The Three Colonies of Australia/Part 1/Chapter 17
CHAPTER XVII.
CORRESPONDENCE WITH PARLIAMENTARY AGENT.
WE are enabled to obtain a good idea of the state of public opinion on all the important points which formed the subject of discussion between the Colonial Office and the colonists during- Sir Charles Fitzroy's administration, by turning to the correspondence which took place between a committee of the Legislative Council, named as the Corresponding Committee, over which the Speaker of the Council presided, and Mr. Francis Scott, M.P.
So early as 1844 the Legislative Council, in the height of their contest with the Governor and Colonial Secretary of State on "the grievances connected with crown lands," turned their attention to the propriety of securing the services, as paid agent, of some member of the British Parliament, who would fill for New South Wales the post occupied by Edmund Burke, as representative of the State of New York, before the breaking out of the War of Independence.
With this view the late Mr. Benjamin Boyd, who was urging with indefatigable energy and zeal the cause of his brother squatters in England, selected the Hon. Francis Scott, M.P., brother of Lord Polwarth, a barrister, a director of the South-Western Railway, a Conservative of very decided Protestant and Protectionist views, with a good political connection among his party, and industrious business habits. But when the scheme was laid before Lord Stanley, the Colonial Minister, he declined to give it his sanction unless the Council would consent that one-third of the Committee of Correspondence should consist of nominee members—that is to say, in the same proportion as the council. To this the elective councillors would by no means agree, and the official appointment of Mr. Scott, and his salary, remained in abeyance, with many other questions of greater importance; but in the meantime Mr. Scott exerted himself with considerable success to oppose the bill prepared by Lord Stanley, on the information of Sir George Gipps, for settling the tenure of pastoral lands, and entered into a correspondence, from which we make the following extracts.
In a letter addressed by Mr. F. Scott to the Speaker of the Legislative Council, dated 30th June, 1846, he refers to "the small amount of attention which colonial questions command in parliament," and adds te two more examples to one given in a previous letter," in the fact that twice the House of Commons had been counted out when he had motions standing for considering the subject of emigration. So that at that time it was impossible to find forty members willing to listen to Mr. Scott, on a question vitally affecting an important colony.
He then goes on to state that he had ascertained that the bill for the regulation of waste lands of Australia, laid on the table of the House of Lords by Lord Lyttleton, the under-secretary of the recently-appointed secretary, Mr. Gladstone, was substantially the same as one which had been printed the previous session, laid on the table of the House of Commons, and sent out to the colonies. He observes—"After a year's deliberation, after ascertaining the opinions of the colonists to be opposed to the measure, it is a matter of deep regret that the government should introduce the same bill to settle a question of vital importance, which it leaves more unsettled than ever." Then he adds these remarkable words coming from a Conservative of the old school: "I am not aware that the opinions of any one in this country connected with New South Wales, or of any one in the colony except his Excellency Sir George Gipps, were either ascertained or asked for. So that it would appear that the transmission of a bill by the government in this country for the consideration of a colony with a Legislative Council as a deliberative assembly, is little more than its transmission to the colony for the signature of the colonial governor without the council. The bill seems to be framed rather in accordance with the observations of the land and emigration commissioners than with a view to the interests of the Australian public."
The principle of the bill protested against was to maintain the high price of land, and to retain the land until sold in the hands of the crown, to be rented to tenants at will, or on short leases, as in Turkey and Egypt, on such terms as would have left the fortune of every pastoral proprietor in the hands of the governor or his subordinates.
Eventually Mr. Scott was able to organise an opposition among the aristocratic and wealthy relatives of the squatters—the Elliots, the Trevylyans, the Edens—more formidable than had been anticipated. Among the other questions he was instructed to urge was the concession of the control of the casual revenues of the colony—claimed by the council and refused by Sir George Gipps; and assistance for establishing steam communication—a subject which had occupied the council since 1845.
