The Three Colonies of Australia/Part 1/Chapter 8
CHAPTER VIII.
GOVERNOR BOURKE.
1831 TO 1838.
MAJOR-GENERAL SIR RICHARD BOURKE, K.C.B., became Governor of New South Wales in December, 1831, and retired in November, 1837. He was, without question, the ablest man who had as yet occupied that office; equal in zeal, energy, and plain common sense to Macquarie; superior in the liberality, humanity, and statesman-like far-sightedness of his views. With wise self-reliance he resisted the blandishments of the official clique who have been the curse of all our colonies, and the opposition of the faction of white slave-drivers, who looked upon the colony as a farm to be administered for their sole benefit. He had courage, too, of a rare quality, for he dared to differ from his chief, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, on a vital point of administration. His recorded objections to the Wakefield land system are remarkable for their prophetic wisdom. Sir Richard was, and his memory still is, deservedly popular among the humble, or the wealthy sons of the once humble settlers—a rare merit, and not a qualification for favour at the Colonial Office. The six years of his reign were crowded with measures and events of the utmost importance in the history of New South Wales.
1. The discussions of the Legislative Council became public, and the financial estimates were regularly submitted and discussed.
2. The Church and School Corporation (which had become a gross job) was abolished, and religious equality established by an act of the Legislative Council.
3. An attempt was made to introduce the Irish national school system (which the bigots defeated).
4. Free grants of land were abolished, and sale by auction at a minimum price of 5s. substituted.
5. The despatch was received from Lord Glenelg, and steps were adopted which, in 1840, finally abolished transportation to New South Wales.
6. The squatting system was legalised and systematised on a plan which has since produced nearly £60,000 per annum.
7. Rules for regulating the number of convict servants to which each settler should be entitled (without favour), and the number of lashes which should be inflicted on a convict servant by a single magistrate, were framed and promulgated.
8. Port Phillip was peopled by settlers from Van Diemen's Land, and South Australia by colonists from England.
The powers of the executive council imposed on the Governor of New South Wales in the last year of Sir Thomas Brisbane's administration were, under Sir Ralph Darling, almost nominal. Not only were its deliberations secret and its dissent powerless, but Governor Darling illegally and systematically exercised authority in the only matter entrusted to the council—the distribution of the revenues. Towards the close of his administration he introduced a bill indemnifying himself, and legalising his illegal assumptions. Sir Richard Bourke, on the contrary, earnestly co-operated in raising the character of the council, treated the non-official members with the utmost respect, and endeavoured to give the council, as far as possible, the tone and functions of a representative assembly; a course directly the reverse of his successor, Sir George Gipps. Both were able,, but the one was a frank and generous, the other an astute and jealous man. It is very much to be regretted that Governor Bourke had not been permitted to govern with as little interference from Secretaries of State as Governor Macquarie, and to remain long enough to initiate the partly elective council which fell into the unhappy hands of his successor.
THE LAWS OF LAND TENURE.
First in importance among the legislative changes effected by Sir Richard Bourke's government, must be ranked the "Order in Council," subsequently embodied in an act of parliament, by which sales by auction, at a minimum upset price of 5s. per acre, superseded free grants of land; and the act of the Colonial Legislative Council, by which pastoral occupations of the vast territories beyond the surveyed limits of the colony (colonially, the Bush) were legalised, placed under the control of special commissioners, and charged with a rent in the shape of a licence-fee and a poll-tax.
From these two sources (the sale of land and pastoral or squatting rents) a fund has been derived, which, during the last twenty years, has conveyed to Australia more than one hundred thousand free emigrants, selected from the poorest labourers of the United Kingdom. The introduction of these labouring emigrants rendered the abolition, first of the assignment system, and finally of transportation, possible.
Here it may be convenient to review the various "land-laws" which had prevailed in the colony up to the time when those changes were introduced, which occupied so important a place in colonial discussions during the government of Sir Richard Bourke and his successor.
From the foundation of the colony in 1788 to 1824, regulations for the disposal of land were left entirely in the hands of the governor. From time to time the home Government exercised the right of bestowing grants upon such persons as were willing to proceed to the colony to occupy them. Up to 1818 free passages, as well as grants of land, were offered to such free emigrants as were willing to proceed to the colony, with rations for two years.
