Page:The State and Position of Western Australia.djvu/45

 to the progress of the colony of Western Australia from its origin, to show that the statements therein made relative to its early condition are incorrect.

At page 33, vol. 2, of the work in question, there is said to be, in Western Australia, “abundance of good land, and of land, too, cleared and drained by nature.” After adverting to the amount of capital and live stock, and the number of labourers introduced by the first settlers, it is asked, what has become of all that capital, and all those labourers? Then comes the following passage:—“Why this failure, with all the elements of success—plenty of good land, plenty of capital, and enough labour?—The explanation is easy;—in this colony there never has been a class of labourers. Those who went out as labourers no sooner reached the colony than they were tempted, by the superabundance of good land, to become landowners.”

This writer proceeds to state, that Mr. Peel (who, as he had been informed, had brought out a capital of 50,000 l. and 300 persons of the labouring class) had been thus left without a servant to make his bed, or to fetch him water from the river; and that, in the absence of his people, his capital had perished. “The same thing,” he adds, “happened in many cases.” Further on, it is stated that some of the labourers, who had become independent landowners, died of hunger, at a period when a large supply of food had reached the colony; and that they were starved, because where they had settled was not known to the Governor, nor even to themselves—“such,” says this writer, “was the dispersion, of these colonists, in consequence of the superabundance of good land.” It is added, that the settlers who remained had petitioned for convicts—though one of the chief inducements to settling in the colony was an undertaking, on the part of the English Government, that none should be sent thither.

If this writer’s statement be correct—that labourers on