Earl Grey commenced auspiciously by ceding the point as to the casual revenues. On the land question he adhered to the opinions of his preceptor in the art of colonisation, Gibbon Wakefield, and addressed a despatch to Sir Charles Fitzroy, containing a report prepared by his obedient, sympathising subordinates, the Colonial Land and Emigration Commissioners, the tenor of which may be gathered from the colonial documents we are about to quote.
In July, 1847, Sir Charles Nicholson, as chairman of the committee of correspondence, addressed a letter to Mr. Scott, in which, after recapitulating the circumstances under which the correspondence had commenced in 1845, and the discussion with Lord Stanley; the passing of a bill in September, 1846, for appointing Mr. Scott agent for three years at a salary of £500 a year; the reservation of that bill "for the signification of her Majesty's pleasure," "in consequence of the terms of Lord Stanley's despatch;" the absolute refusal of the council to submit to the "unconstitutional" terms suggested by Lord Grey as to the composition of the committee; the passing of a vote for 1,000 toward two years' salary of the agent; and acknowledging the receipt of several letters, including the one already quoted,—Sir Charles Nicholson proceeds to observe that "the provisions of the Australian Land Bill" introduced by Lord Stanley in July 18, 1845, "were framed in utter disregard of the repeatedly-expressed opinions and votes of this council. The vesting the executive with enormous and all but uncontrolled powers, in order to carry out its provisions; the reservation to the crown of the right of sole appropriation of the revenue derivable from the waste lands, and the continuance of the high upset price, are the most prominent, though not the only objections which characterise Lord Stanley's bill." He continues:—"Many of the objections urged against the bill brought in by Lord Stanley, apply with equal force to that of Earl Grey—'The most prominent of the evils with which this measure is defaced is the continuance of the hiah upset mice of land.'"
As we have before observed, Lord Grey was early a convert to the "sufficient price theory." In 1841, when, by the influence of the South Australian and New Zealand speculators, the committee on South Australian Insolvency reported on permanently fixing the price of land by Act of Parliament at £1 an acre, they came to this conclusion, without examining any colonial evidence, on the strength of a case carefully and ingeniously prepared and filled up by the evidence of the two principal witnesses, Mr. Gibbon Wakefield and Colonel Torrens. In that committee Lord Grey, then Lord Howick, proposed, although he did not succeed in carrying, a resolution to the effect that the price of land in Australia should never be less than £2 an acre, and that it should be from time to time increased in price until the want of labour, and the high price of labour then experienced, should be diminished.
It is quite clear that at that time he believed the price of land regulated the price of labour; and, considering the influences brought to bear upon them, he might fairly be excused for so believing. But in the five years which had elapsed since 1841, although a series of reports—to which we have already referred in Chapter XI.—from the Legislative Council, supported by a mass of evidence, had disproved the advantages anticipated, it seems that Earl Grey had either never read or totally disregarded the colonial authorities, and steadfastly adhered to his first impressions; for in Nov., 1846, he had addressed a despatch to Sir Charles Fitzroy, in which, "in justification of the policy pursued by Parliament in prohibiting the sale below its present price," he "recalled to recollection the grounds upon which that policy was originally adopted, and so far he considered that it ought to be chiefly adhered to. And he referred to the despatches of Lord Ripon," where the expediency of abolishing the system of free grants, and substituting one of sales by auction, at a uniform price, is stated, and the example afforded by the failure of Swan River is cited.
It would not now answer any useful purpose to quote this despatch at any length, especially as the contents may be gathered from the criticisms contained in the letter from which we are quoting.
The speaker observes, first, "That neither the council nor the colony have ever proposed to revert to the new grant system. Secondly, that Lord Ripon's system was 5s. an acre and not £1; that 1 an acre had only produced £57,104, while the low upset price had produced £680,000. Thirdly, that sales at 5s. an acre had abated the evil of free grants. Fourthly, that the answer to Earl Grey's argument, 'that value will be eventually given to the land by the application of the proceeds of sales to emigration,' is, that purchasers cannot be found at the price. Fifthly, that the idea of concentrating- population by affixing a high upset price is signally defeated in the practical working of the system; for as all persons settling can only afford to settle as graziers, they migrate to distant parts of the interior colony. Thus the system increases dispersion."
