colonists to earn a living and obtain a return for capital invested after the rate of £3 an acre? Not by agriculture, for colonial experience proves that except to the peasant proprietor agriculture will not pay. If pastoral pursuits are relied upon, no land will be purchased by sane men, and the assumed advantages of concentration, with the funds for churches, bishoprics, schools and libraries, can never be realised."
The part I took on this occasion exposed me, as I expected it would, to a good deal of petty persecution from the New Zealand clique to an attack from the "Spectator," and other organs of Mr. Wakefield's last bubble; but it secured me, I rejoice to add, the warm thanks of several intending colonists, and the friendship of some men whose friendship is worth deserving.
My worst forebodings have long since been confirmed by the letters of unfortunate Canterbury colonists. They find all the money spent on agriculture wasted, but have good hopes from pastoral pursuits on the fine grassy plains, which they once dreamed of converting into Lothian or Norfolk farms.
My next exertions in the cause of colonisation were devoted to the assistance of my friends, Captain and Mrs. Chisholm, in their labours to establish Family Colonisation. In this occupation I was enabled to extend still further my knowledge of Australia, and of the emigrating classes.
Thus, I claim the merit, if merit there be, of having written a Hand-Book of Emigration in a style before unknown, but since popular and common, viz., a style plain and practical, candid as to the defects of the colony, and explicit as to the hardships of the colonist;[1] of having, during a series of years, criticised, exposed, and successfully attacked the fallacies and frauds of the Wakefield system—all the time unsupported by the press, and opposed by the powerful and unscrupulous vested interests of colonising companies since insolvent and defunct; of having saved a considerable number of most respectable persons from losing their money, their time, their health, and their hopes, in the Canterbury colony;—of having done my utmost to make public and popular those common sense principles of self-supporting Family Colonisation, and to carry out those essential reforms in the shipping department of emigration to which my excellent friends, Captain and Mrs. Chisholm, have devoted six active years of their lives.
In conclusion I take leave to state, as misrepresentations
- ↑ All Hand-Books of Emigration, previous to 1848, whether of Australia. New Zealand, or America, were mere puffs, written in the spirit of a recruiting crimp.