Thus, John M'Arthur, in 1804, after reporting the result of his experiments for naturalising the merino in New South Wales before the Privy Council, received a grant of fifty thousand acres, to be selected with the permission of the governor, in any part of the unoccupied territory.
So, too, as long as the settlement depended for subsistence on imported provisions, lands were bestowed on any man, bond or free, who would undertake to support himself after the expiration of the first year of occupation of his farm. With each grant a certain number of convicts were allowed as labourers for every eighty acres, who, as well as the settler and his wife, were rationed for a limited period by the local government, thus receiving from the government stores, beef, mutton, and flour of the same quality as that which they themselves had the profit of selling to the commissariat.
Up to the time of Governor Darling the produce of the colony was so uncertain, and the means of profitably employing the prisoners so limited, that every means was adopted to induce settlers to relieve the Government of the care and cost of convicts for whom there was no work.
In Macquarie's time the settler usually obtained, in addition to a supply of farm labourers, the use of a "clearing-gang," which cut down, burned, rolled, and cleared the huge trees from great tracts that no one would have attempted to cultivate without such assistance.
Under these rude means, up to 1820, the last year of Macquarie's government, 400,000 acres passed into the hands of private individuals. Brisbane granted 180,000 acres at a yearly quit rent of 2s. per 100 acres, and 573,000 at 15s. annual quit rent per 100 acres; he also sold between December, 1824, and May, 1825, 369,050 acres at 5s. an acre, giving a long credit, with a quit rent of 2s. per 100 acres in addition. In 1828, under Darling, the total number of acres alienated amounted to 2,906,346. But this acreage cannot, for any useful purpose, be compared with that of cultivated Europe; large patches and vast continuous tracts are so barren or so thickly timbered as to be of no more value than those Connemara estates offered for sale at 5s. an acre, and dear at the money.
It must also be noted that these quit rents were scarcely ever collected, but allowed to run in arrear until, under the government of Sir George Gipps, they exceeded in amount the value of the whole fee-simple of many estates, and became the source of a very formidable grievance.
Under Governors Brisbane, Darling, and the first years of Bourke's government, it was usual to make grants to colonists in proportion to the amount of capital they imported in cash or implements of husbandry.
In 1822 Commissioner Bigge recommended that sales of land contiguous to grants issued in consideration of capital imported into the colony, should be made at the rate of 10s. an acre for land in very favourable situations, and 5s. an acre in more remote situations. But this suggestion remained a dead letter.
In 1825 Lord Bathurst, as already stated, announced to the Australian Agricultural Company, but did not carry out his determination, that instead of free grants as theretofore, land in New South Wales would be "put up to sale according to a system similar in many respects to that adopted in the United States of America." In 1824 the Secretary of State for the Colonies issued regulations for the disposal of land in New South Wales, of which the following is an abstract:—
"1. A division of the whole territory into counties, hundreds, and parishes, is in progress. When that division shall be completed, each parish will comprise an area of 25 square miles. A valuation will be made of the lands throughout the colony, and an average price will be struck for each parish.
"2. All the lands in the colony not hitherto granted, and not appropriated for public purposes, will be put up for sale at the average price thus fixed.
"3. All persons proposing to purchase lands must transmit a written application to the governor, in a certain prescribed form, which will be delivered at the surveyor-general's office to all parties applying, on payment of a fee of two shillings and sixpence.
"4. The purchase-money must be made by four quarterly instalments. A discount of 10 per cent, will be allowed for ready money payments.
"5. The largest quantity of land which will be sold to any individual, 89,600 acres. The land will generally be put up in lots of three square miles or 1,920 acres.
"6. Any purchaser who, within ten years of his purchase, shall by the employment and maintenance of convicts have relieved the public from a charge equal to ten times the purchase-money, will have the money returned, but without interest. Each convict employed for twelve months will be computed as £16 saved to the public."
Persons desirous of becoming grantees without purchase might obtain land on satisfying the governor that they had the power and intention of expending in the cultivation of the land a capital equal to half the estimated value of it.