But these arguments produced no effect on the impassive and perfectly self-contented mind of Earl Grey; nor did a more elaborate report made in the same year, to which we shall presently advert; for we find in 1853, that, in exact imitation of Gibbon Wakefield in 1850, Earl Grey published his "Colonial Policy," and there, in the very words of his despatch of 1846, urged the same arguments on the land question, with the same example of Swan Elver, without appearing conscious of the contradicting facts above quoted, which had been so repeatedly pressed upon his attention.
In the same letter it is announced that in 1846 the Legislative Council had agreed to make a contribution of £6,000 a year for three years toward promoting steam navigation, or about one-third of the estimated cost. The gold discoveries of 1851 found the colony no further advanced toward steam communication than 1846.
In a second letter, dated the 1st October, 1847, we find the following passage:—"Intelligence has reached the colony indirectly through various channels, that Earl Grey has under consideration the establishment of constitutions for the Australian colonies upon a new scheme, allied to that framed for New Zealand. The mere suggestion of any such constitution, in which district councils appear to be the predominant element, being fastened upon us has excited general dismay. Should our apprehensions prove well founded in this matter, it will afford another and striking instance of the injustice of which we have not unfrequently to complain, of being made the subject of great and important changes through the medium of Parliament without any reference to ourselves, or any consultation with those best qualified to form an accurate judgment of our social and political wants."
From these extracts it will be seen that the first intimation of the accession of Earl Grey to office was accompanied with ample cause for distrust, which he lost no time in improving and justifying.
When the colonists learned the terms on which the contest between the pastoral interest and the Colonial Office had been settled, they saw at once that the interest of all those who were not squatters with four thousand sheep had been sacrificed; and that to maintain a high price of land on sale, land on lease had been handed over in perpetuity.
Many of those who had supported the squatters so long as Sir George Gipps attempted to confiscate their property, and had encouraged them to resist a system of taxation based on royal prerogative, similar to that which Hampden died resisting, now saw that the compromise sacrificed everything to the pastoral interest, and seriously checked the extension of that class of yeoman freeholders on whom the colonisation of the colony chiefly depended—for without farms there would be few wives and children in the bush.
Among these was Mr. Robert Lowe, who, as chairman of the committee appointed "to consider the minimum upset price of land," drew up a report, in which, on the evidence of all the most distinguished men in the colony, the whole legislation of the mother country on the subject of land was shown to be opposed to the feelings, to the needs of the colonies, and, in fact, to the colonisation of such a country as Australia.
In the same year Mr. Lowe issued a small pamphlet, entitled "Address to the colonists of New South Wales, on the proposed Land Orders," which shortly and clearly explained the defects of the compromise with the squatters. He observes:—
"The squatters, considering that they held the land till it was required for purchase, and that the purchase had been made by Parliament impossible, began to look upon their runs as their own. They began to sprout from tenants-at-will into freeholders. Sir George Gipps saw the danger, but instead of meeting it by a reduction of the minimum price of land, which would at once have extinguished these aspiring hopes, he sought, by showing them the precarious nature of their tenure, by exacting arbitrary tribute, more objectionable in its nature than in its amount, and by withholding from them all the machinery of government, for the use of which they were taxed, to check this encroaching spirit. This injudicious harshness had precisely the contrary effect. It united in favour of the squatters all the liberal and constitutional men in the community. Advantage was taken of this indignation to divert public attention from the real cause of the evil—the high price of land—which alone had made the squatting question of importance, and to fix it on the plausible palliation of leases and pre-emption.
