whether of land or stock; and treated emigrants as merchandise or live stock consigned for the benefit of the purchasers of land.
It certainly was most unfortunate for the colony that the initiation of a representative government, the substitution of free emigrant for prisoner labour, and the attempt to establish local self-government, should have fallen under the direction of one who, with great talents, was obstinately determined not to learn anything from experience, and not to permit any measure of reform he did not originate. His want of pliability was strikingly displayed in the conduct of emigration.
CHAPTER XII.
EMIGRATION.
WHEN grants of land ceased altogether, and were superseded by sales, the character of emigration to Australia, and even the motives which directed it, were materially changed. To Australia, previous to 1831, the same class of persons proceeded in small numbers, who by thousands have resorted, during the last ten years, to Canada, and, above all, to the western states of America—families with capital varying from fifty to five hundred pounds, intent on living on land of their own.
The distance, and the then little known capabilities, of Australia, would, twenty years ago, have made it, under any circumstances, a difficult task to direct towards its shores a similar stream of colonists; but the new system of so raising the price and the quantity of land sold, so as to discourage the purchases of all but the wealthy, and of devoting the proceeds to the importation of able-bodied labourers for their use, altered the whole character of the free colonisation. The new system was not without merits as a temporary expedient for supplying, as rapidly as possible, the demand for shepherd servants, occasioned by the abolition of the assignment system, peopling the shores of the newly-settled districts in Port Phillip and South Australia. But as a permanent measure the moral and social defects were, and are, very serious.
By the emigration land fund system the parent state is relieved of a certain amount of (surplus?) labour without expense, and the colonies are supplied with the same, in proportion to the amount received for the purchase or rent of land. According to the principles of the system, those who are rich enough to purchase or rent land (the