On grants of not less than 320 acres, and not more than 2,560 acres, subject to a quit rent of 5 per cent, per annum on the estimated value, redeemable within the first twenty-five years at twenty years' purchase, with a credit for one-fifth part of the sums the grantee might have saved by employing convicts. No quit rent was required for the first seven years, but the grantee was subject to forfeiture of his grant if unable, to prove to the satisfaction of the surveyor-general that he had expended a capital equal to one-half its value.
Detailed regulations like those above quoted as to expenditure of capital can never be enforced. In practice, quit rents fell in arrear and could not be recovered. Thousands of acres granted were barren and utterly valueless.
In September, 1826, Sir Ralph Darling created a land board, composed of the Colonial Secretary, the Civil Engineer, and the Auditor-general of accounts, which issued the following set of regulations worthy, for their thorough absurdity and impracticability, of their bureaucratic descendants, the South Australian commissioners, and the New Zealand Company.
Persons desirous of obtaining land were (1) to apply to the colonial secretary for a form to be filled up and submitted to the governor, who (2), if satisfied of the character and respectability of the applicant, directed the colonial secretary to supply him with a letter (3) to the land board, in order that they might carefully investigate the stock articles of husbandry, &c., and cash, forming part of his capital. On the land board reporting (4) to the governor satisfactorily as to capital, the governor furnished the applicant (5) with a letter to the surveyor-general, who (6) was to give him authority to proceed in search of land! When he had made his selection he had to apprise the surveyor-general (7), who twice a month was to report (8) to the governor such applications; and, if approved (9) by the governor, the applicant received written authority (10) to take possession of the land until his Majesty's pleasure should be known, or the grant made out. Terms as to quit rents the same as the first set of regulations—viz., 5s. per cent, after seven years; grants to be in square miles; one square mile, 640 acres, for each £500 of capital, to the extent of four square miles.
Land selected for purchase, not granted, to be valued by the commissioners, put up for sale, and sold by sealed tender, not under a price fixed by commissioners. Personal residence, or residence of a free man as servant or deputy, required on purchases and grants.
These regulations of Sir Ralph Darling were marked by every official vice unnecessary forms, expense, and uncertainty, inquisitorial investigation, bribery and corruption among the subordinates in the various offices; in fact, everything that could be done, was done to disgust decent, unpolished, unlearned settlers. They were adopted by the Colonial Office in 1827, and had the effect of rendering the business of obtaining and granting land one series of jobs. The home government always reserved to itself the right of making grants, and exercised it in a most baneful manner.
One effect, unintentional on the part of the authors of these cumbrous arrangements for obtaining grants of land, was to encourage unlicensed squatting in districts unsurveyed, and at that period allowed to remain in "healthy neglect." So the live stock increased in spite of the forms of the "land board."
An impartial retrospect of the granting; system,, before it was systematised and encumbered with regulations, leads to the conclusion that with a just and intelligent governor, it was the best that could be devised for such a colony.
The attraction of a free passage, with free grants of land and the use of convict labour which were offered up to 1818, did secure a certain number of respectable colonists. The free grant of land made to emigrants, in proportion to their capital, and to prisoners who had served their term, during the governments of Macquarie and Brisbane, between 1788 and 1825, with the aid of convict labour, did colonise and cultivate the country. For instance, in 1821, the great road across the Blue Mountain to Bathurst was executed, and rendered practicable for wheeled vehicles. In 1822 the Hunter River District was a wilderness; in 1827, for a distance of 150 miles along the river, half a million acres had been surveyed, granted, or sold to settlers whose capital was estimated at from four to five hundred thousand pounds, and whose stock included 25,000 horned cattle, and 80,000 fine-woolled sheep. All the improvements, buildings, fences, and cultivation were effected by assigned servants, whom the government fed and clothed for the first eighteen months of their servitude. Nothing but convict labour could have done so much in public and private works in five years.
Considering the slight offences for which the majority of the prisoner population of New South Wales had been transported, between 1788 and 1825, there can be no doubt that had the free grants of land system been accompanied by measures for classifying, teaching, and Christianising the convicts, and for providing, from the destitute parts of the United Kingdom, such an emigration of women as would have equalised the sexes, the character of the colony would have been materially changed, and a population provided well calculated to amalgamate with and rise to the level of free emigrants, when the time came for abolishing transportation, and giving up the land which convicts had pioneered to the use of a free population.