"It is needless to dwell upon the vacillating and contradictory schemes of the home and local government during the years 1845 and 1846, in which they seem to have considered every expedient for settling the question, except the only effectual one, the reduction of the price of land. At last the Act 9 and 10 Victoria, chap. 104, was passed. By this Act, Parliament delegated the powers which it withheld from the Legislative Council of New South Wales, to the Privy Council of England. The Privy Council has transmitted a set of proposed rules to the colony, not for the purpose of obtaining the opinion of the colonists, (for what right have they to an opinion about their own affairs?) but to prepare the local government for the exercise of the powers which the Privy Council—the delegate of Parliament—has delegated to it. These rules are in substance—that the governor shall divide the lands of the colony into three districts, to be called the "settled," "intermediate," and "unsettled." The settled lands are to be sold by auction at £1 an acre, upset price, and the unsold parts are to be leased for not more than one year, by auction. In the unsettled lands, every holder of a licence is entitled to demand a lease for fourteen years. His rent is to be £2 10s. for every thousand sheep or 640 cattle which the run will carry. During the fourteen years nobody else can buy the run, but the' lessee can buy any portion, not less than 160 acres, at £l an acre, without competition. At the end of the lease, the lessee is entitled to a renewal for another fourteen years, unless at least one-fourth of the run be sold at auction, when the upset price will consist of £1 an acre, and the value of the improvements. In the intermediate districts the lease is to be for eight years only, and the land is liable to be sold at the end of every year. ******* "Once grant these leases, and beyond the settled districts there will be no land to be sold—the lessees will have a right to hold their lands until some one will give £1 an acre for them.
"These leases cannot be sold, mortgaged, or sublet. Be the capabilities of these lands what they may, they are to be a sheep walk for ever. The home government which raised the price of land to enforce concentration, is now in the sequel of its policy compelling dispersion.
"The squatter may make sure of his run at the end of his lease by buying up, in the exercise of his pre-emptive right, all the water and all the water frontage; thus rendering the run valueless to any one except himself.
"The price he is to pay for these privileges is, counting three sheep to an acre, one-fifth of a penny per acre. Thus does a government which is so niggard of its land that it will not part with the fee-simple of the most barren rock for less than £1 an acre, while that £1 an acre law remains in force, alienate millions of acres at one-tenth of the rent which it received on its free grants. The system devised for the preservation of the waste lands will end in their confiscation.
"Deal liberally with the squatters—give them the most ample compensation—give them the land for nothing till it is wanted for purchase—comply with all their reasonable, nay more, with many of their unreasonable demands—their present views have been forced upon them by the folly of the home government—not originated by themselves; they are a great and growing interest, producing the main export of the colony, respectable for their numbers, their intelligence, and their wealth. But we ought never to forget, that if we give over to them their territory, we are giving away what is not our own—we are trustees for posterity. *******
"Our obvious duty therefore is, to press upon the home government the repeal of the £1 an acre Act, and the Act under which these orders were made—not because the first has dispersed our population, driven away capital and checked emigration, but because this Act, in addition to these minor grievances, is about to wrench from us for ever the possession of our own territory, and give it over to men who have no right to it whatever, and who will neither develop its resources nor enable others to do so."
This protest, supported as it was by the public opinion of the great majority of the colonists, had no effect on the official or home government. Earl Grey assigned to the three Land and Emigration Commissioners the task of replying to the report of a committee which had embodied the opinions of a large body of experienced and intelligent colonists, and these three young gentlemen, whose lives had been passed in the study and practice of official routine, "looking out on St. James's Park, settled to the entire satisfaction of themselves and their chief, and in direct contradiction to the opinions of the Colonial Legislative Council, how land was to be sold and grazed at the antipodes."
This was adding insult to injury. In 1848 a committee of the House of Lords on colonisation examined a number of Australian colonists. With one exception, a gentleman engaged in promoting a new land speculation in Western Australia, all the witnesses agreed on the impolicy of the land system which had been fastened on the Australian colonies.
For instance, Lieutenent-Colonel Sir Thomas Mitchell, surveyor general and member of the Legislative Council of New South Wales, thus describes the course imposed on a colonist desirous of purchasing land:—
He also says in reference to the "ordinances" we have quoted—
"The squatters have been clamorous to obtain some title to possession; a great concession has recently been made, and according to orders in council recently sent out, they are to have leases of runs for fourteen years. The colonists in general seem to consider a fourteen years' lease with power to renew almost as good as fee-simple."
