mackenzie, and A. Harris, all painting their landscapes from colonial investigation, it would be impossible to compete.

In conclusion, I feel that there is much to correct, and something, perhaps, that needs apology. I regret that I have been obliged, by want of space, to omit chapters on the aborigines and the natural history of Australia, and on the transportation question; but still I believe that I have produced a useful, honest, truthful book, which I hope to have an opportunity of amending more than once.

LONDON, 26th August, 1852.

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First Discoverers—Spaniards—Dutch-English-French-1520—1605—

Quiros-Torres-Tasman-Dampier-Cook-Landed at Botany Bay
-Named New South Wales, A.D. 1770

CHAPTER III.

Origin of Transportation-White Slavery in James II.'s Reign-Howard's
Labours-Americans Refuse White Slaves-First Colonists of Botany

Bay

CHAPTER IV.-GOVERNOR PHILLIP TO GOVERNOR KING.

1778 TO 1806.

Foundation of New South Wales-The Constitution and Judicial System-
The Lash-The Law-The First Church-Famine-Wild Cattle Found
-Governor Hunter-Governor King.

CHAPTER V.

The Discoveries of Matthew Flinders and George Bass

CHAPTER VI.-GOVERNOR BLIGH.

1806 TO 1809.

Bligh of the Bounty-His Brutality—M'Arthur-Founder of Australian
Wool Trade-Bligh Attempts to Crush M'Arthur-Revolution-Arrest

of Governor-He is Superseded-Results of Revolt

CHAPTER VII.-GOVERNOR MACQUARIE.

1809 TO 1821.

Depressed State of the Colony-A Convict created a Magistrate-Impulse
given to Industry-Discovery of Bathurst Plains-The Prosperity of
the Colony Due to Administration of Macquarie, and Merinoes of
M'Arthur

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