dividends, believed that government could buy up and work all the railways of Great Britain at a profit, so Lord Stanley and Lord Grey, dazzled by the land purchases of mad speculators in New South Wales, Port Phillip, and South Australia, fancied that the government had an inexhaustible treasure for emigration and patronage in the waste lands of every colony in the British dominions, from the Sugar Loaf Hills of New Zealand to the wild wintry moors of the Falkland Islands.
Two acts brought in and carried by Lord Stanley, the Colonial Secretary, in the session of 1842, embodied the recommendations of the committee, and arranged for the future government of South Australia. By one a minimum price of £1 an acre, with sale by auction, except in the case of special surveys of 20,000 acres, was imposed on all the Australian colonies, including Van Diemen's Land. It is this act against which the colonists, who were never consulted, have not ceased to protest. By the other act South Australia was transferred from the management of commissioners to the Colonial Office, and its debts were arranged in the following manner:—The whole debt amounted to £405,433; of this, £155,000, which had been granted by Parliament in 1841 for passing exigencies, was made a free gift; £45,936, of which £17,646 had been incurred by Governor Grey in maintaining unemployed emigrants, was to be paid by the Treasury; and the remainder was converted into debentures, partly guaranteed by the government and partly charged on the colonial revenues.
It may be convenient to state here that renewed sales of land, after the discovery of copper mines, paid off the greater part of these debts, with interest, between 1845 and 1849, with the exception of the £155,000. About £50,000 still remains due.
On the passing of this act South Australia sank into obscurity, and in spite of the vigorous efforts of the South Australian Company, which found itself in possession of large tracts of land that could neither be sold nor let to rent-paying tenants, ceased to attract the attention of emigrants.
Great bankers and capitalists who had been induced to purchase lots of land wrote them out in their books as value nil. So late as 1850 there were parties in the city of London who had forgotten that they held some thousand acres in South Australia until reminded by an application to purchase from returned colonists. In very rare cases has the investment in rural land at £1 an acre turned out profitable.
Dover, the quietest and least enterprising of towns, contributed by public subscription in 1837-8 one emigrant to South Australia. The fortunate man no sooner arrived, with nothing to lose, than, carried away