Before the same committee Mr. William Bradley, a native Australian member of the Legislative Council, a landed proprietor, a magistrate, and holder of a run of three hundred thousand acres; Captain Coghill, member of the Legislative Council, and a proprietor of thirty thousand acres of freehold; and Mr. W. Verner, late Chief Commissioner of the Insolvent Court, and a settler in Port Phillip, gave strong evidence to the same effect.
While Mrs. Chisholm said—" The most important thing to be done, would be to get a survey of land, laying out farms, varying from thirty acres to one hundred acres. That land would be purchased by small capitalists, who are now in the labour market, and only want an opportunity to purchase land. There is very little encouragement given to agriculture; there is a difficulty in getting land. If families are to be provided for, it is necessary that agricultural farms should be throwr. open to them, by making it easy for the poor man, when he has saved his money, to purchase a farm without loss of time."
But, as in 1848 the Squattocracy had obtained all and more than they had ever hoped to obtain; as Earl Grey, who never changes his mind, was at the head of the Colonial-office; as emigration was rendered brisk by the distress at home; no change was made toward multiplying freeholders in Australia. Mrs. Chisholm also suggested that as a means of enabling labouring men to invest in land, and inducing them to save, land notes or tickets should be issued of the value of five pounds each and upwards, which should pass current in the purchase of government land, so that frugal families might find a safe substitute for the savings bank.
Subsequent events have doubly proved the soundness of the principles of those who opposed the government land system.
The good land of Australia lies in patches, "oases" in deserts fit only for pasture. The high-priced symmetrical system, condemned by Sir Thomas Mitchell, doomed many districts to sheep, where villages and agriculture would have been found of great value not only in extending population and civilisation but in providing food for the gold diggers.
The result of the policy inaugurated by Lord Stanley, carried out and still approved by Earl Grey, was to make the humbler class of the Australian population as loose as possible on the land, vagrants instead of settlers. The condition of the country would have been infinitely less critical, if for the last ten years the successful emigrants had been encouraged to settle as much as possible on land instead of investing their savings, if not in drink, in stock, or in tours on the coast. Freeholds, easily obtained, would have stimulated marriage, and those who resorted to gold hunting would have returned successful or unsuccessful to their homesteads.
Another result pregnant with evil looms in the future. The best land for settlement and cultivation in the neighbourhood of a gold-field may be held on lease by a squatter, who having held it for a nominal rent during the lease may claim to purchase it in a block at a price which, considering the enhanced value, will be nominal! It will not be surprising if the men enriched by gold-digging, who saw themselves before the golden age of Australia excluded from freehold by .squatters, runs, and the £1 an acre lots, grow rather discontented, when under the new order of things they again meet their old friend the squatter still in the character of a monopolist, with power to buy for £1 land worth ten which he has held on lease for a rent of one-fifth of a penny, when it was well worth in 100 acre lots 5s. or 10s. an acre. But these are questions we must leave the colonists and their Parliaments to settle. Fortunately, we have not Earl Grey at the Colonial-office to fan up the flames of insurrection; for we learn from his apology for his "Colonial Policy," that in 1832 the universal evidence of the colonists against his land system had not shaken his original convictions; he considered "that the working of the Act (of 1842), far from showing that there was anything erroneous in the views of those by whom it was recommended and passed, seems to have proved the soundness of the principles on which it was founded. At the same time, some improvements in its detail were suggested by experience." And he proceeds to quote the Act of 1846, and the orders in council, which we have dissected, as specimens of "improvements in detail." [1] A little further on he says, "those who contended that instead of adopting the squatting ordinances the minimum price of land ought to have been reduced, asserted, that by the regulations the squatters were virtually put in possession of land which could never be resumed if wanted. Experience has, however, demonstrated that there was no ground for such an apprehension. Already in Victoria above £20,000 has been laid out by one individual, in purchasing the fee-simple of land which had been occupied as a run by another person." Earl Grey's illustration is most unfortunate, but characteristic of the careless manner in which he collects the few "facts" with which he embellishes his narrative. In the case cited no lease had been granted to the occupier of the run, no lease could be granted, inasmuch as it was within the settled district of Melbourne. Leases are for 8 years and for 14 years, and no lease granted under the ordinances has yet run out. The purchase in question consisted of land, which from its quality and situation, if put up for auction in convenient lots even at an upset of one shilling an acre, would have fetched more than the sum paid under the special survey system, in one block, viz., £20,000 for 20,000 acres without competition. This purchase gave the purchaser the right of pre-emption and of pasturage over three times as much more land, which was worth to rent altogether at that time one thousand pounds a year.