But as it is difficult to obtain a succession of governors, able and honest enough to bear the responsibility of granting land when it comes to be of value, it is to be regretted that, when it was no longer considered necessary to bribe prisoners to honesty and industry by the prizes in the shape of a farm of wild land, we did not imitate the simple system by which, during half a century, the vast territories of the United States have been colonised, cities founded, harbours constructed, canals cut, and railroads made.
Under this system the territories for sale are surveyed in advance, and laid out in lots of eighty acres and upwards, at a fixed price of a dollar an acre; a map containing the land for sale is open to every intending purchaser; there are no reserves except for special stated public purposes; parties settling beyond the bounds of surveyed land do so at their own risk, and have no power to inflict on the parent state heavy expenses in armies or officials. They are expected to govern and protect themselves, and to retire or purchase when the government surveyor makes his appearance. No doubt the American system has its defects, but, taken as a whole, it is the best which has ever been devised for employing a large emigrant population, and conquering and subduing the earth, at the least possible public expense.
It is possible that something like it might have eventually been transplanted to Australia, but a series of accidents threw that island-continent entirely into the hands of a clique of political land-jobbers.
In 1829 the colony of Swan River was founded on principles, under circumstances, and in a situation which ensured failure.
Mr. Peel, a gentleman who had influence with government, combined with Sydney merchants to found a colony in some other part of Australia. The merchants found the money, Mr. Peel the influence. The large fortunes which had been realised by colonists in New South Wales led the colonisers to believe that the same might be realised in a new colony, without the disadvantage of a convict population.
Swan River, on the north-western coast of Australia, was the site chosen. Sailors who had visited the shores gave the favourable reports, as sailors always do of any safe harbour where they find wood and water enough for their ship's crew. Geographical reasons led the adventurers to expect a temperate climate; further precise investigations as to the quality of the soil, extent of pastures, and character of the aborigines, were considered unnecessary.
The government, in total ignorance of the simplest principles of colonisation, did its part by bestowing a million acres on the founder, and to every other colonist acres in proportion to his capital in cash, live stock, implements, or the number of labourers whose passage he paid.
In great haste ships were freighted, and loaded with fine gentlemen and ladies, farmers and labourers, blood-horses, short-horned cattle, merino rams, carriages of fashionable build, and agricultural implements enough for one of the best farmed English counties. Those who had little money made use of their credit to obtain consignments which would entitle them to land. Not one of them doubted that the wild land in an unknown country would soon be as valuable as in Bedfordshire, or, at any rate, as on the banks of the River Hunter in New South Wales, and that the labourers would labour as contentedly for the same wages abroad as at home.
The first fleet of Western Australian colonists arrived to find the country not only unsurveyed, but unexplored. They were disembarked on a narrow slip of beach, bordered by thickets filled with hostile savages, who speared men and their cattle on every opportunity. A fine stud of thorough-bred horses perished for want of fresh water; whole cargoes of furniture and agricultural implements rolled on the beach without being unpacked. The labourers repudiated their home engagements, and obtained exorbitant wages. When the country was further explored, the quantity of available land turned out to be extremely limited; the live stock was rapidly consumed for food, while the remoteness of Swan River from the old colony rendered importations of any kind difficult, expensive, and uncertain. The sheep turned out to pasture repeatedly died, poisoned by a plant which, up to this day, the colonists have been unable to discover and extirpate.
In a word, planted in a remote district, far from other ports and out of the track of commerce, with very little land available for agricultural or pastoral purposes—what little there was of the one monopolised by a few hands, much of the other poisonous; with colonists, both high and low, the most unfitted by previous education for a rude, self-dependent life, without leaders or servants of colonial experience, without forced labour—the Swan River settlement failed miserably. This failure would have been confined to the fortunes of the first colonists, however bad the system of colonisation, had there been, as in the other settled districts of Australia, vast plains of sound pasture on which pure-bred merinoes could have fed and multiplied; or coal, or copper, or gold to be had for digging; but there was nothing, and is nothing up to the present hour, beyond the bare means of sustenance; thus, without a single staple export, Swan River, in spite of a series of systems of colonisation, has never been able to rise from the condition of an eleemosynary dependency, supported by the bounty of the parent state. With the failure of Swan River the system of free grants of land ended in Australia.