marked out and made practicable. Land suitable for cultivation had been discovered, surveyed, and handed over to land purchasers, who had now no temptation to stay in town, if they meant to remain in the colony; labourers were willing to take reasonable wages, or ready to set to work for themselves with hearty good will; and, what was most satisfactory of all, live stock by importation, by overland, and by natural increase, afforded an ample supply of meat at reasonable prices, with a certain and increasing quantity of wool and tallow for exportation. Impoverished gentry were now happy to fall back, from imported fresh salmon, or ducks and green peas in tin cases, at fifty per cent, above the Piccadilly tariff, upon native poultry, at almost nominal prices. During the land mania geese imported from Van Diemen's land sold at 12s. 6d. each, fowls, 5s. a head, and everything else in proportion. In 1842 country people used to drive a cart filled with live poultry, fowls, ducks, geese, turkeys, in fair condition, covered over with a sheet, and sell the whole lot at from fourteen to sixteen shillings.
Under the bountiful, genial climate of South Australia actual want was unknown, and industry produced immediate results.
Governor Grey's task was easy. The famine or speculative prices of labour and provisions had fallen to reasonable rates, the emigration of paupers had ceased, and with the immigration the cost of maintaining the infirm, the sick, and the lazy. The unhired were set to work at such bare wages as induced them to seek private employers as soon as possible; the surveys were carried on steadily without pressure, and without exorbitant expenses for stores and hire of drays; and the police expenses were partly superseded by the arrival of a company of soldiers granted to Governor Grey, although indignantly refused to Sir Charles Napier. With these reductions of expenditure, and power to draw upon the home government for a limited sum, Governor Grey was still unable, in homely phrase, to make both ends meet; but the colony survived and vegetated in a sort of obscurity, which contrasted painfully with the brilliancy of its early, brief, blooming, hothouse career.
In the mean tune the model colonists were not idle in England. On the 7th July, 1840, the colonisation commissioners for South Australia brought under the notice of the Colonial Secretary (Lord J. Russell) the embarrassed state of the finances of the colony; and in August they reported that the revenue of the colony did not much exceed £20,000 per annum, and the current expenditure had risen to £140,000. Under these circumstances the Secretary of State, by letter dated 5th November, 1840, undertook to guarantee a loan of £120,000 to be raised by the commissioners; but negotiations to raise this loan failed.