Earl Grey says (vol i. page 317), "there can be no doubt that by reducing the price as much as would be necessary to meet the views of the chief opponents of the present system, a powerful impulse would be given to the spirit of land jobbing."
For our own parts we cannot conceive any system more calculated to promote land-jobbing than that which retains good agricultural land as sheep walks, until such time as the spread of population raises the demand high enough to tempt a capitalist speculator who lays out twenty thousand pounds in order to make sixty, by retailing to actual cultivators, without adding a shilling to the value of the land, by roads, buildings or fences.
And that is the system Earl Grey approved and maintained in office, and still approves in his unwilling retirement.
We have deemed it right to give the history of the land question at great length, with full quotations from colonial evidence on the subject, because its past and proximate effects on the condition of the colonists, and their relations with the parent state, fill a place in colonial annals not less important than the anti-corn law struggle in the political history of Great Britain—and because, too, Earl Grey has ventured, in his published defence of his policy, on a misrepresentation and suppression of the facts of the case, which may mislead those who are not prepared for the drudgery of searching for colonial truth in blue-books, despatches, and files of colonial debates.
THE NEW CONSTITUTION.
While the transportation question was unsettled and the land question in hot dispute, a third question, that of a new constitution, with extended powers, from time to time occupied the attention of the politicians of the three colonies. South Australia looked forward anxiously to the enjoyment of representative institutions having, up to 1850 been ruled by a governor with an official and nominee council. Port Phillip desired separation from New South Wales, and a representative legislature of its own. The distance of Melbourne from Sydney was so great that it was found impossible, in a limited and dispersed population, to find gentlemen able and willing to abandon their pursuits and property to pass the legislative sessions in so distant a city as Sydney.
In New South Wales it was confidently expected that the new constitution would bestow rights similar to those enjoyed by the Canadians—that is to say, an executive responsible to the Legislative Council, with full control over their revenues and the disposal of the waste lands.
In 1847 Earl Grey prepared a scheme by which the district councils, which were held throughout the colony in equal hatred and contempt, were to form electoral colleges, and by double election return a representative assembly, while a second superior chamber was to be composed of nominees.
The publication in the colony of the despatch containing a sketch of this scheme, which looked in print like a chapter out of "Telemachus," was followed by such a manifestation of opposition, and by petitions so numerously signed, requesting that no change should be made in the constitution without the colonists being first permitted to express their opinion upon it, that the colonial minister withdrew his project.
In 1849 a committee of the Board of Trade, to whom Earl Grey entrusted the task, prepared a report suggesting a form of constitution to be bestowed on the three colonies. A bill for carrying into effect this report was introduced into, but not carried through the British Parliament. Under this bill the three colonies would have had the power of settling the land, and several other questions, by a sort of congress.
In the meantime the Report was sent out to the colonies. In Port Phillip and South Australia the concession of representative institutions was considered so great a boon that the other parts of the scheme were not too closely criticised. In Port Phillip especially, where an ancient contest had been carried on to obtain separation from New South Wales, the new constitution was received with the utmost enthusiasm. In New South Wales, where a representative council had existed for several years, the sections of the report which gave the most satisfaction were those which appeared to give control over the expenditure of the land revenues, and the power of fixing the price of land.
In the session of 1850 a bill became law, of which the following is an abstract:—
13 and 14 Viet. cap. 59—An Act for the better Government of her Majesty's Australian Colonies.
