Page:The Present State and Prospects of the Port Phillip District of New South Wales.djvu/128

 wife, and five or six young children, requires an amount of rations for their support fully equal to the services he can render, or at all events only justifying the employer in giving a rate of money wages so small as to create dissatisfaction on the part of the labourer, who is but too generally indisposed to make the requisite allowance for the peculiar circumstances in which he is placed.

"With the qualification above mentioned, your committee have no hesitation in expressing their belief that four thousand shepherds and farm labourers would readily find employment at rates of wages from £10 to £12 per annum, with lodging, fuel, and rations.

"No field, your committee apprehend, can be selected for emigration that holds out a fairer prospect to the emigrant himself than New South Wales, providing the selection be made of such as are suited to its wants. The salubrity of the climate—the excess of physical comforts of life—the constant employment presented in rural or grazing occupation—the moderate rate of wages that may be ensured—constitute advantages to the labouring emigrant which it appears questionable whether he can command elsewhere."

The gentlemen who composed the committee, from whose able report I have quoted so largely, were the colonial secretary, the auditor-general, Mr. Icely, Dr. Lang, Mr. Murray, Mr. Wentworth, Mr. Walker, Mr. Macarthur, Dr. Nicholson, and Mr. Bowman, men of great consideration and high standing in the colony—many of them large landed proprietors, and who, if they were capable of listening to the dictates of a selfish and unenlightened policy, might think perhaps that they served their own interest by assisting to keep up the present high upset price of crown land. In their recommendations on this subject I may add that they are not only borne out by the report of the committee of crown lands, and by the expressed opinion of every