The Three Colonies of Australia/Preface
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
Since the 1st September, 1852, an edition of 5,000 copies of "The Three Colonies of Australia" has been exhausted. In this Second Edition I have made material alterations and additions. The work is now divided into two parts—the first Historical, the second Descriptive. I have in preparation, as a sequel, another volume of less bulk, which will be a Practical Hand-Book to the South Sea Colonies, including Australia, Van Diemen's Land, and New Zealand.
The Historical section contains, in twenty chapters of 240 pages, a sketch of the discovery and foundation of the Three Colonies, and the principal political and social events in their respective careers, between the landing of the first fleet in Port Jackson and the opening of the gold mines at Mount Alexander. In the preparation of the first seven chapters (83 pages), I had, in addition to the oral information of old colonists and valuable MSS., the assistance of the works of Collins, Wentworth, &c. The remaining thirteen chapters, which include the administrations of Governors Bourke, Gipps, and Fitzroy, in New South Wales—the Land Question—Emigration—Transportation—the Constitutional Contests of the first Australian Representative Council, and the whole History of the Colonisation of South Australia, are in the strictest sense of the term original. The materials were diffused through the votes and proceedings of the Legislative Assembly, English Blue Books, files of colonial newspapers, and other sources still more obscure and difficult of access. Whatever, therefore, be the demerits of this part of my work, it is the History of the Leading Political and Social Events of a period never before chronicled by any writer on Australia—a period to which Australian colonists look back with as much interest as we do in England to the struggles for the Reform Bill or for the repeal of the Corn Laws. In this Second Edition I have rewritten and condensed the pages devoted to the all-important Land Question, and devoted an additional forty pages to the Administration of Governor Fitzroy and the Colonial Policy of Earl Grey; and I have endeavoured to throw new light on the government of Sir George Gipps, by giving a chapter of political poems from a Sydney newspaper, the " Atlas," which will bear comparison with English compositions of the same kind from the days of the "Anti-Jacobin" to the days of "Punch."
The Descriptive section has been rendered more complete by the addition of a tabular view of the counties, towns, mountains, and rivers of New South Wales and Victoria, extracted, by permission, from Sir Thomas Mitchell's "Manual of Australasian Geography," and by accounts of journeys to and from the various gold-fields, which I have in great part abridged from the able reports made by special correspondents of the Sydney papers.
As I have throughout the following pages expressed my opinions on colonial questions and colonial statesmen with a freedom which my friends may call bold and my opponents audacious, I may perhaps, without incurring the charge of egotism, state what have been my opportunities for acquiring correct information on colonial subjects.
In 1844 my brother, with whom I had previously kept up a close correspondence, returned from Australia, where he had passed six years, engaged in pastoral pursuits. He arrived in England in the midst of the furious contest, described in Chapter XI. of this book, between Governor Gipps and the squatters. In the cause of the squatters he enlisted me; and when the Pastoral Question came to be discussed in Parliament, we contributed several letters—criticising the pastoral regulations which the government proposed to adopt, to which some of the leading London journals gave a prominent place.
Up to that time I had been a disciple of the Wakefield system of colonisation Land Monopoly. It was, however, only necessary to investigate with a practical man the practical effects of this untenable system in order to become irresistibly convinced of its fallacy. In 1847-8 I wrote for my brother, who was a close observer but no writer, a thin duodecimo, "A Voice from the Far Interior of Australia, by a Bushman."
In 1848 we sent forth the first edition of "The Australian Hand-Book." Shortly after its publication I had the pleasure to read an extract, quoted from the volume, in "Blackwood's Magazine," by the then anonymous author of "The Caxtons," who was pleased to describe the "Hand-Book" as "admirable for wisdom and compactness."
From attacking Wakefield's colonial land monopoly in print, I ventured, on every fitting opportunity, to attack it in public at meetings held to promote colonisation. At a meeting in 1848, presided over by Earl Harrowby, I warned the promoters that the land monopoly was the great bar to the popularity of Australia among the working classes. At that period opposition to the Wakefield system was considered wild and democratic; and the line I took up excluded me from any part in the Colonisation Society of Charing Cross, which, in spite of a great array of noble names, never obtained the confidence of the working classes, but after a brief existence, died of inanition. In the same year my brother and I commenced our "Emigrants' Journal," with the view of affording "plain, practical advice to intending emigrants." In 1848, before the fifth number was published, my brother returned to Australia.
While conducting the "Emigrants' Journal" I acquired a vast mass of information on colonial subjects. I was brought into daily contact with colonists of all classes, as well as with emigrants, and in the course of twelve months I answered more than one thousand practical questions on emigration and colonisation.
It was during the progress of this Journal that my attention was called to the singular coincidence between the views at which I had slowly arrived on colonial matters, and the evidence given by Mrs. Chisholm before a Committee of the House of Lords on Colonisation. On this evidence I wrote an article,[1] which led to my making the acquaintance and acquiring the friendship of Captain and Mrs. Chisholm, to whom I am indebted for a great and rapid advance in what I may call my colonial education. In the second monthly series of my "Emigrants' Journal,'* in the following year, I may be permitted to say I communicated to my countrymen a valuable contribution in placing before them the first published account of the work done by Caroline Chisholm. This Memoir subsequently formed the staple of all the biographies of that lady which have appeared, including one in "Chambers' Journal," and a paper I had the pleasure of contributing to "Household Words," entitled "Better Ties than Red Tape Ties."