§ 1, after reciting the previous acts for the government of the Australian governments, enacts that the district of Port Phillip shall form a separate colony, to be henceforth known as the colony of Victoria. After the separation (§ 2), in the colony of New South Wales the Legislative Council is to consist of such a number of members as the Governor and Council shall determine, of which one-third is to be appointed by her Majesty, and the remaining two-thirds to be elected by the inhabitants of the colony; and the Governor arid Council are to establish the electoral districts and polling-places, issue the necessary writs for the elections, and make regulations for taking the polls and deciding on the validity of the returns. § 4 provides that every natural-born or naturalised subject of her Majesty, of the age of 21, possessing a freehold estate within the district of £100 clear value above all incumbrances or charges on it, for at least six months before the date of the writ or the last registration, if a registration has been established, or occupying a dwelling-house for six months of the clear annual value of £10, or holding a licence to depasture lands within the district, or holding a leasehold estate in the district of the yearly value of £10 of which the lease has not less than three years to run, and on which in all cases the rates and taxes due to within three months of such election or registration have been paid, and is not attainted of treason, felony, &c., is to be entitled to vote at the election of a member of the Legislative Council.
Power is given (§ 11) to the Governor and Legislative Council to alter the districts, and to increase the number of members, but in the case of an increase a number equal to one-third of the whole is to be appointed by her Majesty.
The Governor and Legislative Council (§ 14), when thus constituted, are authorised to make laws within the said colony, and to appropriate the whole of the revenues arising from taxes, duties, rates, &c., provided such are not repugnant to the laws of England; but they are not to interfere with the lands belonging to the crown, nor with the revenues arising therefrom, nor shall it be lawful to appropriate any sums of money to the public service, unless the Governor have first recommended to the Council to make such provision for the specific public service towards which such money is to be appropriated, nor shall any money be issued except under the order of the Governor directed to the treasurer; and the revenues (§ 15) are to be charged with the costs and charges for the collection and management of the same, subject to such regulations and audits as may be directed by the Treasury Board of England. Out of the revenues (§ 17) are to be paid the sums for judicial, official, and religious services, enumerated in schedules A, B, C, and D; these sums, however, may be altered by the Governor and Legislative Council (§ 18), subject to the consent of her Majesty.
By § 22 power is continued to district councils to make by-laws, subject to the approval of the Governor, who is to appoint the districts, fix the number and qualification of councillors, and the time and manner of election, nominate the first councillors, make regulations for their going out of office, and to define their powers; but the Governor and Legislative Councils (§ 24) may regulate the tolls, rates, and assessments in such districts, and may also regulate the constitution and duties of the district councillors, and the number and boundaries of the districts.
§ 27 empowers the Governor and Council to levy customs on goods imported, but no duty to be imposed on any article from one country that is not alike imposed on the same article from other countries. No duties, however (§ 31), are to be levied on articles imported for the supply of her Majesty's land or sea forces, nor may they grant any exemption, or impose any duty at variance with any treaty concluded by her Majesty with any foreign power.
By § 32 power is given to the Governor and Legislative Council, subject to the assent of her Majesty, to alter the provisions of this act as to the election of members of the Legislative Councils, and the qualification of members and electors; or to establish, instead of the Legislative Council, a Council and a House of Representatives or other Legislative Houses, and to vest in the same the powers of the Legislative Council.
The other clauses extend to all the other colonies in Australia, namely, Victoria, Van Diemen's Land, South Australia, and Western Australia, the same rights as are given to New South Wales, with power to extend them to new colonies; they also enable the boundaries to be altered, and provide a new Supreme Court at Victoria. The act is to commence within six weeks after a copy has been received by each Governor respectively.
