tions had omitted to provide for a postmaster, a sheriff, or a gaoler for letters, debtors, or criminals; the surveys were seriously in arrear; the head of the staff and all his attendants had resigned; the late resident commissioner and accountant-general, the colonial treasurer, and several other officers were found insubordinate, irregular in their accounts, and grossly inefficient; it was necessary to supersede two of them peremptorily almost immediately; all officials were dissatisfied with low salaries in the face of the high prices of provisions, house rent, &c.; Governor Gawler himself, with Mrs. Gawler, his children, private secretary, and servants, was compelled to occupy a small hut, and expend 1,800 a year whilst receiving a salary of 800. With this imperfect machinery, and an empty treasury, a population of some four or five thousand souls, partly encamped on the site of the city of Adelaide, and partly dispersed in pastoral pursuits over a tract of country one hundred miles long by forty miles broad, instead of being, according to the theories of the commissioners, concentrated on ten square miles, engaged in reproducing English agriculture, had to be governed, customs dues and debts had to be levied, criminals imprisoned, and aborigines repressed.
As to the prospects of the colony, and character of pursuits of the colonists, the inspector of the Australasian Bank at Sydney wrote to his Directors in October, 1818, about the time Governor Gawler landed:
"I venture to express my fears that the price received for the sale of land will be found insufficient to pay for the transplantation and government of emigrants; and, unless funds be provided by the British government, it will be impossible to provide for the administration of police and law. There appears also to have been a great want of experience and decision in directing the energies of the colonists to that source from which alone they can hope to rise to wealth or prevent themselves from sinking into poverty, until an article of export be produced in considerable quantity; as otherwise the funds of the colonists must be expended in paying for articles of import and luxuries considered as necessaries of life. Wool is the only article of export that can be produced, and on this subject the colonists seem as supine as they have been eager to purchase town allotments and build houses, giving the place what seems to me a false appearance of commercial prosperity. Had it been left to me I should have delayed establishing a branch bank until I could be sure there were at least 100,000 sheep in the settlement, and that provision was made for the efficient administration of the law."[1]
The new governor, full of colonising enthusiasm and innocent of colonial or commercial experience, was dazzled and deceived by the building activity which had excited the serious apprehensions of the experienced bank manager. He found a. large body of educated,
- ↑ Report of House of Commons on South Australia, 1841, p. 146.