In January, 1850, I published "A Letter to the Right Honourable Sidney Herbert," on the need of protection for female emigrants, and the necessity for a more careful selection of surgeons in emigrant ships, illustrating my arguments with evidence from Blue Books. Subsequent events proved the reasonableness of my warnings in a very flagrant manner.
On April 17th of the same year a great meeting took place at St. Martin's Hall to launch the last, the most improved plan for colonising Canterbury, in New Zealand, under the Wakefield system, which had so signally failed in South Australia and three other New Zealand colonies. Having during the three preceding years been engaged almost alone in dissecting and exposing this antipodean form of protection and monopoly, I travelled all night from Lincoln, in order to meet the colonising protectionists face to face. I found a platform crowded with Bishops and dignitaries of the Church, Peers, Members of Parliament; in the body of the room some two thousand Clergymen, many Members of the two Universities, and elegantly-dressed ladies. Except a small group at the end of the room, all seemed firm believers in Gibbon Wakefield and model High Church colonisation. I had not had time to obtain the company of a single friend; but when the Bishop of Norwich, Dr. Hinde, ventured to point to Adelaide, Wellington, and Nelson as instances of colonies where "the Wakefield system" had been tried with eminent success, and when Lord Lyttleton, before putting the resolution, invited "the questions or observations of any gentleman," I found courage to rise, and to tell intending colonists that ruin had fallen on all who colonised on the principles embodied in the bishop's resolution, to bid them refer to parliamentary documents for details of the sufferings of South Australian and New Zealand land purchasers, and to say—"I wish you intending colonists to understand that this Canterbury Colony is founded on the principle of creating artificial advantages for those who work with their head and not with their hand—that there is no instance of a colonist in any country employing his capital in agriculture as proposed at Canterbury, and obtaining either low-priced labour, or fair profit on his investment—while in pastoral pursuits the purchase of land is unnecessary, and concentration impossible;" and I concluded by observing—"If the colonisers wanted to have the best bone and sinew of the country, they must not adopt an exclusive system, under which no man with less than £500 could become the purchaser of fifty acres, for that, according to my experience, the best emigrants were men with large families and very moderate means, who could till land with their own hands to a profit, but were not willing to emigrate to become mere hewers of wood and drawers of water."
It would be difficult to give any idea of the effect produced by the incontrovertible facts and figures of my unexpected opposition. The Bishop of Oxford made a most brilliant and amusing reply, in which rhetoric supplied the place of facts and arguments; Mr. Adderley, an amiable enthusiast—pretended to believe that I was recommending the wild, free grants of Swan River, or the churchless, school-less colonisation of New South Wales. But not one of the whole array of model colonisers was able to answer my simple question, "How are Canterbury colonists to earn a living and obtain a return for capital invested after the rate of £3 an acre? Not by agriculture, for colonial experience proves that except to the peasant proprietor agriculture will not pay. If pastoral pursuits are relied upon, no land will be purchased by sane men, and the assumed advantages of concentration, with the funds for churches, bishoprics, schools and libraries, can never be realised."
The part I took on this occasion exposed me, as I expected it would, to a good deal of petty persecution from the New Zealand clique to an attack from the "Spectator," and other organs of Mr. Wakefield's last bubble; but it secured me, I rejoice to add, the warm thanks of several intending colonists, and the friendship of some men whose friendship is worth deserving.
My worst forebodings have long since been confirmed by the letters of unfortunate Canterbury colonists. They find all the money spent on agriculture wasted, but have good hopes from pastoral pursuits on the fine grassy plains, which they once dreamed of converting into Lothian or Norfolk farms.
My next exertions in the cause of colonisation were devoted to the assistance of my friends, Captain and Mrs. Chisholm, in their labours to establish Family Colonisation. In this occupation I was enabled to extend still further my knowledge of Australia, and of the emigrating classes.
Thus, I claim the merit, if merit there be, of having written a Hand-Book of Emigration in a style before unknown, but since popular and common, viz., a style plain and practical, candid as to the defects of the colony, and explicit as to the hardships of the colonist;[2] of having, during a series of years, criticised, exposed, and successfully attacked the fallacies and frauds of the Wakefield system—all the time unsupported by the press, and opposed by the powerful and unscrupulous vested interests of colonising companies since insolvent and defunct; of having saved a considerable number of most respectable persons from losing their money, their time, their health, and their hopes, in the Canterbury colony;—of having done my utmost to make public and popular those common sense principles of self-supporting Family Colonisation, and to carry out those essential reforms in the shipping department of emigration to which my excellent friends, Captain and Mrs. Chisholm, have devoted six active years of their lives.
In conclusion I take leave to state, as misrepresentations have been circulated on the subject, that except by the profits of my books and literary contributions, I have never derived any benefit, either directly or indirectly, from my share in emigration agitation. My "Emigrants' Journal" barely paid its necessary expenses. My pamphlets were, as pamphlets always are, a source of expense. From my "Hand-Book" and miscellaneous contributions, I of course derived considerable advantage; but it has been from hard work of another kind that I have been able to earn that moderate income which renders me independent of colonising companies and patronising shipowners, and indifferent to those official attractions to which so many who take part in colonial questions early succumb, and which has enabled me to wait for the success that sooner or later crowns the reputation of those who struggle for truth and justice.
S. S.
London, 1st June, 1853.