Schedules referred to in the foregoing act. New South Wales is marked A, Victoria B, Van Diemen's Land C, and South Australia D.
| A. | B. | C. | D. | |
| Governor | £5,000 | 2,000 | 2,000 | 2,000 |
| Chief Justice | 2,000 | 1,500 | 1,500 | 1,000 |
| Two Puisne Judges | 3,000 | — | 1,200 | — |
| Attorney and Solicitor General, Crown Solicitor, and expenses of the administration of justice | 19,000 | 5,000 | 13,300 | 5,000 |
| Colonial Secretary, and his Department | 6,500 | 2,000 | 2,800 | 2,000 |
| Colonial Treasurer, and his Department | 4,000 | 1,500 | 1,800 | 1,500 |
| Auditor-General, and his Department | 3,000 | 1,100 | 1,600 | 1,000 |
| Clerk and expenses of Executive Council | 500 | 400 | 700 | 500 |
| Pensions | 2,500 | 500 | 2,000 | — |
| Public Worship | 28,000 | 6,000 | 15,000 | — |
| 53,500 | 20,200 | 41,900 | 13,000 |
In the new province of Victoria, and in South Australia, the new law was received, as was to be expected, with universal satisfaction. They had obtained at least as much as they expected; but when the colonists of New South Wales found that the clauses as to land and revenue for which they were most anxious had been excised, their universal discontent was embodied in the following remonstrance, and passed as almost their last act by the expiring Legislative Council. The hand of the author, William Wentworth, fiercely eloquent, is visible in every line:—
It would be easy to prove to those who were unacquainted with the political history of New South Wales that these grievances are for the most part imaginary; for in theory the colonists have almost all the rights claimed, and against granting them those they have not there are plausible theoretical objections.
For instance they have nearly the same control in theory over the customs department that we have; but as the officers are appointed in England by a board distant sixteen thousand miles, and paid out of a fund over which the colonists have no control, it may easily be imagined that they find it difficult to regulate the due execution of the duties of a department which has been almost too powerful for the merchants of London with all their parliamentary influence close at hand. It is true that here the salaries and cost of collection are deducted from the gross revenues, and so far the Australian rule follows the bad British precedent; but here the ministers who refuse to redress an administrative grievance may be turned out of office there—the advisers of the governor are irremovable.
So too there are theoretical reasons for making the salaries of the principal officers permanent, but the colonists remonstrating had in their view instances in which they had been compelled to pay Masters in Equity and prothonotaries, thrust upon them against their will.
There is no question that to confine patronage to colonists would be to shut out much talent and learning from the colony; but the remonstrants were thinking of a whole line of incapables and insolvents who had been provided for by the British minister at the expense of the colony.
Again, it is desirable that in certain cases the imperial government should have the power of vetoing colonial legislation; but the remonstrants were thinking of instances then recent in which that power had been exercised in a most injurious manner,—as for instance, in the "Wool Lien Act."
We need not pursue further the particulars of a contest which has died away, not without leaving some ill-healed scars, under the conciliating policy of Earl Grey's successors and the hilarious prosperity of the gold discoveries.
We have mentioned enough to prove that the discontents of the colonists of New South Wales were not excited by imaginary causes, but had their source in real and chiefly in taxing grievances—the sort of grievance, next to an interference with his personal liberty, which troubles the Englishman most acutely.
It is quite certain that the colonists were not always in the right; sometimes in their contests with the Colonial Office they were very much in the wrong,—just as we in England are subject to political and commercial aberrations; but in order to form anything like an apology for Earl Grey's unpopularity in Australia we must assume that he was infallible—that he knew better than any colonist what was good for the colony; and that therefore he was justified in ruling a transmarine dependency, peopled by an English race, on principles that no minister dare apply to Yorkshire or Lancashire.
In the midst of the first session of the new Colonial Parliaments, all political contests, internal and external, were cast into the shade by the gold discoveries: land question, convict question, taxation question, all were absorbed by the digging up of gold, over which flocks and herds had long been carelessly driven. The year 1850 found New South Wales with 200,000 free people, an export of £2,899,600, an import of £2,078,300, and 7,000,000 sheep—a surplus revenue and an annual demand for labour—nominal freedom of self-government, actual restriction from legislation on every vital interest. Who can say in what condition, social and political, 1860 will find the felon colony of 1788?
A Wool Store at Geelong
- ↑ Vol. I., p. 314, Earl Grey's Colonial Policy.