Page:The progress of the colony of Victoria.pdf/4

 in the value of their property. Others were reduced to great distress, and had to seek homes in the adjoining colonies.

After two years of great depression, matters began to mend; and by 1845 the colony was in a healthier and better condition than ever. The population had increased to 28,000; the imports to £249,000, and the exports (principally of wool and tallow) to £464,000 per annum; the two latter having doubled within a year. The squatters had found it more profitable to boil down their sheep and export the tallow, than to sell them at a merely nominal price.

I shall now look back a few years to trace the pi ogress of the land question.

The original settlers took possession, as squatters, of as much land as they found necessary for the pasturage of their flocks and herds. This was, indeed, the most natural arrangement at the commencement of the colony, nor had the government power to order it otherwise. Those who wanted to buy land paid five shillings an acre. Things went on very well in this way; the squatters first occupying the land and then buying it for themselves, or else giving place to others and moving back upon unoccupied tracts. And so they would have continued to do, were it not for the interference of the home government, influenced by the colonizing schemes of Mr. Gibbon Wakefield. The plan of this gentleman was to sell the lands by auction at the high upset price of £1 per acre, and thus secure the land in the hands of men of property, and keep the colonists concentrated. The proceeds of the sales were to be devoted to the introduction of free emigrants, so that the settlers of capital might be well supplied with labour at low rates. By dint of puffing, false statements, and denouncing all opponents as interested parties, he gained the attention of the English press and government to his plan for making his colony of South Australia a "model colony," he obtained a charter, and formed a company for carrying out his projects. But after a short time of apparent prosperity, his plan proved a complete failure. Capitalists found it did not pay to give a pound an acre for land at the other side of the globe, and renounce all the comforts of home and civilization in order to occupy it; while those who were really fit for colonists, hard-working industrious men with small means, could not afford to pay such a price. Very little land was sold, beyond what was bought up at the first rush; there were, therefore, no funds to send home for labourers, and wages consequently rose to such a height that agricultural pursuits were abandoned, and the colonists spread over the country to find pasture for their stock on land for which they paid nothing. And thus, results exactly opposite to the anticipated concentration and cheap labour were arrived at.

But as yet the fallacy of the scheme was not detected. When Mr. G. Wakefield and his coadjutors saw that it did not work well, they addressed the home government to the following effect:— "How can our settlement attract emigrants, while the adjacent colony of New South Wales is selling land at five shillings per acre? Raise land there to the same price as ours, and we shall then get on smoothly together." Acting on this suggestion, the government, which seems to have placed implicit confidence in Mr.