Page:History of Adelaide and vicinity.djvu/119

 The Husbandmen ADELAIDE AND VICINITY 93 The most important feature of Governor Grey's administration remains to be recorded. Under Governor Gawler the city had its chance, and it was now the turn of the country. While all this strife was going on in Adelaide, the producers were engaged in much more profitable work, and Governor Grey helped them by his retrenchment and his discouragement of all biit necessary public works in the city. He had been twitted with' being too much of a theorist in political economy, but his policy had very definite issues. As observed in the preceding chapter, he saw immediately aft(r his arrival that the capital was overcrowded and that the population must be sent out to the farms and stations and gardens. Some of the reasons for his rigorous dismissal of Government employes, and for his disinclination to provide relief works, were to be found in the country. He was more far-sighted than most of those who railed against him. Decentralisation, and the utilisation of natural resources, were the objects he had in view ; and a rapid growth in agriculture and in general industrial de'elopment was the result. Throughout the period of depression newspapers in other Australian colonies, and some of the opponents of Wakefield's principles in England, had scathingly criticised and " written down " South Australia, but after a year or two they changed their tone. The depression was at first felt as acutely, though not as generall)-, in the country as in the town. Many Adelaide merchants were interested in agriculture and sheep breeding, and their losses compelled them to relinquish their estates for a mere song, even after they had erected substantial improvements by careful management. The fall in value of real estate, and in all kinds of property, rendered a percentage of the producers bankrupt, and men who in 1840 were comparatively opulent, in 1842 were in povert)', and found it necessary sometimes to obtain work as farm laborers. Orchards were allowed to run wild and improvements to fall into decay, simply because their owners, by bankruptcy, were forced to quit, and because there were no capitalists to purchase them. The price of wheat in 1842 was from 2s. to 2s. 6d. per bushel. Stock was sacrificed at comparatively ridiculous quotations ; sheep that cost £2 were sold for 5s. In 1843 the boiling down of sheep and cattle was resorted to, and soap works were established. One settler at Echunga, who in 1840 in land, garden, and stock, had an "apparent balance" to the credit of profit and loss of ^30,000, had sacrificed all by 1843 ; and the Banks obtained the property. Whereas, under Governor Gawler, there was not enough land surveyed for purcha.sers, under Governor Grey in 1843 there were not enough purchasers for the land surveyed. Some 300,000 acres waited for buyers, and in the meantime 36 special surveys of 4, OCX) acres each had been allotted. Those who arrived in the Province with capital during this period and purchased land and stock almost without exception acquired a competency. The subsequent view of the position is of a different character. In 1841 there were 8,168 acres under crop; in 1843, some 28,690 acres were cultivated. One record has it that up till the latter year the land alienated was 325,000 acres ; the population was 17,366; the number of sheep in the Province, 331,000; of cattle, 29,000; and of horses, 1,566. The wreck of their hopes in Adelaide led many colonists to swell the number